"Jose" wrote in message
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An electronic voting machine whose software OTOH is open, public, and
whose compiling and loading into standard interchangable chips and media
is properly supervised is much more difficult to rig. I would have more
confidence in such a machine.

I would not. One of the most widely used open source programs (Firefox)
still regularly is found to have defects in it. Open source software is
still software, and it takes a huge effort to inspect the code and detect
flaws.

I do agree that an open source software voting machine is preferable. But
IMHO, the more important aspects are for the voting machine to provide a
paper record of the vote, and for the voting results to be audited.

Specifically, electronic voting machines ought to spit out a paper ballot
very similar to what is used today. The voter should inspect the ballot to
verify it has recorded their vote accurately. Then, some small percentage
of voting machines should be selected (randomly, of course) for their output
votes to be compared to manually counted paper ballots from those machines.

This would not, of course, guarantee 100% accurate results. But it would
come pretty close. It would be FAR more reliable than what is being
proposed these days by companies like Diebold.

Pete