Democracy at Risk .. the coming voting scandal ( excellent article ! )

[MORTARDUDE]

Democracy at Risk
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: January 23, 2004


krugman@nytimes.com

he disputed election of 2000 left a lasting scar
on the nation's psyche. A recent Zogby poll found
that even in red states, which voted for George W.
Bush, 32 percent of the public believes that the
election was stolen. In blue states, the fraction
is 44 percent.

Now imagine this: in November the candidate
trailing in the polls wins an upset victory - but
all of the districts where he does much better
than expected use touch-screen voting machines.
Meanwhile, leaked internal e-mail from the
companies that make these machines suggests
widespread error, and possibly fraud. What would
this do to the nation?

Unfortunately, this story is completely plausible.
(In fact, you can tell a similar story about some
of the results in the 2002 midterm elections,
especially in Georgia.) Fortune magazine rightly
declared paperless voting the worst technology of
2003, but it's not just a bad technology - it's a
threat to the republic.

First of all, the technology has simply failed in
several recent elections. In a special election in
Broward County, Fla., 134 voters were
disenfranchised because the electronic voting
machines showed no votes, and there was no way to
determine those voters' intent. (The election was
decided by only 12 votes.) In Fairfax County, Va.,
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? Internal
e-mail from Diebold, the most prominent maker of
electronic voting machines (though not those in
the Florida and Virginia debacles), reveals that
programmers were frantic over the system's
unreliability. One reads, "I have been waiting for
someone to give me an explanation as to why
Precinct 216 gave Al Gore a minus 16022 when it
was uploaded." Another reads, "For a demonstration
I suggest you fake it."

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? Let's ask
Jeffrey Dean, a programmer who was senior vice
president of a voting machine company, Global
Election Systems, before Diebold acquired it in
2002. Bev Harris, author of "Black Box Voting"
(www.blackboxvoting.com ), told The A.P. that Mr.
Dean, before taking that job, spent time in a
Washington correctional facility for stealing
money and tampering with computer files.

Questionable 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? Representative Rush Holt
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. The bill requires that such verified
voting be ready in time for the 2004 election -
and that districts that can't meet the deadline
use paper ballots instead. And it also requires
surprise audits in each state.

I can't see any possible objection to this bill.
Ignore the inevitable charges of "conspiracy
theory." (Although some conspiracies are real: as
yesterday's Boston Globe reports, "Republican
staff members of the U.S. Senate Judiciary
Committee infiltrated opposition computer files
for a year, monitoring secret strategy memos and
periodically passing on copies to the media.") To
support verified voting, you don't personally have
to believe that voting machine manufacturers have
tampered or will tamper with elections. How can
anyone object to measures that will place the vote
above suspicion?

What about the expense? Let's put it this way:
we're spending at least $150 billion to promote
democracy in Iraq. That's about $1,500 for each
vote cast in the 2000 election. How can we balk at
spending a small fraction of that sum to secure
the credibility of democracy at home?

[HARDCORE]

"Your right Dude, a very interesting piece!"

VERITAS