Reply #2: Interesting but ultimately irrelevant question... [View All]

[JackRiddler]

The fundamental point must be that black box voting makes perfect election fraud possible - i.e., fraud with almost no chance of being caught. If there is no paper trail or any means of confirming a count, and if the software itself is proprietary and secret even from the purchasing client (i.e., the government), then that is necessarily unreliable because there is a gateway for fraud.

One might prove statistically that fraud must have been committed (for example by finding incredible discrepancies between districts with and without particular machines, as was the case in 2004), but establishing the who and how (of many possible pathways to a hack) might be impossible.

Based on the 2004 evidence, whoever did it preferred Bush. This can be effected by the company owners, moles within the company, or (less likely) highly sophisticated outside hackers.

But it's irrelevant - the machines should be done away with altogether because they allow for an unprecedented quality of fraud.