As the Presidential election year in the USA is approaching, it’s time to remind everyone again about election fraud and how important it is to push for free software in electronic voting machines. Voting machine software is primarily manufactured by private companies who use proprietary software. This immediately brings up the possibility that backdoors are built into the software to allow people “in the know” to change vote tallies and directly influence elections. Even if they don’t, however, buggy software can create errors which can make it difficult or impossible for some votes to be properly tallied. They also leave no paper trail so recounts are impossible.

But, if we issued tickets which showed which votes a person cast, this might make it possible for people to buy votes or pressure their employees to show a “properly filled out ballot” to keep their jobs. Even if they work perfectly, electronic voting machines programmed and managed by companies with strong ties to particular candidates create distrust in the entire political system.

You can learn more about these issues at the Open Voting Consortium website. The OVC is an organization which is hoping to raise 1.5 million dollars to run a certified test of free software voting machines so that they can gain approval for use in US elections.

These kind of tests take not only money, but time, so please donate soon if you want to help it happen before the next presidential election. Hillary Clinton has already announced her intention to run and, as a woman, I want to give her a fair chance to win. Not only because I would like to see a woman in the White House, but, even more so, because I’m dying to see Bill Clinton as First Man in an apron saying, “Taste my cookies…please.”

^_^