Today I visited my family physician and we got to talking about politics. I mentioned my concerns about the use of unreliable electronic voting machines this November, and he concurred. He said he had actually called one of his Democratic friends who happens to work on the Hill and this friend assured my doctor that whatever electoral fraud has occurred in recent elections is nothing out of the ordinary.
I mentioned the GAO Report and some other evidence to the contrary. He became interested, and finally said, "Maybe what we need is Alice's Restaurant?"
It's been several decades since I thought about those lyrics, but he was right. He asked me to send him an email with links to the information I mentioned. So in the interest of passing it on, here's what I wrote him:
Dear Dr. -----,
You mentioned today that some political insiders have assured you that the current state of affairs, however unsavory it may be, is not a departure from "business as usual."
I believe that if you read the evidence for yourself, you may to come to a different conclusion. In my opinion, those who see nothing unusual in the situation today are not paying attention. I'll provide just a few references below. If you are interested, let me know, and I'll be glad to send you others.
Q: Is the current voting system generally safe and reliable?
(That is, can we be reasonably sure that the system overall is not dangerously vulnerable to widespread fraud and abuse this November?)
The short answer is no, evidence clearly shows it is not reliable. The main problem is the wide-open vulnerability of particular types of electronic voting machines used in the U.S., as described in the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO)Report of Sept. 2005:
"ELECTIONS: Federal Efforts to Improve Security and Reliability of Electronic Voting Systems Are Under Way, but Key Activities Need to Be Completed"
Granted, the title sounds REALLY boring. The report's tone is quite sober and it contains no blockbuster partisan accusations.
But the facts it presents speak plainly enough. The report describes in detail a national electoral system that is neither secure nor reliable.
For example, on page 25:
"Regarding key software omponents, several evaluations demonstrated that election management systems did not encrypt the data files containing cast votes (to protect them from being viewed or modified).19 Evaluations also showed that, in some cases, other computer programs could access these cast vote files and alter them without the system recording this action in its audit logs.20 Two reports documented how it might be possible to alter the ballot definition files on one model of DRE so that the votes shown on the touch screen for one candidate would actually be recorded and counted for a different candidate.21 In addition, one of these reports found that it was possible to gain full control of a regional vote tabulation computer--including the ability to modify the voting software--via a modem connection.22 More recently, computer security experts working with a local elections supervisor in Florida demonstrated that someone with physical access to an optical scan voting system could falsify election results without leaving any record of this action in the system's audit logs by using altered memory cards.23 If exploited, these weaknesses could damage the integrity of ballots, votes, and voting system software by allowing unauthorized modifications."
Remember, these are not wild-eyed lefties or conspiracy theorists. The GAO is a bunch of straight-laced bean-counters. If there is some rational motive for completely ignoring the findings of this report, then I'd like to know what it is.
If someone tells you that our voting system today is overall safe and reliable, why not simply ask them to supply a factual basis for their assertion? After all, why should we have to resort to "faith-based" voting?
You may find that when you start to actually discuss facts and evidence, some skeptics will resort to ad hominem arguments and avoid addressing the facts altogether. But that's a subterfuge, not an argument.
If doesn't matter whether the people complaining about the electronic machines are Democrats, Republicans, Greens, conspiracy theorists, or leather fetishists.
Facts are facts. Are the machines demonstrably vulnerable to fraud and abuse? According to the non-partisan GAO, the answer is yes.
This is an unpleasant fact, to be sure, but for the sake of our children, it is our duty to address it. It's cowardly to hide from the truth, whatever it may be.
(Please note that I am not suggesting that electronic voting machines are the problem per se. Electronic voting CAN be done in a way that is safe and reliable, but that must be incorporated into the design of the machine. India, for instance, has an electronic voting system that is well implemented; the machines use open source code that is publicly inspected, they produce paper records, and so on. By contrast, the machines being aggressively pushed on the states by the Bush administration and its allies do not meet minimum standards of security and accountability.)
Q: If the electoral system is really so unreliable, why don't we hear about it in the news?
The short answer is that the media has drastically changed in the past 30-40 years. A generation ago, most newspapers used to be owned locally, by publishers whose main business was — news. Now that scenario is going the way of the small family farm. With rare exceptions, most large newspapers today are controlled by huge corporate conglomerates, who have ties to a wide range of business interests outside journalism. These days, the business of the newspaper itself is only a tiny fraction of the business interests of the corporate owners.
For a compelling analysis by a media veteran:
Bill Moyers: "Keynote Address to the National Conference on Media Reform"
Bill Moyers: "Take Public Broadcasting Back"
Even though the traditional media is not giving sufficient attention to this issue, the electoral reform movement is ongoing. Here is a candidate for Governor of Ohio running on that issue: www.bobforohio.com. This guy is himself an investigative journalist, and there's a lot of good information on the site about the issue of electoral fraud. While his political views are indeed on the left end of things, I have not found him to be wrong on the facts. Let me know if you find otherwise.
In closing, while I agree with your friend on the Hill that electoral fraud is an old scourge in politics, I disagree that what we are seeing today is nothing unusual. On the contrary, fraud has been taken from retail to wholesale, and that difference in scale and scope has changed everything.
I looked up the lyrics you mentioned. You are right. That's just the ticket.
"And friends, somewhere in Washington enshrined in some little folder, is a study in black and white of my fingerprints. And the only reason I'm singing you this song now is cause you may know somebody in a similar situation, or you may be in a similar situation, and if your in a situation like that there's only one thing you can do and that's walk into the shrink wherever you are, just walk in say "Shrink, You can get anything you want, at Alice's restaurant." And walk out. You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and they won't take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're both faggots and they won't take either of them. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. They may think it's an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. And friends they may think it's a movement."
Best regards,
[Sycamore]