…so when you hear them tell you it’s not a good idea to use computers for something, you should probably listen.

Chaos Computer Club takes legal proceedings against the voting computer in Hesse

The use of the insecure NEDAP voting computer which has proven to be susceptible to manipulation is not contested in Hesse only.

By taking this step, the CCC [The Chaos Computer Club] is attempting to bring about a voting procedure that is reliable and plausible for all voters before the state elections on 27th January. Recourse to the court has become necessary since the Hesse state government evidently does not have the required expert knowledge to understand the technical security and transparency flaws of the voting machines, nor the will to act accordingly.

This comes from Germany, where state elections are scheduled to be held later this month.  So Europe is having to deal with the same voting machine bullshit we are here in the U.S. now.  But this is interesting…a commenter on Slashdot says…

Interestingly the main argument in the case at hand is NOT that the machines are faulty or can be manipulated.

Until now elections in germany are held in public. This means that anybody can come in and watch the votes beeing counted. However with the voting machines used the people are requested to believe the government that they operate correctly. This trust should be based on secret reviews of the machines hard and software conducted by the government.

I really love this approach to the court challenge!  I hope they succeed.  Yes.  Yes.  Voting needs to be absolutely positively transparent.  Whatever the outcome of an election, everyone needs to know that the vote was fair.  I’ve said it before…

Canada uses paper ballots. Yeah, they’re a smaller country, but that only means we have more people available to make it work here too. Yeah, it’s a lot of work. But do you want to keep your democracy or not? Nothing is more important then a fair and honest vote. Nothing is more important then everyone generally knows the vote was fair and honest. You win, you loose, there is always the next election. When the votes stop being counted, when trust is lost in the voting process, there may be no next election. Paper trails are not the answer. There must be No Software in the process.

…and I can’t say it often enough:  Paper Ballots!  Paper Ballots!