July 08, 2003
Electronic Vote Tampering?
New Zealand’s Scoop has a series of stories on how insecure and easily manipulated the electronic U.S. election process is, through the use of the dominant Diebold voting ballots. While one story deals explicitly with the ease that a potential fraud could be perpetrated (with pictures and very easy to understand), another article on the same topic deals more with the implications of the security and lack-thereof throughout the Diebold company and their voting software. Scoop contends that, if applied, this electoral scandal could be “bigger than Watergate”.
Ongoing information and sources can be found at Black Box Voting, the website that investigated this security problem.
Posted by Stephen VanDyke at July 8, 2003 02:41 PMCall me a luddite, but I think electronic voting is the worst idea for Democracy since the electoral college.
I don’t think it will increase the number of voters as much one might expect and it is very insecure, open to fraud and deception.
Canada votes by paper ballot. Australia fines its citizens for not voting. Many countries have voting holidays.
The US needs a simple low tech solution for casting ballots, use the same procedure everywhere, a voting holiday, a tax rebate for voting, a very short and limited campaign season, government funded campaigns, low limits on contributions, full disclosure…
And much better candidates.
Posted by: Rick at July 9, 2003 05:42 PMJesus. The more I read this site, the more it sickens me! There is so much crap that we’re just kept in the dark about!!!
ciaran
Posted by: ciaran at July 9, 2003 11:52 PMRick, you raise an interesting issue. In order to make voting uniform and accountable across the nation, we would need to federalize the voting system (constitutional amendment) or, the states would all have to agree to conform to a single standard.
Since the latter is not plausible politically, federalizing the system appears to be the only hope for adopting a single standard for voting, including weekend voting, etc. However, such a move could put the potential for fraud square in the hands of a very small group of people at the federal level.
As it is, the fraud potential is spread out over 50 plus territories such that the potential for fraud is decentralized and has a much smaller influence than the potential of a centralized operation.
Ideas? Comments?
Posted by: DRRemer at July 10, 2003 08:36 AM
