Towns are testing new ballot counting machines that use open source software
The number 1 most important property of voting <i>by far</i> is that the results are believable.<p>Voting machines irreparably damage the believability that an election was fair. They require trust, they require operation, and they increase the blast radius of bad actors. They are fundamentally a black box, open source or not, because the operation of them is subject to human malfeasance. There is no guarantee the open source software itself is what is running on those machines.<p>I consider myself extremely liberal and I don&#x27;t believe America&#x27;s elections are legit. I cannot go verify for myself that votes are tabulated reasonably, so I have to trust without the ability to verify. I cannot even begin to explain the details or process of how an election is run. I can&#x27;t even think of edge cases for voting and how they are addressed because there is too much I don&#x27;t know I don&#x27;t know. I can&#x27;t tell you what prevents double voting, voting on behalf of non voters (for example if I knew 10 people who haven&#x27;t voted in 30 years, I might be able to submit a ballot on behalf of them), or what prevents ballot interception. Some states use &quot;signatures&quot; yet my signature is not even remotely distinct.<p>It doesn&#x27;t have to be this way.<p>In Taiwan, you go to your voting location, you vote in a booth, you put your ballot into a box, the box is opened after polling hours and votes are tallied publicly with anonymous ballots shown publicly as they are tallied. Ambiguous ballots are subject to public review. All unambiguous votes are counted. Everything except filling out the ballot itself is public.<p>When conservatives spew forth the big lie, that is not something that can be thrown under the rug. That is not a Trump problem, that is not a conserative problem, that is an America problem. If election results are not fairly undeniable, the basis of democracy (that those in the minority should submit to majority rule) is violated.<p>The fact that election officials are more concerned with &quot;counting the vote&quot; than &quot;our voting integrity is unimpeachable&quot; is a big problem.