It's not just Diebold voting machines that threaten our democracy--it's the attitude surrounding them.
Cross-posted from
Primary Colors.
In celebration of my paper about the Chartists (a group of English reformers who pushed for universal manhood suffrage and other political reforms), which is not even
remotely written yet, despite being due tomorrow, today's major cause for concern is the serious lack of reform following up the 2000 Presidential elections.
The Akron Beacon Journal reports that the Help America Vote Act is being used in Ohio, a key swing state, to
buy Diebold's new voting machines. Now, the fact that the word "chad" in all its many permutations has become part of the cultural lexicon is definitely enough to make me consider (along with abandoning the electoral college) new, more reliable, and more secure methods of voting. The ones we have are confusing enough to make anyone nervous--there was a pretty scary moment in my election when one of my supporters thought that the levers over my and my running mate's names weren't working. The problem is, Diebold machines don't seem to promise any of those things,
as the Great Falls Tribune reports in an eminently to the point editorial:
"We have certified none of those machines," said Amy Sullivan, who's coordinating local HAVA implementation for the Montana secretary of state's office, "and we won't until we're sure they're secure."
I'm going to get up on the soapbox for a few minutes here, but what in the
world does it say about our attitudes towards democracy and voting,
especially after a crisis that called into question our ability to have free and fair elections, that we are even
remotely willing to consider a method of voting that might be hacked, might be tampered with, might be vulnerable, produced by a company that's unwilling to produce a paper record of that method because it says it's
unnecessary, despite the fact that it makes ATMS that spit out paper records
all the time. Our right to vote, to choose our representatives and hold them accountable, is unbelievably crucial to all the other liberties we consider at all dear. To jeapordize that is unthinkable.
We have to stop this, right now. I don't know how to do it, but there must be some way to block local election officials from buying and implementing Diebold voting machines. I don't care if we have to mark off paper ballots, I don't care if it's less efficient, we need a certifiable paper trail of votes. This is unacceptable.
And more than that, we need to do what
SEIU, the
League of Conservation Voters,
ACORN (which, incidentally, has
its own radio programming--with all the hype about Air America, who knew?) and other organizations are doing this summer--hit the road, and start a massive organizing campaign to reemphasize the importance of every single vote. We can't afford anyone believing that their participation doesn't matter.