Jan. 29, 2004 - 17:57 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

New Age Bad

Never thought about it before, but it seems that the electronic touch screen balloting has a problem of verification of votes cast. From what I read in Paul Krugman's (of The New York Times) article in our paper January 26, 2004,

"Electronic voting calls all elections into question."

From what Mr. Krugman says, "First of all, the technology has simply failed in several recent elections. In a special election in Broward County, Florida 134 voters were disenfranchised because the electronic voting machines showed no votes, and there was no way to determine these voter's intent. (The election was decided by only 12 votes). In Fairfax County, Virginia, electronic machines crashed repeatedly and balked at registering votes. In the 2002 primary, machines in several Florida districts reported no votes for governor. And how many failures weren't caught ?"

Mr. Krugman mentions some interesting things about the overall reliability of said voting machines, "Internal e-mail from Diebold, the most prominent maker of electronic voting machines, revealed that programmers were frantic over the system's unrealibility."

After detailing a few items of interest Mr. Krugman continues, "Computer experts say that software at Diebold and other manufacturers is full of security flaws, which would easily allow an insider to rig an election. But the people at voting machine companies wouldn't do that would they ?"

"Questionable computer programmers aside, even a cursory look at the behavior of the major voting machine companies, reveals systematic flouting of the rules intended to ensure voting security. Software was modified without government oversight; machine components were replaced without being rechecked. And here's the crucial point: even if there are strong reasons to suspect that electronic machines miscounted votes, nothing can be done about it. There is no paper trail; there is nothing to recount."

"SO WHAT SHOULD BE DONE ? Rep. Rush Holt D-N.J. has introduced a bill calling for each machine to produce a paper record that the voter verifies. The Paper record would then be secured for any future audit. And it also requires surprise audits in each state."

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Mr. Krugman may have faults, but at least he comes up with appears to be reasonable answers to the problems stated.

Of course I can see the screams of outrage because of the amount of paper involved, storage of same and extra procedures. But at least there would be something to recount, rather than hanging chads and unrecorded votes from those magic modern electronic touch screen voting machines.

A key phrase of Rep. Holt's bill appears to me to be, "Each machine to produce a paper record that the VOTER VERIFIES."

To me a paper shooting out of the machine with the vote recorded and verified right then by the voter would make it ironclad. Reckon that makes too much sense to be adopted.

So like every old thing ever developed having bad parts come to light, now comes the New Age Bads . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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