I've been following the electronic voting machine issue and the various Diebold scandals for quite a while now. With much frustration, I note that Dem and liberal websites rarely discuss them. We're concerned with Iraq, with the economy, with polls, with campaigning, with a dozen other things. But Dems don't seem to give a crap whether or not our votes ultimately count.
If there's a possibility that votes aren't counted correctly through error or malice, what good does all this campaiging do?
It seems odd, to me, that this isn't a major issue for us.
The basic issue is that electronic machine counts cannot be verified after the fact. If the machine has a bug or someone hacks it, there's absolutely no way to tell unless something is obviously wrong, like
the total vote count is greater than the number of registered voters. Computer scientists have analyzed Diebold's voting software and
found dozens of vulnerabilities.
These things should make the issue important for everyone, regardless of political persuasion. But of particular creep-factor intensity, it turns out the president of the primary manufacturer of the electronic voting terminals is a lifetime republican who has publicly sworn himself to delivering votes for President Bush. And state by state, several dozen elections from local to senator have had sudden overnight shifts where democrats leading by 5 points or more for months on end suddenly lose by 2 or 3 point margins. Here's an interesting op-ed on the whole issue. So maybe it's a little paranoid to suggest a conspiracy, but the point is, whether or not there is a conspiracy we can't possibly know if the votes are fully electronic and black-box.
Well, thank god for California. Maybe we elect idiot musclemen to the governorship, but at least we have a Secretary of State with a head on his shoulders.
In a press release today, CA Secretary of State Kevin Shelley stated that all CA voting districts must use voting machines which include an auditable paper receipt by 2006.
So even if I can't seem to get other progressives to care about this issue, at least there's one smart guy out there who will help preserve democracy.