The Problem

Democracy has been practiced for thousands of years with counting in the open to assure fairness. If beans were used for votes which method of vote counting is fair?

A. the leaders count the beans with their hands behind their back while humming and then announce the winner. No recounts are ever needed because the leaders are pure and trustworthy.

B. the leaders count the beans in front of you where you can see them. They account for every bean by making sure that the total votes and abstentions matches the number of voters. Any close count can be contested with a recount of the beans or a review of the tallies.

If you answered A then you're happy with the way electronic voting works today. This organization is about getting our current voting system more like choice B.

Computers are great. But there are numerous problems with the way they are being used for counting votes today — problems that can easily be solved. Most of these problems have to do with the way that the votes are recorded and counted.

Here is a summary of problems with electronic voting machines from our friends at verifiedvoting.org (not affiliated with Open Voting Foundation).

The Open Voting Foundation will support solutions for open voting. These solutions include software using open standard specifications that can be inspected by the public for flaws and even improved by the public. The software must also capture and count votes in ways that the voter can verify individually and would be statistically impossible to tamper with on any significant scale.

The problems with electronic voting have been happening even before the year 2000 elections. This is not a partisan issue.