Video download link | md5sum 22692bae8396f2df8de753bc3958cf29 Lula Winning is a Win for Free Software Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0



Summary: Disinformation campaigns and election processes that are virtually impossible to audit serve to show that technology can harm democracies; on the other hand, there's a better chance at comprehending digital systems if they conform to standards and use only Free software on 'open hardware'

THE notion of electronic voting is not compatible with the concept of maintaining physical paper trail for assessment by pertinent people, like people who count individual votes (not totals) and respective observers who validate the counting process. There's ample literature on this subject, authored by people with extensive experience in that domain. They can explain this far better than us. In the past we wrote about the concept of Software Freedom in voting; paper is best, combination of machines and paper is faster but can be tampered with, Free software in voting machines^* is a "lesser evil", and then there's the back-doored proprietary voting infrastructure, which is pure evil yet increasingly widespread. The last one is the worst and it cannot be tolerated because it leads to uncertainty about outcomes (like the 2016 election in the US where Russians were accused of cracking, then in 2020 when disinformation ran rampant). No operating systems -- or no computer programs at all -- means no cracking. And without prospects of cracking, confidence only improves. "Show me the ballots" is more powerful than "show me the code!"

Some days ago we cautioned against mindless stigmatisation of people who reject electronic voting and now we're seeing Bolsonaro trying to 'pull a Trump' to dispute the outcome of an election he lost (several links about it were posted here this morning).

"It certainly does not feel like technology is so beneficial to democracy."The video above focuses on the Free software (or 'FOSS') track record of Lula, the winner of the election in Brazil. He has long supported the country's digital autonomy and adoption of standards such as Open Document Format (ODF). "Well," an associate has said this morning, "the outcome of the election in Brazil could have a positive effect on FOSS and Open Standards there."

That's aside from how the election was done.

But it remains to be seen if Bolsonaro leaves the helm or wages a violent coup like Donald Trump did (still with total impunity; the country does not take insurrection seriously enough). The video mentions how Bolsonaro himself attempted to rig the election by posting intentionally false (fake) material online. It certainly does not feel like technology is so beneficial to democracy. ⬆ ____ ^* "Voting and FOSS are two unrelated topics," an associate noted, so it's "best to split them into two posts." But in the case of Brazil, we'd like to bring light to both aspects. "It would not be good if there were confusion and it looked like advocating for FOSS voting machines at this point," the associate added. Just to be clear, our position is that Lula should move the country to Free software. As for the voting process, it ought to be done with paper ballots. Not everything needs to be handled by technology. Counting millions of paper ballots by hand does not take a long time, either. It often feels like a "solution" in search of a problem or plain grifting.