Could open source be the solution to the e-voting debacle?

The chaos from the 2000 presidential election in Florida, and subsequent e-voting controversies, has left voters skeptical. So a former engineer from Intel and Borland has designed a new, open system to give voters peace of mind.

SAN FRANCISCO (BetaNews) - Engineer Alan Dechert and his team have created the Open Voting Consortium, an organization aimed at creating and offering open voting systems that can be trusted by voters. Rather than attempt to tinker with a voting machine already in use, Dechert and company created their own voting system from the ground up.

During the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo, LinuxWorld attendees had the chance to participate in a mock presidential election that offered insight into how elections would work with this system in place. After using a mouse to click through the ballot, a voter prints a copy of her ballot, which will include bar codes. Each ballot can be manually counted, be electronically photographed, or have its bar codes scanned to record the vote.

The paper ballots are stored in a box and can be later manually counted if a problem arises. An election worker then can print a tally sheet at the end of the day, which also has a barcode.

The barcode standard used by the voting machine is a common standard that can be scanned by the majority of scanners used today, Dechert told BetaNews during LinuxWorld. A numerical sequence is hidden in the code, and each bar code is unique so it is impossible to count it twice.

The system can operate on a regular PC, and there is no need to invest in expensive equipment. Most of the systems shown at LinuxWorld were $190 PCs and $70 printers, which is significantly cheaper than the voting machines used today, whose prices start at $3,000.

Dechert hopes to have the Consortium's voting machine certified by 2010, and the city of San Francisco has expressed interest in them, he said. Several other Bay Area voting jurisdictions are interested in learning more about the system and how soon it could be rolled out. Dechert said deploying the system in national elections will be a mission for the future; in the meantime, it will need to pass a stricter certification and be more closely analyzed.

There has been considerable controversy over the past three years as to whether or not open source e-voting software is beneficial to security. Open source supporters, including Dechert, believe the application's code can be analyzed for any security flaws or issues, and then be fixed by the open source community. Other analysts and researchers, however, contend that the open nature of the system will expose potential vulnerabilities to a wider community of malicious users.

However, an open source e-voting system would also let county and municipal governments avoid being locked into long-term contracts with e-voting manufacturers. Along with the long-term, expensive contracts involved when a government deals with private companies such as Sequoia Voting Systems and Premier Elections Solutions, they've also been unwilling to allow independent parties to determine the accuracy and integrity of their systems.