Over at Ars, I’ve got a story about the version of the Holt e-voting bill that was passed out of committee on Tuesday. In addition to making more money available to comply with the law’s requirements, the legislation significantly weakens the previous strong source code disclosure rules. The original Holt bill required that the source code be available to anyone who asked. Although the new version does make it available to a lot of people—including parties to election litigation and security researchers—it adds some red tape that’s likely to substantially reduce the number of people who are willing and able to jump through the relevant hoops.
Although I’ve said before that open source voting is no panacea, I find it hard to see an argument against requiring the disclosure of the source code for voting machines. It’s essential that all aspects of an election be transparent and accountable, and the source code of a voting machines is as much a part of the election process as the election judges’ handbook or the rules for recounts. Moreover, voting machines are almost entirely purchased by large institutions, so it’s not like there’s any risk of the disclosed source code showing up in someone else’s voting machine. The only reason I can think of to keep the source closed is to protect voting machine vendors from public scrutiny, which is obviously a reason not to allow them to keep it closed.
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