Although I’m not a very eloquent writer, I’ve tried to stress the importance of voting machines running on Open Source software, instead of Closed Source software.

Please understand: There is no point in having elections when the voting machine source code is a secret (aka. Closed-Source).  No point whatsoever.

How much faith would you have in a system where everyone passed their ballots under the door of a dark closet where one man is trusted to announce the results at the end?

Would that make sense to you?  Would you trust that man to be honest?  Would you still bother voting?

Of course not.

However, this is exactly what closed-source voting machines are.  There are a handful of guys who write the code and then keep it a secret.  That code is then used to tabulate the results, and then we just trust whatever it says.

Doesn’t anyone realize how bat-shit-insane that is?!?

Think I’m nuts?  Watch this video:

Want to watch someone actually rig a random voting machine? Watch the last half of Hacking Democracy:

Here’s a short clip about a different Diebold model, although it’s not documented as well as the video above: