Public Trust Demands Open-Source Voting Systems
Yesterday, news broke that Dominion Voting Systems was sold to a new company, Liberty Vote. Dominion, the second-largest voting systems vendor in the US that currently tabulates 1 in 5 American votes, is no more.
On its website, Liberty Vote says, "We are turning the page and beginning the vital work of restoring faith in American elections."
There is indeed a crisis of trust in American elections. As the saying goes, trust takes years to build, seconds to break, and forever to repair. We urgently need a new strategy that repairs voter trust. American freedom and democracy depend on it.
We must start with a foundational commitment to transparency. Every voting machine vendor in the US claims to be transparent. It may come as a surprise, then, that most Americans vote on machines that run proprietary, secret software! A voting machine that every American can trust must run software that is fully open to public scrutiny.
Today, VotingWorks makes the only open-source voting equipment in the US. Open-source is the modern standard for public-trust and high-security software. Signal, the most secure and battle-tested messaging app, is open-source. The US Military recommends open-source. A modern voting system needs to be open-source.
Liberty Vote, and every other vendor of voting machines in the US, can fulfill their commitment to transparency by making their technology open-source today. If every vendor takes this opportunity, together, we can turn the page and launch a new generation of voting systems every American can trust.
About Voting Works
Read about the company: https://voting.works
View our complete source code: https://github.com/votingworks
Contact us with questions: hello@voting.works