Topic submitter here (and current President of the SF Elections Commission).<p>As a software developer and open source contributor myself, I'd really like to see open source happen. But if no vendors respond to the RFI / RFP with a credible open source proposal, it will make things a lot harder.<p>Basically, SF would have to contract to build its own system. I made this point at last week's Commission meeting here: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOOoXSOtR-s&t=1h04m55s" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOOoXSOtR-s&t=1h04m55s</a>
Interesting. Good to see they seek information about systems that "are based on voters marking <i>paper</i> ballots".<p>Contrary to popular belief, in state or nation-wide elections paper is a safer way to vote than electronics because the former is simpler and thus easier to verify by the general public.<p>Most people don't realize how hard it is to beat the transparency and simplicity of a physical ballot box. It can be inspected by the public at the start of the day so anyone interested can verify it's empty and people can keep an eye on it during the day and see if anyone tampers with it. Then at the end of the day it's important the votes are manually tallied right after the ballot box is opened. This makes the process transparent to most people in society and assures the highest level of scrutiny and confidence that the vote and vote count are legit.<p>It's hard to replace this with anything more complex i.e. electronics.<p>For a recent discussion see:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10076919" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10076919</a>
Is this a chance for Score Voting or Approval Voting [1]?<p>Edit: It looks like they are going with instant-runoff, which is more complicated and has higher levels of regret. Does anyone know why they have selected this versus the easier Score Voting option?<p>[1] <a href="http://www.electology.org/#!approval-voting/cc04" rel="nofollow">http://www.electology.org/#!approval-voting/cc04</a>
Wow, great to hear and a great opportunity for improvement. If a sensible solution comes to light then hopefully it will have a domino effect on other states. Bonus points for wanting transparency and a system that's open source. Let's just see what actually happens though.