Reply #12: At war or Cold War it didn't much matter [View All]

[PATRICK]

but when the TV pundits started forecasting with instant results from exit polls that put the pressure on. The larger the election official the more they wanted neat control over all those paper counters for variuous reasons.

But the actual history of the optical scan and the early new machines is immediately disturbing, the vaporizing of the evidence and the hidden paths of reconstitution. The trajectory though is also now revealed as somewhat disturbing. For every thing that needed "protection" some neat piece of machinery or law came in with greater and more hidden dangers of manipulation. Punch, cards, lever machines- all have larger and less obvious ways of being defrauded.

Considering the press and the pols begrudge the people's clear will about campaign money influence one wonders why the cost of billions is no big deal over the sudden need we are told we have for a "new" shiny comfort bauble that eats our democracy.

One of the reasons why the issue has not been enjoined clearly is that some computer people were enlisted to sell these monsters and many of their colleagues, including critics, couldn't at first conceive of the possible abuse. Now we are left like mice trying to bell the cat with printers.