"In 2002, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act in response to the hanging-chad debacle of Florida's 2000 presidential elections. The act's main thrust was to provide money to states to replace outdated punch-card- and lever-based voting systems with optical-scan or touchscreen models. The act largely accomplished that goal, filling the coffers of closed source voting system manufacturers. In doing so, the act may have inadvertently placed the country in a worse situation...."

"Current U.S. policy ensures that e-voting remains in the hands of very few proprietary vendors.... But the key to securing e-voting resides in making its systems open source."

• Open source: How e-voting should be done, by Paul Venezia, IDG News Service, InfoWorld, October 27, 2008.