OSET's ElectOS: Software or Vaporware?
OSET’s Mission: DEFENDING DEMOCRACY WORLDWIDE.
Wow. How grandiose. How narcissistic. Let me describe the Mission in different words.
A handful of ~10 software developers currently collaborate on GitHub and take control of our voter registration and tabulation process through a narcissistic technology initiative called TheTrustTheVoteProject. And yes, that moniker is even trademarked.
Let me state the EDA Mission. Not trademarked.
Remove technology from vote counting and make it simple enough for an 18 year old high school graduate to understand, no coding skills required.
Here is a corollary EDA Mission statement.
To count our federal contests (and all contests eventually) just like Canada and New Zealand, by HAND by HUMANS with hand marked paper ballots.
Please, go here which is the repository for the Software (or perhaps vaporware?). Now look at the content. I am not going to describe WHAT you should be looking for or HOW to evaluate it. Just go look at it. Do you understand it? Can you explain it to someone else? If you are an election official, can you explain this to your constituents?
In 99.9% of the cases, I bet the answer is NO. Therefore, we should not use it. Voters have the RIGHT to understand how votes are counted. Full STOP. End of story. I don’t care how good or how secure it PURPORTS to be.
Do you feel like you should have the RIGHT to understand it? If the answer is…uh NO, that is someone else’s job, like the elected official, then I would suggest YOU have got it all wrong. The elected officials don’t even understand it.
Ask your elected officials if they can explain this OSET product called Vanadium to you?
If the least educated voter amongst us cannot understand how votes are counted, then a priori that system should be dismissed. There is no need to spend hours upon hours assessing it.
Let’s delve into the publicly available information on OSET first.
Unauthorized Access
OSET does not want the public to have access to the IP used in the current election technology solutions. RED FLAG. Go here. My question is, why do we need IP to count votes in the first place?
OSET Funding
OSET will take your donation but good luck finding out who funds them. Take a look at Schedule O on the IRS 990 here. The funding list is available upon REQUEST. Gee thanks. So much for OPEN SOURCE solutions. Why not list the names of the people or organizations who provided $1.9MM in 2020 up from $216,000 in 2019. OSET brags about open source solutions, so let’s be open on the 990.
Vaporware or Software
Let’s look at an example of the transactions on the Repository list on GitHub. The famed “Vanadium” “block chain like” (or is it block chain light) last commit was Feb 8th, 2022. The one prior to that is November 24th, 2021. Wow. This solution sounds pretty up to date.
Digging further into the Vanadium CORE here you can see two and EXACTLY two contributors. Wow. World wide democracy is going to be saved by TWO software developers.
What is more amazing (or disturbing really for a knuckle dragging hand counter advocate like me) is that both of those contributors are ANONYMOUS accounts. How is this solution OPEN SOURCE if I can’t even tell if we have foreign nationals writing the code? Who even knows if these anonymous accounts aren’t SHARED by a team of foreign nationals?
My question to the elected officials…don’t you have security assessments on the software that you use to ensure that anonymous foreign nationals are not making commits to an open source software solution to be used to take control of US elections to save DEMOCRACY?
You think I am being hyperbolic?
Check this out. A description of the ONE WORLD ELECTION OPERATING SYSTEM.
“ElectOS is a “software framework” in design, engineering, and development for election administration and voting systems, applying user-centered design [my comment…except for the part where 99.9% of the USERs, aka VOTER, can’t understand ANYTHING about the CODE] and security-centric [my comment…buzz word alert] engineering principles.
ElectOS consists of components that help election administrators and state agencies (as well as voters) [my comment….as well as voters?, gee THANKS] before, during, and after elections. More specifically, ElectOS provides [my comment….at best WILL provide at some point in the distant future a Non Vaporware BETA solution] a core set of software and data capabilities to support voter registration, election administration and voting.
The breakthrough [my comment…buzz word alert] ElectOS framework aims to reinvigorate [my comment….aka CONTROL, MONOPOLiZE, CENTRALIZE] the election technology marketplace through principles of transparency [my comment….except when it come to the Form 990 FUNDING and ANONYMOUS developers], open standards, and free distribution of software through open source licensing, to be integrated with hardware and delivered as finished systems by commercial vendors.
ElectOS is imperative [my comment…..why is this imperative? Canada and New Zealanders hand count votes.] in a world where the required heavy lift of re-thinking a secure software layer for inherently insecure hardware requires a research and development commitment that neither government nor the existing commercial industry can do alone [my comment…Government and commercial entities actually do not need to TO DO anything at all. Count the votes by hand, no software.]
Importantly, this is a digital public works project for public benefit because we all deserve a more secure, lower cost, easier voting experience that instills confidence in elections and their outcomes.” [my comment…which can be supplied by hand counting methods].
Summary
If all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. In this case, every problem looks like it needs to be solved with SOFTWARE. Many parts of the world agree with me, we don’t need software and here are a few examples.
Cheers