Open Voting Solutions, Inc., a Delaware corporation, has become the first voting system vendor to apply for certification with Open Voting Consortium, a California nonprofit corporation. While many independent experts have advocated open source software for election systems, no such products have been sold by voting system vendors. Companies like Diebold prefer to keep the inner workings of their systems confidential.

"There is no excuse for any secret methods to be involved in the tabulation of our votes," says Alan Dechert, President of the Open Voting Consortium. "It's about time that voting system technology be fully open to public scrutiny. We expect that Open Voting Solutions' OpenScan product will become the first commercially available Open Voting system."

Open Voting Solutions CEO, Dr. Richard Johnson, wrote to Mr. Dechert requesting that testing and evaluation be done by Open Voting Consortium (OVC) scientists and engineers. Dechert explains, "This is new, so all the details have not been finalized. Generally speaking, a voting system can earn the OVC service mark if it utilizes a voter verified paper ballot and all software written for the voting process is published for all to see."