Video: The source code of democracy

Here in the States, Independence Day is tomorrow. No better time, we thought, to question the systems we trust to tally and track our votes come election season. If you missed the Red Hat Summit, you missed Alan Dechert of the Open Voting Consortium. Dechert contends that voter confidence is crucial to encouraging voter participation–a hot issue in America where voter apathy is bad and seems to be getting worse. And if you can’t see how your votes are counted, how can you trust they’re counted accurately?

Watch this primer and stay informed as the conversation continues between big voting machine manufacturers like Diebold, and reform advocates like Dechert’s Open Voting Consortium.

P.S. In America, we’re fond of fireworks and frankfurters on the 4th of July, but out of respect for our neighbors around the world who will celebrate later this year or have already celebrated, here are a few other Independence Days (chosen at random).

Columbia: August 7th
El Salvador: September 15th
Peru: July 28th
Syria: September 1st
Turkey: October 29th
Ukraine: August 23rd
Democratic Republic of the Congo: June 24th

This entry was posted by Julie Bryce on Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007 at 3:47 pm and is filed under culture, multimedia, education, events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.