Is Sequoia’s new marketing ploy, which publically discloses some of their computer code, good for election integrity? Well sort of. But it does absolutely nothing to ensure our votes are counted.
It’s not the faulty program code or broken machines that fail elections in this country. It’s the election laws. Every major election snarl-up back to and including 2000, were the result of election laws not taking into account one simple reality: computer systems and people will sputter and crash.
Moreover, there will never be a perfect national election. Considering the sheer numbers of computers and humans and ballot configurations and peripherals. . . It’s simply not going to happen. Somewhere in some jurisdiction(s) something’s going to hiccup. Perhaps it will be 37 votes. Perhaps 537. Either way if it’s enough to change the outcome of an election and spot-on-accurate results cannot be determined by any other means, the election should be sent straight back to the voters who voted it. Politically charged courts should not be deciding how you and I voted.
Until we fix the laws that guide the elections, we won’t ever fix the election.
So while this level of transparency is an important breakthrough, it will not ensure fair and accurate elections. Nor will it prevent failures outside the realm of the computer’s secret code, such as:
- By mistake or intent, the code you see may not be the code running the election. While it is more likely that uniform code can be systematically deployed across all computers in a scanner based election system, there is no fool-proof guarantee. Touchscreen based systems present a much greater challenge, since literally thousands of touchscreens can be required to support the voters in one jurisdiction at 100 voters per touchscreen.
- Poorly designed ballots can adversely affect voter intent.
- Optical scanners are only as good as the pre-printed ballot forms and the ballots hand-marked by voters. Ballot positioning and alignment, ink, and quality of paper are some of the factors that can cause an undetected number votes to be misread and miscounted.
- Programming code can be influenced by outside factors. For example, the date and time of day can influence a computer’s behavior.
- Communication of the voting machine (scanner or touchscreen) with the central computer can be incorrectly defined and interrupted.
Even the most perfect computer program code cannot prevent the failure of a computer’s individual electronic parts and peripherals. Computers will fail and humans will make mistakes. Only when these unalterable facts are accepted and accounted for can we achieve stable elections in this country.