Diebold with a Vengance...Secrets, lies, and electronic voting

[andyjackson1828]

by Julian Sanchez

As the autumn of 2000 drew to a close, citizens of the wealthiest nation on the planet suddenly began to feel a bit... backwards. A country still reeling from the unwelcome realization that the magical Bill Gates and his crack squad of Internet pixies had not forever vanquished the business cycle abruptly discovered that a close contest for leadership of the economic and military juggernaut that is the United States would turn on hanging chads. For week after tedious week, we tuned in to CNN to watch weary volunteers squinting at punch cards, debating the significance of each dimple and perforation with the intensity of medieval schoolmen poring over scripture. How grotesquely lo-fi! Why not just scratch out your favored candidate's name on the cave wall with a sharp bone?

The talking heads appointed to conduct the autopsy of that imbroglio appeared to be in broad agreement: the whole sordid affair would have been prevented if only Florida had been with it, man and implemented electronic touchscreen voting statewide. (Reason, too, was on the bandwagon.) The companies that make electronic voting machines were delighted to join the chorus, with batallions of erstwhile elected officials on hand to lobby their former colleagues to install the next insanely great thing in voting gadgetry on the double.

Legislators in Florida, stung by the national giggles elicited by the poodle orgy that was the 2000 election, quickly banned the old punchcard machines and began a statewide phase-in of touchscreen machines, as did Georgia. Recent estimates by Election Data Services found that counties using electronic voting machines now comprised almost 20 percent of the electorate, more than double the number just six years earlier. Some citizens could even be voting online by 2004.

But Floridians don't seem convinced that bytes beat butterflies: A quarter say that they are "not at all confident" in the new technology, and half believe that it's important for machines to preserve a paper trail of votes—something that's not currently done.


The rest at...

http://www.reason.com/links/links111103.shtml

[papau]

1. half believe that it's important for machines to preserve a paper trail of

votes.

OK - will Florida election folks respond - or is no paper trail GOP policy?