dvdc on Nostr: I’m curious if someone has a technical answer to my questions, but of course, they ...
I’m curious if someone has a technical answer to my questions, but of course, they are rhetorical in that I've asked them myself and don't have good answers; however, I try to stay humble and recognize I will never have all the answers, so I’m genuinely interested in if anyone else has good answers.
Using open-source software doesn't mean much unless you can verify that what you're running is the software. In this case, I don't think validating that voting machines are actually running open-source software is feasible. Therefore, voters must trust election officials; thus, whether the voting machine uses open-source software doesn't matter for election integrity because the result is the same: trust in election officials.
This is emblematic of Bitcoin's anomalous nature, which most still don't fully grasp: it’s a technical breakthrough solution that fixes a social problem. However, most technical solutions don't fix social problems; they fix technical problems, which means we need social solutions to social problems like election integrity.
Using open-source software doesn't mean much unless you can verify that what you're running is the software. In this case, I don't think validating that voting machines are actually running open-source software is feasible. Therefore, voters must trust election officials; thus, whether the voting machine uses open-source software doesn't matter for election integrity because the result is the same: trust in election officials.
This is emblematic of Bitcoin's anomalous nature, which most still don't fully grasp: it’s a technical breakthrough solution that fixes a social problem. However, most technical solutions don't fix social problems; they fix technical problems, which means we need social solutions to social problems like election integrity.