The Command Post - 2004 US Presidential Election - Still more concern over touch-screen voting

August 12, 2004

Bush | Still more concern over touch-screen voting

Obviously partisan, Ronnie Dugger’s lengthy article in The Nation entitled How They Could Steal the Election This Time still presents a troubling picture of how this year’s election could overshadow all the fun we had in 2000.

In November 2 millions of Americans will cast their votes for President in computerized voting systems that can be rigged by corporate or local-election insiders. Some 98 million citizens, five out of every six of the roughly 115 million who will go to the polls, will consign their votes into computers that unidentified computer programmers, working in the main for four private corporations and the officials of 10,500 election jurisdictions, could program to invisibly falsify the outcomes.
The result could be the failure of an American presidential election and its collapse into suspicions, accusations and a civic fury that will make Florida 2000 seem like a family spat in the kitchen.

The biggest concern is the lack of a paper trail for re-counts, especially in Florida where the President’s brother is actively blocking attempts to prepare for a vote verification.

Not surprisingly, the starkest resistance to the voter-verified paper trail comes from Florida, where more than half the citizens will have to vote on touch-screen systems in November. The President’s brother, Governor Jeb Bush, and Jeb’s Secretary of State, Glenda Hood, express unqualified confidence in the trustworthiness of the DRE systems and militantly oppose providing a paper-ballot trail for them. Hood has denied that the electronic voting machines can be tampered with in the software, saying: “The touch-screen machines are not computers. You’d have to go machine by machine, all over the state.” A spokeswoman for her says flatly that “a manual recount is unnecessary.”
This past spring a powerful state senator proposed to make it illegal to recount votes in the DRE systems, but she backed down when called on it by activists. Then Ed Kast, director of Hood’s division of elections, who has since resigned, sought to achieve the same purpose by diktat, issuing a formal ruling that, despite the extant state law requiring recounts under certain circumstances, supervisors of elections do not need to recount DRE ballots. The ACLU and other groups have sued to invalidate that ruling; a spokesperson for the state Republican Party excoriates the suit as a left-wingers’ “ploy to undermine voters’ confidence.”

Posted by Solonor at August 12, 2004 10:03 AM | TrackBack

Comments

Pure, unadulterated paranoia. Who do these people think make the optical ballot scanning machines? Corporations. What about all the computers that have been used in voting tabulation for years, regardless of the balloting method? Corporations. And the software that they’ve used all this time? Probably the exact same corporations that they’re so paranoid about now. There’s literally no reason to believe that an electronic balloting system is more susceptible to subterfuge than more conventional systems, because every conventional system is, at it’s heart, the same as an electronic one: a machine-based system.

The fact is that in 2000 every single state experienced “irregularities,” just like Florida did (and just as they have in virtually every single election they’ve ever conducted), but due to the compartmentalizing effect of the Electoral College, attention was focused only on Florida, even though it wasn’t even the closest state election; I believe Gore won New Mexico by something like 38 votes. The point is that elections are natural human endeavors, and like all natural phenomena don’t occur—-indeed, can’t occur—-with perfect invariable uniformity. Moreover, they never will, even if in the future we figure out a way to cast ballots telepathically. To latch on to natural variability as it applies to elections and get all freaked out about it can only be ultimately damaging to democracy as it places the pressures of impossible goals and expectations on the process.

:jackson

Posted by: jackson zed at August 12, 2004 02:05 PM

No, it was by some 500 votes, and Florida had a far margin of victory by percentage.

Zed, they are more referring to the fact that it is impossible to recount the electronic-only machines, and you have no way of knowing if your vote has been counted or not.

Posted by: Lakhim at August 12, 2004 03:01 PM

But my point is Lakhim, when, and under what system, has it ever been different? Do you really know what those optical scanners are doing? What about those punch card readers? The obvious answer is no, we have no idea. Sure, there may be a case to be made for psychological assurances, like those skinny guard rails along mountain roads that would never stop your car going over the side, but the reality is that in practical terms they aren’t much different. And what needs to be avoided here is a way to have a “second” election when the first one turns out in a way that one side or the other doesn’t like—-which is guaranteed every time!

