Wednesday, June 27, 2007

NY evote code remains public for now

It seems that attempts by evoting vendors lobbyists and Microsoft to weaken evoting laws relating to making voting machine software code publicly accessible have failed.

"With this year's New York Senate and Assembly session now ended, local voting activists are chalking up a victory for the public at the expense of Microsoft Corp. and the e-voting industry.

The activists had feared that Microsoft and a handful of e-voting device vendors would quietly weaken the state's strict e-voting software escrow law before the current legislative session ended on Friday. Approved two years ago by the legislature (download PDF), the law requires voting system vendors to place all source code and other related software in escrow for the New York State Board of Elections so it can be examined as needed. The law also dictates that a voting system vendor waives all intellectual property and trade right secret rights should the software need to be reviewed in court.

Microsoft, whose Windows software is used in some of the vendors' devices, sought to amend the law to avoid the strict escrow provisions."

Thanks to David Gerard via ORG for the pointer.

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