> chains of custody, tamper proof seals, bipartisan poll watchers, bipartisan election judges, and enough transparency
Does closed source software allow for any of that?
- The chain of hardware custody is difficult: did any components come from China? The chain of software custody is similarly difficult: are the dependencies disclosed at all? Who wrote all the components it uses? At least paper won't surprise you
- Poll watching and judging still involves a handoff to a black box. The poll watcher and judge cannot confirm or deny that the software or hardware performed as expected.
- There is no transparency with closed source software, period. It could be doing <X> and we wouldn't even know it - until it was disclosed, sort of, in an impossible to understand TOS document that was just updated. This is the entire story of the scandals facing tech for the last 10 years or more.
Even open source doesn't guarantee this unless you can verify that every machine is running the code you think it is and was doing so during the whole election.
There's no feasible way for a voter to verify that a machine they're voting isn't compromised without giving people ludicrous levels of access to the machines. (Way more than just a USB port) Never mind the fact that almost no-one has the ability to do this verification anyways.
Does closed source software allow for any of that?
- The chain of hardware custody is difficult: did any components come from China? The chain of software custody is similarly difficult: are the dependencies disclosed at all? Who wrote all the components it uses? At least paper won't surprise you
- Poll watching and judging still involves a handoff to a black box. The poll watcher and judge cannot confirm or deny that the software or hardware performed as expected.
- There is no transparency with closed source software, period. It could be doing <X> and we wouldn't even know it - until it was disclosed, sort of, in an impossible to understand TOS document that was just updated. This is the entire story of the scandals facing tech for the last 10 years or more.