:jackson

Posted by: jackson zed at August 12, 2004 03:09 PM

Well, yes, I do, if you’ve ever used a scantron machine you know what they are doing (rather hard to hack them) and I’d still rather have that safety rail when something does go wrong (As it did in 2000) so we can check by hand instead of letting machines do it.

Posted by: Lakhim at August 12, 2004 03:33 PM

Lakhim sed:

Well, yes, I do, if you’ve ever used a scantron machine you know what they are doing (rather hard to hack them)

Okay, so maybe the election operative overseeing the actual machine might be able to see what’s going on, but not the people that cast the ballots themselves. And what if that machine operator has been bought off? See, that’s the problem with paranoia, it’s a slippery slope that only leads to unquenchably deranged fear and loathing.

I voted in 2000 on an touch-screen electronic tablet—-as have millions across the country over the last decade—-with no paper receipts. In 2000 we had 100% pricincts reported before 10pm. No one had a problem with it. But we weren’t paranoid then either.

And I’m very disturbed by the total lack of any demonstraded concern on the part of the left for the integrity of the election process. Elections are contests—-games, literally—-whose number one requirement to be successful is that they have to conclusively end at some point. It seems the left has some type of tunnel-vision regarding these types of issues, and just like with a lot of the post-Watergate era laws (especially the Special Prosecutor law) and campaign finance laws, they seem completely unable to imagine, before the fact, of their “gotcha”-type laws from ever being used against them.

:jackson

Posted by: jackson zed at August 12, 2004 04:24 PM

Lakhim - “when something does go wrong (As it did in 2000) so we can check by hand instead of letting machines do it.”

And after all the money spent and every last chad counted - was the outcome any different then originally declared?

And, just like with anything, anywhere, anytime - if someone wants to hack, subvert, undermine - they’ll find a way to do it. Nothing is ever 100% error-proof, 100% impenetrable, 100% unhackable, etc… Hey, Democrats always found a way to register dead people, vote twice, etc - and that has nothing to do with actual logisitcs of casting and counting a vote…

Posted by: v at August 12, 2004 04:33 PM

I hate it when I write a long post only to be told I’m not signed in. but oh well.

My theory about all of this is that the left has a plan to use the courts as often as possible in the next election.

The issues about the voting machines aren’t really issues at all, there simply a method of gaining access to the courts when the Democrat candidate loses.

Ditto the “monitors” from abroad. these are simply people who’s opinions will suddenly gain credence in the court of public opinion when the Democrats fuss about a close election somewhere.

And why? Two reasons: first, the left is in love with the entire “selected not elected” mentality. It has fueled them for lo these many years. As Moore’s syndrome reaches epidemic proportions among the hard left Democrats, this mantra chant will grow in volume.

next, this give the Democrats a chance to tarnish the legitimacy of the eventual Republican winners in any hotly contested race. Thus they seek to limit the effectiveness of the office holder and weaken them for the next election.

and why? The stakes are very high for the left. A strong showing by republicans in the election will seriously hinder the left’s ability to advance their idiot PC speaking, income transferring, appeasing the terrorists agenda. AND THEY KNOW IT. Couple this some pending supreme court changes and the stakes for the left are really high.

And they’ve got John Grimjaw as their standard bearer.

So yes, every little thing about every polling place now becomes a huge deal for the left. Sure they’d like this to be done right, but they also need something to take to court as well.

That’s my theory and I await refutation from the learned posters here.

Posted by: skip at August 12, 2004 04:39 PM

I see a similar activity going on in the criminal system, at least when they’re in front of a tv camera. It’s like the Scott Peterson trial. You can have 2,000 facts that point to Scott Peterson, but some liberal ‘trial lawyer’ just says, “well yeah, but that doesn’t mean he killed anyone”. Common sense has left the buiding in these people’s lives. They make it to where, with the right counsel, NO ONE can be convicted of a murder unless it’s a cop beating a black man while being video taped. Now we got a trial lawyer that thinks he’s qualified to run the country, or at least he’s convinced he can sweet talk his way in like he did to the juries in bogus law suits. Who-wee!

Posted by: No Party at August 12, 2004 06:01 PM