As countries around the world modernize their public elections process, the big problem with electronic voting machines is that the market is moving slow to provide equipment which fulfills all of the requirements for a fully democratic election. In many cases, printed proof of a citizen’s vote is still needed, in case the machine has buggy software or if there is suspicion of fraud.

The brazilian Election Supreme Court officialy announced at April 4th 2008, that the 2008 elections at Brazil will use GNU / Linux electronic voting machines with software digital authentication.

Sometimes, working on voting seems like running on a treadmill. Old disagreements need to be argued again and again. As long as I've been speaking in public about voting, I've discussed the need for voting systems' source code to be published, as in a book, to create transparency into how the systems operate. Or, put another way, trade secrecy is anathema to election transparency.

For the first time in history, the Philippine national elections to be held in 2010 will use an automated (electronic) polling system. At this point in time, our lawmakers are now debating on the issue of security of the voting machines that will be used in the polls.

According to major newspapers, starting with the municipal elections of 2008, Brazil’s e-voting machines will use the Linux operating system, to be developed by the technical team of the federal elections tribunal the TSE. According to the TSE’s IT division, the advantages of using Linux in the electronic voting machine are standardization, since it is possible to use this OS in all models of the device, as well as transparency, since this is an open mcchanism in which all the source code is available to the public and can be freely audited. Another advantage is zero cost, because no license fees must be paid.

Unverifiable paperless voting systems are still considered normal in many states; The software that counts our votes is secret proprietary property of Diebold, Sequoia, et al; The system is unnecessarily difficult to use (or impossible to use) for citizens with disabilities; Election judges still strain to divine voter intent on a significant percentage of ballots

"A new California study has found that several electronic voting machines have serious security vulnerabilities. California Secretary of State Debra Bowen commissioned the study which pitted two hacker teams, better known as “Red Teams” against voting machines manufactured by Diebold, Hart and Sequoia."

"Brazil’s Tribunal Superior Eleitoral will use 430,000 GNU/Linux machines for this year’s election, according to a press release (pt) published on the TSE website (h/t Ada Lemos). Giuseppe Janino, the Tribunal’s secretary of IT, promises that this migration will make the elections more secure and transparent, reducing the potential for ballot rigging and tampering..."

You’ve only got until May 26th to vote in the Fedora elections: elections are open now. This election we are voting on new members of the Fedora Project Board and the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee.