Stealing an Election?

I've been following this for several years now (hey, I'm from Chicago after all).   After the problems with the 2000 election, the knee jerk reaction was to throw technology at it.   Oh my.   If you don't have HBO, find a friend who does and watch this documentary.   Is it the truth and the whole truth?  Don't know.  But it does bring up some interesting  questions. (for more information search for "voting machine hack")

There are two problems here.  The first is the question of the security of a system from private vendors which cannot be audited by the public or public officials.  The second is rolling out anything this new and expecting everyone (including the voters) to be properly trained on it.

However there is an opportunity here for one of you to build a billion dollar company in no time at all.  Simply come up with a voting system which is open source and available for anybody to see and contribute to the effort.   Do  a similar deal with the good folks at IBM who makes the guts for ATM machines to build the hardware.  That's how Diebold got into the business after all.

First problem solved.

Then have a professional services and training program for the entire country.   

Second problem solved.

This would be so easy to sell.   You could just say "Our systems are secure, see for yourself".   Which none of your competitors could do.   Now that would be a marketer's dream come true.

But no matter what, please spend the weekend looking at the issues and candidates and make sure you vote next week.

And you can tell your friends "I think I voted".

Comments

[Steve]

An Open Source Voting system like this one?

http://www.elections.act.gov.au/Elecvote.html