Black Box Voting: Ballet tampering in the 21st century.
In 2000, the culprit was something euphemistically known as a "hanging chad". This year, it could be something far more sinister. With the 2000 disaster in Florida leading to calls for election reforms, what has come to pass as "reform" may in fact be anything but. One suburban Seattle woman is doing what she can to raise the alarm.
After the election meltdown of 2000, when an incredibly close race for president shined a very bright light on the shortcomings of the American electoral system, Congress took action. It passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in 2002, telling states to phase out the infamous punch-card ballots, with their pregnant, hanging, and dimpled chads. HAVA also required a touch-screen voting machine for every polling place, mainly so blind voters could cast their ballots unassisted. As an incentive, Congress included billions in funding for conversion of local electoral systems. Faced with the need to upgrade technology and some federal largesse, some states, like Maryland, and some counties, like Snohomish here in Washington, decided to convert completely to touch-screen polling places. As a result, more than 20 percent of American voters will use touch-screen machines in this year's presidential election, according to Election Data Services, a D.C. consultancy.
Voting on a touch screen is like using a bank's automatic teller machine. There is one vital difference, however: The voting machine does not give you a paper receipt. The absence of a paper trail has alarmed a variety of people, including some of the nation's most renowned computer scientists. Their bottom line? These machines could be hacked. The solution? An auditable, voter-verified paper trail.
There are those who fear that companies such as Diebold, who have ties to Republican party politics, can be and will be persuaded to jigger the numbers just enough to tilt the Presidential election to George W. Bush. Will it happen? No one can say with any degree of certainty, but Bev Harris is convinced that this election will be stolen much as the last one was- and this one will have no verifiable paper audit trail to follow.
Of course, I'm not saying that this election will be stolen by the Bush campaign. However, given what transpired four years ago, it is a legitimate concern. It is possible to make a convincing argument that George W. Bush (in conjunction with Katherine Harris and the US Supreme Court) did in fact steal Florida and with it the 2000 Presidential election. Given that backdrop, why would we NOT want to be absolutely certain that we have a verifiable audit trail this time around?
Yes, I do believe that the day of the paper ballot has passed us by. Electronic voting has many advantages, but it does not at this time have the one thing that paper ballots provide- a tangible means to audit and verify the results. Until and unless we are presented with an honest and verifiable system, we run the risk of repeating the travesty of 2000.
This has got to stop. One unelected President is enough.
