Voting machines: Give us paper trails...and I mean NOW!

[thatcrazycajun]

Read this and be gobsmacked. Nearly six years after the Florida Fiasco of 2000 that threw a Presidential election to the Supreme Court to decide (for only the second time in this nation's history), and less than two years after the CEO of the country's leading voting-machine maker was caught promising in writing to "deliver" Ohio's votes to this selfsame rascal, we still do not have verifiably safe and honest elections in this country. (Fergossakes, Iraq has more transparency and integrity in its elections than we do in ours at this point!) If, as this columnist writes, the reason legislation to remedy this has stalled in Congress is not partisan opposition, and at least some GOPers want the system fixed every bit as much as the Dems do, then what in the name of Gordon Moore is the holdup? Could it be that Diebold and the other makers of current election tech are lobbying against it to keep from having to spend more bucks on retooling? Maybe even a little quid pro quo in the form of campaign cash or under-the-table perks? C'mon, Speaker Hastert, what's your excuse?

"Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." -- Josef Stalin

Comments

[patoadam]

I agree completely.

As you may know, paper-trail-free voting machines were sold with the guarantee that recounts would be quick and painless and would not alter the vote count.

John Kerry won the exit polls in Ohio. Even Karl Rove admits this.

[darrenzieger.livejournal.com]

It gets worse. Recounts are fine -- if the whole system isn't already skewed on every level...

http://www.gregpalast.com/we-dont-need-no-stinkin-recount

[zsero.livejournal.com]

Forget paper trails. What's wrong with old-fashioned paper ballots? What made people fall in love with technology and abandon them, back in the long-ago? Australia still uses paper, and seems to get the count done about as quickly as the USA - about 90% of first-preference ballots are counted on the night, and the parties' scrutineers give them unofficial tallies of how the preferences are going, though the public doesn't get those. The only times we don't know who will be in government by the end of election night is when the result is genuinely in doubt, because it will depend on the postal votes that have 2 weeks to dribble in.

(Though in one recent Victorian election it took over six weeks to get a final result, because in one seat a candidate had died the morning of the election, and the rest of the seats were split exactly evenly, so everyone had to wait for a re-election to be held in that seat.)