Why aren't voting machines open source? [close

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

Security Through Obscurity!

Answer 2

The reason they aren't open source, is because, as Kent mentioned, it wouldn't help. You could open source the code. But there's no way to ensure that the voting machine you are using is actually running the code that is open sourced.

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.

Answer 4

• The people responsible have a "security by obscurity" bad meme stuck somewhere
• The people building the software don't want to help competitors
• The people building the software fear embarrassment
• There are not enough people in the legislative process who understand the flaws in all of the above

Answer 5

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

Answer 6

Because politicians buy them. Anything politicians get their hands in goes to shit, because 99% of the time they're only experience is in running for office, not doing things like adequately vetting hardware and software.

Also, kickbacks.

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The truth hurts, doesn't it?