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Brazil: "The Electronic Voting Machine Will Be Linux-Powered"

News Type: Event — Seeded on Mon Dec 17, 2007 6:49 AM EST
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Última Instânica, a legal newswire on the UOL portal, reports:

According to major newspapers, starting with the municipal elections of 2008, Brazil's e-voting machines will use the Linux operating system, to be developed by the technical team of the federal elections tribunal the TSE. According to the TSE's IT division, the advantages of using Linux in the electronic voting machine are  standardization, since it is possible to use this OS in all models of the device, as well as transparency, since this is an open mcchanism in which all the source code is available to the public and can be freely audited. Another advantage is zero cost, because no license fees must be paid.

I know of some people who will be celebrating this development, if it pans out.

Brazil seems to be following the EU's lead in this regard, generally speaking. See

There have been intimations of the change for some time now. See, for example

This seems to represent a remarkable about face, from an elections authority that last year deployed a flood of publicity in support of the proposition that the system, as it exists, was near-magical in its infallibility. See

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{"commentId":1277861,"authorDomain":"clearcache"}
clearcache

I've been lightly following electronic voting issues here in the United States, but not Brazil. Has the OS itself proven to be an issue there, or is it more the voting software that's running on top of the OS? Or is this the first implementation for Brazil?

Good for linux - the selection makes sense. It's a mature, stable platform and money that might otherwise be spent on OS licensing can be redistributed to help in other areas of the project.

{"commentId":1277861,"threadId":"190414","contentId":"1169157","authorDomain":"clearcache"}
  • 2 votes
Reply#1 - Mon Dec 17, 2007 8:26 AM EST
{"commentId":1280051,"authorDomain":"hozelda"}
Jose_X

If you are not allowed to look at how the operating system is put together, then it could be doing absolutely anything. It could be running it's own voting "misapplication" in the background and you could never see it.

{"commentId":1280051,"threadId":"190414","contentId":"1169157","authorDomain":"hozelda"}
  • 1 vote
#1.1 - Mon Dec 17, 2007 7:32 PM EST
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{"commentId":1279097,"authorDomain":"hangloose"}
HangLoose

I'm Brazilian and I've been voting since the first elections with the "new" machine. It was running smoothly since the beginning, of course machines do brake and do have issues, but those issues were minor.

I hope that with linux the machines continue to have the good fame they have. Even been adopted by other countries in South America where Brazil sent some units of these machines to the voting there.

It's kinda a must from the government to @!$%# from proprietary software to free software, software developed with Java and free tools. I myself participated in one government project linux+java.

Other initiatives are the yearly federal tax that has the software made in java and available to all platforms.

But responding to your questions: The OS is not an iissue, simply the government wants free software. And no, its not the first implementation of this in Brazil at least for some years is already reality. For the next election they are promising finger print recognition. Let's see how that is going to evolute.

{"commentId":1279097,"threadId":"190414","contentId":"1169157","authorDomain":"hangloose"}
    Reply#2 - Mon Dec 17, 2007 2:37 PM EST
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