It has been suggested by one of our prominent community members that the use of negative votes should be confined to demoting spam. As the individual responsible for the introduction of negative voting on FSDaily, I feel I should explain my rationale for its inclusion and provide my tips on negative voting.

I won't invite a flame-war by referring directly to the particular voting pattern, instead I'll describe my own voting etiquette which, I think, would eliminate such an abuse.

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.

"I do not honestly care which OS each of you choose to run. For some of you, it will be Windows, others OS X. And for a growing number of the remaining minority, your OS of choice will be one of the Linux flavors available today."

Electronic voting machines vendor Election Systems & Software Inc. has finally given in to demands by California's Secretary of State office that it submit the source code used in one of its products. But it made it abundantly clear it is unhappy about the requirement.