The Open Voting Consortium (OVC) is a

non-profit A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...

advocacy group dedicated to the development, maintenance, and delivery of trustable and open voting systems for use in public elections. OVC was founded in December 12, 2003 by Alan Dechert, Dr. Arthur Keller and computer science professor Dr. Doug Jones. The purpose of the group is to disseminate information about existing

electronic voting Electronic voting (also known as e-voting) is voting that uses electronic means to either aid or take care of casting and counting ballots. Depending on the particular implementation, e-voting may use standalone ''electronic voting machines'' ( ...

systems as well as to develop standards and

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

to demonstrate the use of

off-the-shelf Off-the-shelf may refer to: * Commercial off-the-shelf, a phrase in computing and industrial supply terminology * Government off-the-shelf * Ready-to-wear * Shelf corporation, a type of company * Off the Shelf Festival, a festival of writing and r ...

components with an

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

election system. The group has developed a proof of concept prototype demonstrating an open voting system. Alan Dechert has testified before the California General Assembly.

Founding and focus

An August 2008, ''

San Francisco Chronicle The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and M. H. de Young, Michael H. de ...

'' article says that software engineer Alan Dechert was "outraged" that the results of the 2000

United States presidential election The election of the president and the vice president of the United States is an indirect election in which citizens of the United States who are registered to vote in one of the fifty U.S. states or in Washington, D.C., cast ballots not dire ...

were thrown into confusion "because nobody could figure out how Florida's voters had voted," which convinced him and a few like-minded colleagues to found OVC with the goal of delivering "trustable and open voting systems… In addition to lobbying against proprietary

voting machine A voting machine is a machine used to record votes in an election without paper. The first voting machines were mechanical but it is increasingly more common to use ''electronic voting machines''. Traditionally, a voting machine has been defin ...

s, they have spent the last several years working with scientists and engineers around the world to design and build a voting machine of their own." Dechert told the newspaper that the OVC voting machine, based on the

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

operating system, could be certified for use by 2010. Some of the group's early work included developing a system that would not be subject to the perceived security flaws in touch-screen voting machines, including those supplied by Diebold Election Systems (renamed

Premier Election Solutions Premier Election Solutions, formerly Diebold Election Systems, Inc. (DESI), was a subsidiary of Diebold that made and sold voting machines. In 2009, it was sold to competitor ES&S. In 2010, Dominion Voting Systems purchased the primary asset ...

, acquired by Election Systems & Software), by creating a system that would allow voters to use a touchscreen while simultaneously producing a paper record. A 2004

Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. newspa ...

article grouped the OVC with the "harshest e-voting critics" and said it was pressuring voting machine companies to publish their software online, which OVC argued would lead to greater voter confidence and expose any flaws. "Open source is the only way to build robust systems that people can believe in," said Ed Cherlin, a software engineer and OVC member.AP via Commondreams.org April 23, 2004 , Legislators Wary of Electronic Voting
/ref> In 2013, SB 360 was signed by Governor

Jerry Brown Edmund Gerald Brown Jr. (born April 7, 1938) is an American lawyer, author, and politician who served as the 34th and 39th governor of California from 1975 to 1983 and 2011 to 2019. A member of the Democratic Party, he was elected Secretary of S ...

, allowing the state of

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

to self-certify open source election system

References

External links

OVC website
{{authority control Electronic voting organizations Political advocacy groups in the United States

Founding and focus

See also

References

External links