There’s a tragedy happening in Venezuela. I am trying to discover the truth but one part of the story struck me as interesting and odd. Venezuela, it would seems use an e-voting system. This is supplied by Smartmatic, a British based company and their CEO, quoted in the Guardian, has announced that he believes that
… results recorded by the company’s systems show “without any doubt” that the official turnout figure was tampered with
This is the problem with e-voting systems. How can he know and how can anyone know the truth?
Transparency
I have written a lot about e-voting and how I don’t believe it’s possible to build a software system that’s both secret and transparent.
The Morning Star have done a piece on the company’s ownership and its links to the Venezuelan right wing opposition.
Over the last couple of days, things have been exciting in Venezuela, but the Sqwawkbox found an article from Forbes, Venezuela’s Election System Holds Up As A Model For The World, in which the large numbers of controls in their system are documented. What I say about no-on knows if the code does what it promises or is designed to do remains true, but it seems that the Venezuela Government and its contractors seem to be trying.
Pingback:Digital Democracy – davelevy.info