Many of the blogs I read (see blogroll to the left) have covered the controversy surrounding electronic voting machines for several months now. I’ve never had much to add to the subject, so I rarely mention it.
That said, if you’re not familiar with the controversy, be sure to check out Paul Krugman’s column in today’s New York Times. It’s a pretty good overview of the situation and it explains just how serious a matter this is. (If you prefer a cartoon version of this controversy, Tom Tomorrow had a brilliant strip about this in late October)
Krugman explains that Bush loyalists, many of whom are committed to helping elect him and other Republicans, own and operate companies that create touch-screen voting machines are used widely in elections across the United States. Many experts have examined the system and have found that the machines could be manipulated, fairly easily, to effect an election’s outcome due to technical malfunctions and serious security flaws.
“An analysis of Diebold software by researchers at Johns Hopkins and Rice Universities found it both unreliable and subject to abuse,” Krugman said. “A later report commissioned by the state of Maryland apparently reached similar conclusions.”
Worst of all, as Krugman noted, the machines “leave no paper trail,” so it’s difficult, if not impossible, to know that a mistake has occurred.
“The point is that you don’t have to believe in a central conspiracy to worry that partisans will take advantage of an insecure, unverifiable voting system to manipulate election results,” Krugman concludes.
At this point, critics of the system appear to be Democrats because of the partisan affiliation of those who create the machines. That said, there’s simply no reason this has to be a partisan issue.
No matter which party you join or which candidates you support, democratic elections rely entirely on a fair and accurate voting system. Once the system is shown to be prone to mistakes and open to abuse, democracy is undermined.
Even Republicans who may benefit from the machines’ flaws have to realize that this is a system in desperate need of repair. Realistically, how would the GOP react if loyal and wealthy Dems created voting machines that were prone to error and open to manipulation?
Krugman noted that Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) has introduced a bill requiring that digital voting machines leave a paper trail and that their software be available for public inspection. It’s hard to argue against Holt’s legislation.
In fact, Atrios described nicely how a paper trail could make the system far more reliable.
“It’s really very simple,” Atrios said. “Electronic machine prints ballot. Voter reads ballot, confirms their vote choices. Voter drops ballot in old fashioned ballot box. A random sample of old fashioned ballot boxes are manually counted every election night, as should be any locations where there are possible problems, technical or otherwise. It’s so obvious — and simple — what should be done that it should scare us all that it isn’t being done.”