Bo Lipari reports: “Over the last two months Microsoft and a cadre of high paid lobbyists have been working a full-court press in Albany in an attempt to bring about a serious weakening of New York State election law.”

On Thursday, June 14, I recieved a copy of proposed changes to New York State Election Law [Link to PDF] drafted by Microsoft attorneys that has been circulating among the Legislature. These changes would gut the source code escrow and review provisions provided in our current law, which were fought for and won by election integrity activists around the state and adopted by the Legislature in June 2005. MicrosoftIn an earlier blog I wrote about Microsoft’s unwillingness to comply with New York State’s escrow and review requirements. Now the software giant has gone a step further, not just saying “we won’t comply with your law” but actively trying to change state law to serve their corporate interests. Microsoft’s attorneys drafted an amendment which would add a paragraph to Section 1-104 of NYS Election Law defining “election-dedicated voting system technology”. Microsoft’s proposed change to state law would effectively render our current requirements for escrow and the ability for independent review of source code in the event of disputes completely meaningless - and with it the protections the public fought so hard for.

[Bo Lipari: Link]

Via SlashDot, which observes that “Microsoft is siding with the makers of voting machines that run on Windows — the company doesn’t want its code inspected by outsiders.”