GitHub Letter of Support

GitHub's Involvement in Open Source Voting

GitHub, the world's largest platform for collaborative software development, has publicly expressed support for San Francisco's open source voting initiative. As the home of millions of open source projects and the platform where much of the world's critical software infrastructure is built and maintained, GitHub brings a unique perspective to the conversation about election technology transparency.

In their letter of support, GitHub emphasized that the open source development model has proven its ability to produce software of exceptional quality and security across every domain, from operating systems and web servers to cryptographic libraries and database engines. The same principles of public code review, community contribution, and transparent governance that have made open source the foundation of modern technology infrastructure can and should be applied to the software that counts votes in democratic elections.

GitHub's support also reflects the company's commitment to civic technology and its belief that software development practices can strengthen democratic institutions. The platform has hosted numerous civic technology projects and has seen firsthand how collaborative development brings together diverse perspectives to solve complex problems. Election technology, with its unique requirements for security, accessibility, and public trust, is precisely the kind of challenge that benefits most from open, community-driven development.

The company noted that hosting election software on a public platform like GitHub would enable unprecedented transparency, allowing citizens, security researchers, and election officials to track every change, review every line of code, and participate in the ongoing improvement of the systems that underpin their democracy.