Open source

Maybe Diebold, ESS, Sequoia, and similar private companies manufacturing the machines on which we vote, machines that read the optical scan ballots upon which some of us have voted, or the software systems that tabulate the votes -- well, maybe it's not such a great idea that their software and programming is all kept under such lock and key.

Or so suggests OpenSourceTheVote.org, forwarded to us by a reader.

There's not much on the site yet. But there is this:

At present, there is no hard evidence for a systematic fraud among the computerized voting and counting in Ohio and Florida, but there is plenty of anecdotal evidence which raises such suspicion -- examples of computer flaws and failures -- but most importantly: there exists no sure way to prove that fraud was not perpetrated by a backdoor within the voting and counting software which remains inaccessible to the public eye, and the high probability that systematic software bugs were responsible for disenfranchising thousands of voters.

Allowing the sun to shine on the code which runs these machines will eliminate the fear of fraud, and help to mitigate the danger of errors, and allow the collective intelligence of the world's software developers to ensure the security and reliability of voting, a process on which our democracy is founded and on which our freedom depends.

Makes sense to me. Others?