One of the Silliest Things

California Secretary of State Debra Bowen is a big proponent of open source voting machines, which developers say are more secure and less buggy than the proprietary devices made by various manufacturers and in use nationwide. (Here's a helpful <a href=http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/opensource-voting>article</a> published in IEEE Spectrum magazine explaining open source vs. closed source voting machines.) Bowen got another chance on Wednesday to plug open source voting when she spoke at the Gov 2.0 Summit in Washington, saying it reduces time and costs.

California Secretary of State Debra Bowen is a big proponent of open source voting machines, which developers say are more secure and less buggy than the proprietary devices made by various manufacturers and in use nationwide. (Here's a helpful article published in IEEE Spectrum magazine explaining open source vs. closed source voting machines.) Bowen got another chance on Wednesday to plug open source voting when she spoke at the Gov 2.0 Summit in Washington, saying it reduces time and costs.

She said as the Nov. 2 Election Day nears, officials in Los Angeles County will transcribe by hand 30,000 to 40,000 voter registration forms a day. The manual process creates mistakes as officials work to figure out if entries are, for example, people's middle names or surnames.

"Paying people to type data from a form is one of the silliest things we can do in 2010," Bowen complained.

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