[omnivore]

Is anybody else wondering why NY State would even be thinking about picking an electronic voting system that sits on top of Windows? Wouldn't you want the voting machines to be something really simple, like based on a microcontroller or two? All it needs is to throw a primitive GUI, count some integers, and report out on a modem connection with appropriate security. This is like Commodore 64 or TRS-80 type stuff. Keep it real simple so all parties can read every line of code. They shouldn't even be considering having Windows running on a voting machine. (And I'm not some Linux or Mac person, I use Win XP.)

Have these people ever looked at the kind of processors and OS's that are used in things that actually matter, like say, vital-signs monitoring systems in hospitals? Those are not Windows boxes. They have nice simple GUIs, and they record and report data reliably enough to trust your life to.

That they'd even be thinking about a Windows-based system for this means that the people working on this are either utterly, grossly incompetent, or are already planning subversion of the voting process.

[dayglored]

> Is anybody else wondering why NY State would even be thinking about picking an electronic voting system that sits on top of Windows? Wouldn't you want the voting machines to be something really simple, like based on a microcontroller or two?

Sure, but I wanted to avoid sparking a religious flamewar about operating systems, so I stuck to the transparency aspect -- since a closed proprietary microcontroller would also have the same problem as Windows.

But yes, a simpler system would be easier to characterize and analyze. And putting any mission-critical application over Windows is just asking for trouble. There are damn few analytically-correct operating systems; Windows is certainly NOT one of them.

> That they'd even be thinking about a Windows-based system for this means that the people working on this are either utterly, grossly incompetent, or are already planning subversion of the voting process.

I agree completely. I hope it's merely gross incompetence, but somedays, it's hard not to start thinking about tin-foil hats... ;-)