We are extremely excited to share the news that CAVO (the California Association of Voting Officials) has joined the Open Source Initiative (OSI) as an Affiliate Member. As most of our readers and supporters know, Follow My Vote actually joined CAVO as an Industry Member in late 2014.

This is a great partnership as both organizations are pushing for open source and transparent solutions. If you are unaware of what open source means, Wikipedia defines it as the following : In production and development, open source as a development model promotes a universal access via a free license to a product’s design or blueprint, and universal redistribution of that design or blueprint, including subsequent improvements to it by anyone. It can become more complicated with defining licenses. The OSI lists out a more detailed description here.

CAVO is a non-profit organization in California leading the way in regards to education, best practices and development of open source voting systems that are used in public elections. OSI was founded in 1998 and helps bring about education, infrastructure, collaboration of open source projects. They also aid in provide a network for open source projects and companies.

CAVO and OSI recognize that advances in open source development can provide citizens and governments the opportunity to ensure that everyone’s vote is counted accurately and securely without being held hostage to private vendors nor aging, outdated infrastructure. Innovation through open source development will provide communities the capacity and certainty to administer elections for this century and keep the promise of democracy, namely that your vote will always count.

Source: Open Source Initiative.