ITAA Fires Back at Critics of E-voting.

Harris Miller, president of the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), an influential IT vendor association is accusing electronic voting system critics, many of whom are IT security researchers, of using the issue of e-voting security to wage a war that pits open-source software against proprietary software. Miller said a recent ITAA survey showed that 77 percent of registered voters are unconcerned about the security of e-voting systems. Miller said critics who claim to be concerned about the security of e-voting systems are really using the issue to push a political agenda on behalf of the open-source community. Eric Raymond, president of the Open Source Initiative, a nonprofit organization promoting open-source standards and criteria, said Miller has the issue wrong. According to Raymond, most e-voting critics, including himself, are not focusing on open-source versus closed-source at all, but rather on the lack of any decent audit trail of votes--one that cannot be corrupted by software. Miller acknowledged that security has to be a priority, but he was firm in his stance. He said that asking open-source proponents of open-source software to comment on the security of e-voting systems is like asking a bunch of clergymen what they think of premarital sex.