Why aren't voting machines open source? [closed]

Question

Sooo...it's only sort of programming related, but I figure it's election day, right? Is there a single good reason why they aren't, not necessarily open source in that anyone can contribute, but open source in that anyone could inspect the source?

Answer 1

Voting machines aren't open-source because lobbyists for the "electrical till" industry successfully hoodwinked politicians not qualified to make technology choices into buying their snake-oil. This was accomplished with a mix of anti-FOSS FUD and good ol' fashioned bribery campaign contributions.

---

Update: I will try to post links here from time to time that show how vendors respond to critical examination. Feel free to add your own. (Pro-OSS–only: "the man" can make his own post!)

• Interesting Email from Sequoia

Answer 2

In Belgium, the sourcecode for the voting machines is freely downloadable.

Answer 3

In the context of this discussion, you might find this paper interesting:

Secret-Ballot Receipts: True Voter-Verifiable Elections

It's written by David Chaum, the cryptographer responsible for DigiCash, among other things. From his bio page on Wikipedia, I also found End-to-end auditable voting systems.

Update! Now it seems we can see if this really works: First Test for Election Cryptography.

Looking back in time now, I've read a couple of articles on the experiment in Takoma Park, and this system actually seems different from the one described in the original paper. However, it is still by David Chaum, and still supports the end-to-end audit properties. The system is called Scantegrity II.