Sorry if I wasn’t clear. I’m not talking about protecting the source code from being viewed by nefarious actors. Exactly the opposite, in fact. If the code is good, being able to see it will not help people subvert it. The point is that if members of the public can’t freely view the source code without jumping through hoops, there’s no reason for us to trust that a) it’s not deliberately doing something bad or b)it’s not vulnerable to being subverted.
You seem very sure that these machines are safe, and my point is that the indelible paper trail is only half of what is necessary to convince me of that. The other half is that I, or anyone else, should be able to freely inspect the source code, including the code that runs a checksum to make sure that that source is actually what is being run on the machine. Secret proprietary code has no place on voting machines, period.
