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An open-source voting system (OSVS), also known as open-source voting (or OSV), is a voting system that uses open-source software (and/or hardware) that is completely transparent in its design in order to be checked by anyone for bugs or issues.[1] Free and open-source systems can be adapted and used by others without paying licensing fees, improving the odds they achieve the scale usually needed for long-term success.[2] The development of open-source voting technology has shown a small but steady trend towards increased adoption since the first system was put into practice in Choctaw County, Mississippi in 2019.[3]
Security and trust
Systems where more people can understand more of the process and get insights into details serve a similar purpose to election observers who help to inspire trust with increased transparency and verification.[4] Additionally, when 90% of the market of election systems in the United States, for example, are run by 'murky' and 'inscrutable' private equity companies, conspiracy theories can flourish alongside serious vulnerabilities.[4] With quicker identification and correction of issues than under proprietary systems, organizations such as the U.S. Defense Department and NASA opt to incorporate open-source software.[5] Cities, for example, can have their own staff work on software with the vendors when out in the open, allowing for faster patches and enhancing their election security.[6] The consensus among the information security community is that a widely-used open-source system should be more secure than a closed one, as more people tend to be willing and able to check for vulnerabilities.[7]
Cost Savings
In addition to increased transparency creating more trust and security, open-source software can lower costs for elections. A VotingWorks bid in a Mississippi county, for example, was 50% less than the other vendors using proprietary software,[8] while its machines in 2021 were listed at 1/3 the price of the average machine.[4] Open-source software allows maintenance costs to be controlled via vendor competition (rather than dependence on just a couple vendors), and to be shared with other jurisdictions as they employ the software.[9]
Proprietary vendors are not transparent about their costs, estimates found that roughly 2/3 of their revenue came from support, maintenance and services.[10] Private vendors also have sued governments trying to switch to a more reliable process.[10]
In 2004, Open Voting Consortium demonstrated a "Dechert Design" GPL open source paper ballot printing and scanner voting system.[11] In 2008, Open Voting Consortium demonstrated the system at a mock election for LinuxWorld.[12][13] In 2019, Microsoft made its ElectionGuard software open-source, which the company claims is used by all major manufacturers of voting systems (in the United States),[14] however they have come under fire for obstructing the adoption of open-source election software.[15] In 2020, Los Angeles County became the first U.S. jurisdiction to implement its own publicly-owned election system.[16] The Los Angeles attempt at open source voting was dismissed by Open Source Initiative as a failed project when it did not meet accepted open source standards. A condition of the Secretary of State's approval was to open-source the code by October 1, 2021,[17] but had not met that commitment as of February 2022.[18]
San Francisco applied to run a limited pilot in November 2022 using VotingWorks, but California's Secretary of State asked the City to resubmit their application when the nonprofit's ranked-choice voting module was closer to completion.[19]
Mississippi was the first state to have local jurisdictions use open-source voting systems to cast and count ballots. In New Hampshire, the towns of Ashland, Newington and Woodstock piloted that same open-sourced software system in the fall of 2022 with an eye to possible statewide adoption of VotingWorks' open-source systems by 2024.[20]
Open-source election risk-limiting audit systems have been implemented statewide in the U.S. states of Georgia,[21] Michigan, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Virginia and in local jurisdictions in California, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Washington.[22]
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