The New York Times has written an important article, To Protect Voting, Use Open-Source Software, about the dangers of voter fraud and how using open-source software may provide protection against this very real threat to our democracy.
The crux of the argument is that open-source software is, of course, open to anyone. Users can actually see every detail of the code, with vulnerabilities to hacking being visible to knowledgeable software people and open to correction. This is not the case with software from commercial suppliers such as Microsoft, where only corporate insiders can view and modify the actual source code.
This all makes sense, but will this require that election officials in rural America, far away from tech capital such as Silicon Valley, NY or Boston, will need to maintain scarce, high priced software specialists on-board to monitor the situation? If so, it is an impractical solution.
The article does raise one point that can’t be argued, and that is, even in today’s hi-tech, computerized world, a paper trail, composed of actual paper, might be a vital protection. After all, it’s a lot harder to forge paper than it is to forge ones and zeros