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Supporters of actual democracy want all elections to include a "voter-verified paper trail," which is another way of saying paper ballots or paper computer "receipts" which the voter checks before depositing it in a ballot box. The whole point is that we don't have to entrust our democracy to some dumb computer.
Touch-screen machines can be theoretically cheaper ways to hold elections (no muss, no fuss) but you never know what's actually happening in there. You could choose "Gore" and the machine say, "Yep, Gore", but when you leave, it records the vote as "Bush", or doesn't record it at all.
In Katherine Harris's old Congressional district in Florida, they voted on these new "improved" touch-screen machines. The computers tell us that 18,000 people in one county went in to vote, but somehow didn't register a vote for Congress. That would make the undervote in that county several times larger than the undervote in most places around the country. But there's absolutely no way to find out what the voters really wanted -- all you have is a computerized tally, and no way of knowing how the computers came up with the numbers.
What dumb fucks came up with this system anyway? Oh right... Republi---
Anyhow, the old Dean For America campaign apparatus has morphed into a progressive political-action group called Democracy for America. They're run by Howard Dean's brother Jim (no, not he of the sausages, ye clever knobs).
DFA is pushing for paper trail voting to be on the Agenda of Nancy Pelosi's "First 100 hours" when Democrats take control of Congress. Check them out; sign the petition.
Link: http://www.democracyforamerica.com/paperballots
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
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1 comment:
I am very proud of you, Scot, for coming out foursquare in favor of honest elections.
The history of democracy is rife with stolen votes and padded election numbers.
The problem with electronic cheating is that it can never be reconstructed for evidence, and it gives the appearance to most people of being legitimate because it's so unassailably 'scientific'.
I do think that if the innards of electronic ballot boxes all over America could be studied, they would reveal lots of rotten things from the last election, making it even more surprising that there was such a turnover. I think if the true results were known, the election would have been more one-sided than it was.
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