‘They think they are above the law’: the firms that own America’s voting system

The fact is that democracy in the United States is now largely a secretive and privately-run affair conducted out of the public eye with little oversight. The corporations that run every aspect of American elections, from voter registration to casting and counting votes by machine, are subject to limited state and federal regulation. The companies are privately-owned and closely held, making information about ownership and financial stability difficult to obtain. The software source code and hardware design of their systems are kept as trade secrets and therefore difficult to study or investigate. It's for this very reason that my own country - for now - of The Netherlands went back to pencil and paper voting with public manual counting by actual humans.