Let's Reject Unverifiable National Election Results
An editorial in today's New York Times carries the frightening news that a federal panel is working to grease the skids to make it impossible to detect fraud in future national elections.
Here is an excerpt from the editorial:
"The Election Assistance Commission, a federal body set up after the 2000 election mess, has created a group called the Technical Guidelines Development Committee to propose federal electronic voting standards to Congress this spring. This committee includes outspoken supporters of electronic voting without paper trails, including Britain Williams, a retired Kennesaw State University professor who has worked closely with Georgia on its controversial adoption of Diebold voting machines. But disappointingly, the commission did not include any of the many respected computer scientists - such as Prof. Aviel Rubin of Johns Hopkins, Prof. David Dill of Stanford or Dr. Rebecca Mercuri - who have been warning about the unreliability of electronic voting in its current form... The chairman of the working group preparing the standards for voting machines is a top executive of Election Systems and Software, a large and controversial voting machine maker."
Verifiable elections are an essential feature of a democracy. Nothing is more critical to our democracy than trust in our electoral process. The 2000 election was indisputably stolen. Four years later, our federal government sanctioned a national election whose suspicious results cannot be independently verified. Several states, including California, have already required the use of voting machines whose results can be verified (with paper ballot back-ups) in the future. But these reforms will accomplish little if other states continue to rely on machines that can be tampered with so easily.
Here's the solution: the state of California and all other states that use voting systems that generate results that can be verified should immediately pass legislative resolutions that notify our federal government that our states and citizens will not respect the results of national elections if those results cannot be independently verified.
The resolutions should also declare that if our federal government conducts another national election in 2008 whose results cannot be verified those of us who live in states that conduct verifiable elections will pay our federal income taxes into an account held in escrow by some uninvolved third party (perhaps Switzerland) until the United States of America once again has a federal government that is legitimately constituted.
This proposal may sound extreme. But not if one considers the sacrifices previous generations made to secure our democratic freedoms, including the right to vote and the right to have those votes counted. We owe it to those who came before us and those who will come after to make sure that our generation does not lose our democracy, without a fight, on our watch.
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Comments
Amazing! You're a blogger.
I appreciate your passion and idealism regarding national elections, but there are some additional details you haven't included.
First, you have completely dismissed the existance of the electorial college. No one ever has "stolen" a national presidential election. Each state may select its electors in any manner it wishes. You know this.
Then going back to the 2000 results, those who would read your notes will have followed the re-re-recounts and unless they were delusional remembered that under most standards Bush did in fact "win" Florida. Under other standards he didn't. To say, however, that the 2000 election was "indispuably stolen" is just non-sensical.
Just in case you'd think to rebut with the actions of the U S Supreme Court, please note ( and confrim if you like ) that the Court's rulings were never going to affect the selection of electors anyway. They had already been certified by the Florida Legislature. It was over.
Regarding whether "Bush won dirty," there was plenty to go around. Kerry did himself no favors in refusing to release his military records. No DD-180, no credibility. His harping on Bush's and Cheney's military service was just tacky.
Face it. The only reason any candidate's military record is an issue when running for commander in chief is to indicate what kind of leader he *will* be. It matters not a whit for an incombant, we already know what he's like.
His plans for Iraq were impossible to discern. Or worse, they were discernable and people didn't like it. On domestic issues, every time he found something to talk about, it evaporated in weeks.
Either the situation would change or Bush would co-opt his position. Finally, there was no way he was going to convince anybody that he would bankrupt us less or slower than than Bush.
If the Democrats had run Leiberman instead, they might have had a shot.
OK, finally to the good news, which according to Carnegie I should have put first. I couldn't agree with you more about the return to a paper ballot. We use them here in Mississippi, and as a computer professional I concur with you that this "electronic" thing is a disaster.
Posted by: George A. Booth at January 6, 2005 10:14 PM
I saw in the news, sometime this last week, a proposed paper ballot which was enumerated to validate that it was cast, and I believe that the voter would take a copy with him so that he could also verify that the ballot was counted as he cast it.
There are a couple of problems, of course, with makeing sure the ballot is still secret. Perhaps the serial number could be handed out in sealed envelopes. There has to be a way to break the "audit trail" for the poll workers, retain one for the voter, and verify that only voters cast ballots.
voting machines would have to make the marks/perforations. NOBODY want to revist the hanging chad thing again.
There's money to be made at this.
Posted by: George A. Booth at January 7, 2005 02:17 PM
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