Friday, December 02, 2005

24 hours to certify Diebold source code?

Via IP today, I learn that the North Carolina State Board of Elections claims to have reviewed and certified the reliability and security of Diebold election machines' source code in less than 24 hours after it was placed in escrow.

All I can say is, North Carolina's State Board of Elections must have software quality assurance engineers the likes of which the world has never seen, engineers who can conjure comprehensive test suites out of thin air faster than mere mortals can even type them up, and who can construct proofs of program correctness in Hoare logic on-the-fly while reading source code, and who don't need symbolic model checkers because they can simulate thousands of Büchi automata in parallel in their heads while filing their fingernails.

Or, hey, here's a thought: maybe the board conducted some kind of sham certification process and rubber-stamped the software without really examining it. Nah...

My previous posts on election machines: Voting Machine Abuse Link-O-Rama; Close your eyes and hum pretty songs and maybe the code will fix itself; Further links on voting machine manufacturers' arrogance; Krugman on voting shenanigans [etc.]; Electronic election idiocy from Tom Zeller.

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