Thought experiment

[unixronin]

cipherpunk posted yesterday about a paper on the weaknesses of DRE voting machines.  And it got me thinking.

Suppose that every state, when requesting bids for voting machines, were to include a clause like the following in the request for proposals:

"n.  By submitting a bid in response to this request, you grant permission for an independent security audit of the submitted voting equipment prior to completion of the bid process, said audit to be performed by agents including but not limited to an agent or multiple agents appointed by $state, and agree to cooperate fully and in a timely manner with any and all such audits."

I think the results might be interesting.  Discuss.

Comments

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

The current generation of Electronic Voting Machines was driven by congress, in panic mode, after the 2000 election. The companies involved convinced our representatives that the best way to fix the vote counting problems was to do it with a computer. Congress promptly allocated $3 Billion and change to large companies to develop such a beast.

What you are suggesting would be a more thoughtful, market driven development cycle. Instead of major companies trying to burn through allocated cash as fast as possible, without consideration of quality, we would be trying to find out what the public needs to ensure a fair and verifiable election result.

I don't think your suggestion will really help matters. It is an attempt to make a silk purse. What we have is a pig. If we want reasonable voting machines, the states and municipalities must be the ones to demand it, creating a market. What we have was a product looking for a market. The consumer base has already been badly burned, I doubt the market will recover anytime soon.