an opportunity in today's KC star

[David Nicol]

I find the idea of computer voting booths designed and implemented by
closed-source companies to be distressing.

Anyone for trying to put together an official statement of the LUG, which
would be sent to the kcstar as a letter from the LUG -- agreeing with
that sentiment, and offering to create or obtain a free and open source
alternative to the computerized voting systems discussed in today's
newspaper, made with common off-the-shelf hardware?

I am pretty sure we could even undersell the money figures given in
the article -- $1000 per voting booth for an attached printer? -- I really
don't see why state-of-the-art hardware would be needed to run a touch-screen
voting machine, or even what the advantage of touch-screen over keyboard
might be.  To select from the candidates on this screen press a number key
on the keyboard.  Did you select 32, "Chuck Steak" running in the Mauve party,
for the position of director of parks department division of drinking
fountain maintenance?
press the "YES" button.

I dunno about touch-screen technology -- the data comes in from the touch screen
like mouse click coordinates, right?

Aha --
http://www.openvotingconsortium.org/
exists.

So we propose a petition in the form of an open letter to government
that the OVC
solution should be considered, and offer to, as an organization,
integrate and maintain it.

The politics at KCLUG are clearly a mixed bag, so we otta be totally immune from
accusations of partisanship :)


--
David L Nicol
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