No More Windows CE for Ceará Elections?

Will Windows CE be exiled to Ô do Borogodô? Will it go to live in the Casa da Mãe Joana?

OLinux (Brazil), Oct. 13, 2006: Brazil’s election authorities ponder switching from Windows CE to Linux for voting machines.

It suprises me that open-source e-government was not more of a political issue here, as it was in the Spanish elections that sent Aznar home, as I remember reading.

It remains to be seen if the Science & IT and Culture ministries will use this apparent Lula mandate to recover lost ground in that area.

O diretor geral do TSE, Athayde Fontoura, admitiu a possibilidade em entrevista publicada pelo jornal Washington Post.

The director of the TSE, Athayde Fountoura, admitted the possibility in an interview published inthe Washington Post.

O Brasil está considerando substituir o Windows CE, da Microsoft, pelo Linux nas urnas eletrônicas, disse Athayde Fontoura, diretor geral do Tribunal Superior Eleitoral, em entrevista para o jornal norte-americano Washington Post.

Brazil is considering replacing Windows CE, from Microsoft, with Linux in its voting machines, said Fontoura, the director-general of the Brazilian election authority.

“Estamos estudando a possibilidade de usar um programa de código aberto, como o Linux, em eleições futuras”, disse ele para o jornal norte-americano. “Isso transformaria o processo, como um todo, mais transparente o processo todo e mais barato”.

“We are studying the possibility of using an open-source program, such as Linux, in future elections,” he told the American newspaper. “This would make the process as a whole more transparent and less expensive.”

De acordo com o jornal, o TSE tem sido pressionado a fazer esta mudança porque o código proprietário da Microsoft não permitiria uma auditoria independente para verificar a existência de “códigos maliciosos” que poderiam fraudar o resultado das eleições.

According to the WaPo, the TSE has been pressured to make the change because the proprietary MSFT code cannot be subjected to an independent audit to verify that it is free from “maliciouscode” that could be used to commit election fraud.

Let me see if I can find that WaPo article, and fact-check it a bit. Oddly, the link from the UOL story on the matter now yields this:

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Tried that, dude. Nothing..