Peter,

If US states are using homegrown systems, and they probably are, that doesn't really have any impact on my thesis.  One's nationality doesn't oblige the person to defend the methods of his government.

All I would say is that economies of scale are critical in high quality systems.  Some systems, like ICBM guidance systems, would probably be made better if the US and Russia cooperated on them.  Nonetheless, sharing military data between potential adversaries is typically worse strategically than any gain at a system quality level.

As for voting systems, if they are made and implemented in a trustworthy way, there benefits from scale that outweigh security or economic concerns.  First, it seems self-evident that typical saboteurs would be domestic in any given election.  Even if there were foreign actors, they would need domestic support who would presumably have better access to domestically built software anyway.  Sunlight is the best cure for that problem - not domestic development.

Second, voting is a very common occurrence in the world.  Kenyan companies have an actual opportunity to develop a robust and exportable voting product.  Kenya is sadly world famous for voting problems so if in the next 2 elections, it could demonstrate a platform that is robust and durable, it could be made into an actual product that other governments might buy (or if open source, contribute to).  This would be a fantastic challenge for the local ICT industry and potentially a huge boon.  However, institutionalizing the case that all voting systems should be homegrown would kill that company's export reputation though.

Finally, if Kenyan ICT 'national pride' rests on developing its own voting platforms solely for Kenyan elections, that's a major problem.  Everybody's got to think bigger - people like me want Nairobi to be a capital of tech in Africa and the world and the only way to make that happen is to give the entire industry an international focus.

-Adam

+254 712 966 801
https://twitter.com/varud
https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamcnelson


On Thu, Mar 7, 2013 at 12:41 PM, Peter Karunyu <pkarunyu@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Mar 6, 2013 at 4:02 PM, Adam Nelson <adam@varud.com> wrote:
...

On this list, there is a strong bias towards "Kenyan solutions" or "Kenyanborn".  Aside from finding this kind of offensive, it's also just petty and backwards.  The reason IEBC exists is not to support the local ICT industry, it's to facilitate a trustworthy platform on which Kenyan elections can take place.  In addition, there are hundreds of elections a year around the world and for Kenya to have a one-off system that has never been used elsewhere and will never be used elsewhere is neither efficient nor high quality.  Maybe the local word processor and spreadsheet apps should be "Kenyanborn" too? 

@Adam, your comments have stuck in my mind for a while, caused me to do a bit of research here and there.

It appears that each of the states in US have some leeway in how they conduct elections, at least some of the elections, so my (trick) question to you is: which of the vendors of e-voting systems in US are not "USA solutions" or "USAborn"?

My point being; there is absolutely nothing wrong with any country desiring to have locally made solutions to a problem. Infact, I could think of a number of security, economic and national pride reasons why this should and is encouraged all over the world.

The fact that a working solution exists does not invalidate the desire to copy it, improve it, or even come up with a completely new solution.

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