California Secretary of State Debra Bowen argued Thursday that open source software can help fix some of the flaws in electronic voting systems, which have proliferated throughout the country since the 2000 election yet been criticized as unreliable.

"A new California study has found that several electronic voting machines have serious security vulnerabilities. California Secretary of State Debra Bowen commissioned the study which pitted two hacker teams, better known as “Red Teams” against voting machines manufactured by Diebold, Hart and Sequoia."

As countries around the world modernize their public elections process, the big problem with electronic voting machines is that the market is moving slow to provide equipment which fulfills all of the requirements for a fully democratic election. In many cases, printed proof of a citizen’s vote is still needed, in case the machine has buggy software or if there is suspicion of fraud.

Sometimes, working on voting seems like running on a treadmill. Old disagreements need to be argued again and again. As long as I've been speaking in public about voting, I've discussed the need for voting systems' source code to be published, as in a book, to create transparency into how the systems operate. Or, put another way, trade secrecy is anathema to election transparency.

In theory, open source programming of voting machines would remove their veils of secrecy. In practice, though, using open source may not be a viable option if code is not made available. However, a formal effort to work on open source code for voting machines could come at any time from anyone.

Many states are hastily implementing flawed electronic voting machines and related election procedures.

Sequoia Voting Systems plans to publicly release the source code for its new optical scan voting system, the company announced Tuesday — a remarkable reversal for a voting machine maker long criticized for resisting public examination of its proprietary systems.

According to major newspapers, starting with the municipal elections of 2008, Brazil’s e-voting machines will use the Linux operating system, to be developed by the technical team of the federal elections tribunal the TSE. According to the TSE’s IT division, the advantages of using Linux in the electronic voting machine are standardization, since it is possible to use this OS in all models of the device, as well as transparency, since this is an open mcchanism in which all the source code is available to the public and can be freely audited. Another advantage is zero cost, because no license fees must be paid.

The brazilian Election Supreme Court officialy announced at April 4th 2008, that the 2008 elections at Brazil will use GNU / Linux electronic voting machines with software digital authentication.