SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Roy Schestowitz at TechRights reports:
Microsoft wages war on politics in all sorts of ways, sometimes through lobbyists, sometimes through 'former' staff, pseudo 'charities' like the Gates Foundation, and pressure groups like the Business Software Alliance.
Today we present information given to us courtesy of the California Association of Voting Officials. They complain about Microsoft lobbyists and they have expressed an interest in aligning for global issues, for they too realise that Microsoft cannot be ignored if society wants fair elections and ultimately pursues voting machinery that can be trusted.
Microsoft lobbying in this area is a scarcely explored topic. There is very little information about it out there, hence we hardly ever covered the topic. It is widely known, however, that voting machines in the US use Windows, which has back doors and therefore can never be trusted, with or without tampering by a human operator.
[...]Somehow, despite public will to induce transparency, accountability, audits, etc. on the process, decades later we are still [...] heavily dependent on a proprietary, secretive system (or set thereof).
[...]"We put open source language into voting system legislation", told us [sic] someone from the California Association of Voting Officials, "and the Microsoft lobbyists have it removed.
"This must be stopped as OS voting systems are a preferred security environment for vote tabulation... the alternative being Diebold / Dominion / Microsoft, etc."[...]
The head attorneys for President Obama's election report (which omitted open source voting system solutions even though the information was gifted to them) work for firms that lobby and/or represent Microsoft (Bob Bauer of Perkins Coie and Ben Ginsburg of Pattons Boggs/Jones Day)
Nate Persily was tasked with presenting the President with all information...but inexplicably failed to include any reference to open source in the report. When asked about this omission--and possible steps to remedy (addendum etc)--Persily went silent.
No members of the Presidential Committee were responsive...
In California--which is the frontline of the battle for open source voting systems in the USA--the lobbyist for the California Association of Clerks and Elected Officials Barry Brokaw is also the lobbyist for Microsoft
Original Submission
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday June 15 2015, @01:47PM
This is the US government, though: They're beholden to scummy corporations for almost everything, from bombers to drones to websites to roadways to space flight. Ever since Ronald Reagan, they've been positively allergic to the idea of hiring civil servants to do work for the public good.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2015, @03:19PM
No, it isn't that insidious. You had the embarrassing debacle of Florida in 2000 with all the butterfly ballots, hanging chads, recounts, not allowing recounts, etc. Clearly all this would never have happened if it was all electronic, etc., etc. This is the 21st Century and all; it's embarrassing that we're so behind the times, etc. We must do something!
For the States that wanted to "modernize", the Fed gave them money (Help America Vote Act) to do so. In steps Diebold and other companies with solutions that are 90% there. All they need to do is tweak up their existing ATM machine code or whatever. That sounds like a great deal because if it is good enough for an ATM, then it must be good enough for voting, right? You have election officials with money to burn and vendors who claim they have COTS solutions to purchase. In my state you had an election official talking about how great these were, and when pressed on the issue of verifying whether the machines are accurate, she pointed out how easy it was to do a recount by clicking on the "Recount" button in the software. There's that whole "don't attribute to malice. . . ." saying that is appropriate here.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2015, @04:43PM
Except that our system is so hopelessly corrupt, and our politicians always so 'conveniently' ignorant when it counts, that it is unreasonable to suggest that mere stupidity is a satisfactory explanation.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Monday June 15 2015, @06:03PM
"Don't attribute to malice"?! Recount button, LOL. More appropriate is the saying America was founded on: "power corrupts". There is no reason to take anything on trust where verification is so relatively trivial. We should trust Diebold, when it would be so easy for them to hand over the source code? They think their precious proprietary secrets are more important than the integrity of our voting tabulation? They don't think copyright, as extreme as it is, is good enough for them? No way! We are the customers, and in this matter, it's our way or the highway. Hand over the source code and all other documentation, or we don't buy. That's the way it should be.
It's like making a large cash purchase. Both sides count the money carefully, for several reasons. First is to make sure there aren't any mistakes. But also, it's to show that if any deliberate shortchanging is going on, it WILL be detected, so don't even think of trying it.