A Case Against Electronic Voting, Can Opener and Monopoly Defense

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Friday October 27, 2006 · 1:08 PM PDT

2006/10/27 · 13:08

Case Against Electronic Voting - The Can Opener and Monopoly Defense

I love technology, everything from water wheels to wireless energy systems. But sometimes in the course of human events, we grab the new shiny stuff like confused and bewildered raccoons and refuse to let go even when it is obvious that it is not in our best interests. There are cases when the old way is still the best way.

Our old system of voting is a like a spoon, it has worked for countless generations, more or less with optimal efficiency. Now we are trying to eat the soup of democracy with the spork of voting, known as electronic ballots. I purpose three major reasons why this should be junked and forgotten about, so we can feed our republic properly, because confidence in the ballot box is the soul of any republic.

Arguement 1 - The Can Opener

Electric can openers are great, but give me the old fashion hand turning model any day. Besides those whose hands have worn down due to the time and wear, there is real no reason to own an electric can opener. Because dry goods are good to have on hand during bad times, say a hurricane or other natural disaister, when you just might find the power out. What would you do then? Plus the manual version will not quite working on you or go out of warranty, unless you somehow manage to get it rusty. But in that case, the electric version would have quit working in the same conditions long ago, and the manual version would just need a bit of oil and elbow grease to get working again.

Voting is much the same way, because the power has gone out on the validity of our election system. Sure, the eletronic ballot is convinent, much like the electirc can opener, but both fail us in bad times. And my friend, these are some of the worst times for America, because if the citizens of this land lose faith in the ballot box, they will lose faith in our social contract.

But with a manual can opener, you can always get the goods. Same with the old system of voting, we could always get inside the votes and verify the product is there. Even with paper trails and other safeguards, on a national level we can never be sure if the proof is in the pudding, or if the can truly contained pudding at all. We would be stuck on the outside of the can desperately trying to look in.

Argument 2 - Electronic Monopoly

Okay, I am referring to the time honored game of Monopoly here, not the economic construct. The board game is a social affair, where various family members and friends banter and scheme to become the next real estate tycoon. The person in front of you physically grimaces as they land on your multi-hotel Broadwalk, and their liquid capital passes into your hands. And who doesn't make a joke to the person who wins second place in the beauty pageant? Or side offers of under the board transaction to spring a pauper out of jail?

Now electronic Monopoly on the computer, in my opinion, is just plain sad. Gone is the social interaction, replaced by the uncaring logic and reason of a computer program. You don't even get to roll the bones, but watch pixels dancing across the screen. And I am sorry, you do not get the same joy of watching a computer player land on your property as you do on Thanksgiving when a cousin who took the last drumstick checks into your hotel.

That is because, like Monopoly, our democracy is a hands on affair. It is the people who make this country great, and it is the people I want counting my votes, not HAL or some other cold calculating, possibly rigged, computer. I would rather endure the vices of a political machine, then have my votes tallied in the obscure circuits of an electronic voting machine. It removes the most basic civic function of a democracy, counting the votes, out of human hands and places it into the netherworld of electronics. I think we should regress. Which brings me to Argument 3.

Argument 3 - Poll Workers

I enjoy, on the rare occasions I find myself in Brazoria during voting season, going to the polls and seeing my elders. If you take a good look around at polling stations, you will find the section of our population who are in the august era of their lives. I do not view this as a bad thing, mostly because these people go out of their way, spend hours in mundane training, to make sure the lights stay on for democracy.

But for the most part, they do no understand, or feel comfortable, around computers and other advanced electronic equipment. This is fine, because I see them do amazing things with just pencils and paper. Remember, this is the generation who put a man on the moon with slide rulers. My generation could just hope to do something that clever.

So form should follow functionality, and our voting system should reflect that abilities of those who are in control of the process at the ground level. These poll workers will do a bang up job with paper ballots, I know this because this age group has done wonders across generations, and the system has never broken down until we introduce computers into the model. So I think, even though I am a borderline technocrat, we should remove electronics from all polling stations across the land.

Final Statement

I challenge anyone to tell me what the advantages of electronic ballots are over paper ballots, in reference to problems in the 1950s versus today. If it was not broke then, how did it break in just the last ten years? And if was not broke, then way did we try to fix it?

Or was the fix just in, so a certain group could take a monopoly on our democracy, which is opening a whole different can of worms.

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