Glenn Reynolds raised some interesting points about voter security in an age of electronic voting. Diebold is legendary among geeks and nerds for its non-existent security, which has been repeatedly proved to be hardly worthy of the ignoble mantle of "joke."
As Glenn observed, procedure is a key aspect of how a proper, secure voting process happens, but I want to take it a step farther than that. It is not only the fundamental problem with our voting system today, but it is the only effective way to attack the issue of voter fraud.
A computer is incapable of determining who should be allowed to vote without the proper information being provided to it. This is where the importance of procedure begins. Electronic voting does nothing to address the political issues that cause voter fraud in the first place. These range from weak-kneed election officials kow-towing to race agitators to dead people being allowed to exercise the franchise from beyond the grave.
Technical solutions to the problem must begin more fundamentally than just at the voting machine level. They must be involved at every step of the process.
The first step of the process is to harmonize all local and state government databases that affect the voting process, even tangentially. They must be indexed with a common and consistent set of information so that they can work together to accurately inform one another. A prisoner database should automatically inform the voting records database that someone is a prisoner; the local hospital's systems should inform the voter records database that a person has died.
The ability to harmonize the databases that local and state governments use already exists, but is encumbered by the bane of any new process: bureaucracy. In this case, it faces what could turn into a formidable enemy as an automated process is quite possibly the antithesis of a human government bureaucracy. It is absolutely necessary to keep as many people out of the loop as possible to protect the process, which naturally disempowers the bureacracy overall.
There is one final issue with electronic voting machines, such as the ones that Diebold sells, and that is that it is impossible to know if the entire live suite of machines is safe. Glenn touched on that point, but there is one last problem, and that's that no one can truly verify whether or not there isn't something, at some point that is compromising the data ranging from a program that hijacks and rewrites the network data packets to a trigger in the database that randomly turns one vote into another.
It is true that conspiracy theorists have harped on this problem for a long time, but then it is a sign that you really don't appreciate the severity of the issue, both technically and in terms of political consequences, if you blithely, nonchalantly dismiss it as "it'll never happen." When the future of your republic is tied to a badly designed machine that is one Compact Flash card away from executing a quiet coup d'etat, that is one of the most fundamental problems a society can have.
Why are paper ballots with ink pens so hard to use?
That is what we do in my district.
100% countable and auditable. Counting machines don't care which bubble they count.
But what is the point? Unless every district begins requireing photo ID, and cross referencing addresses with voter registrations, and crosschecking registrations in other states, voter fraud is here to stay.
That is why the outcomes of the past several elections were sucha big deal. The outcomes are decided within the margin of fraud. So will the next several elections. Democrats depend on this to win, even in solid Democrat districts
I agree with you about paper ballots being the safest way to go. My point was that voter fraud is deeply ingrained into the process and would require a fundamental overhaul of many bureaucracies in order to really cut down on it.
One solution in the meantime, I think, is to repeal that unconstitutional restriction on the size of the House of Representatives and to allow the states to use proportional representation. We might actually get competition in politics if we did that.
while I agree that more representatives would cut down on the relative strength of each congressperson, I don't see how more of a bad thing is good.
As for the size of our HoR, 435...440...430... what makes one arbitrary number better than another?
I am against DC statehood for the same reason democrats are for it. It is an automatic democrat vote in the house and two in the senate, forever.
The staes could already use porportional representation but they choose not to. Those in power, want to keep it that way.
I know, I know!
Get big burly men (attractive ones, most suitable for "needs" being met)to go to each home in all the cities, rural townships, etc across the land.
Get these same men to drag each person to the "voting station" set up near them. Hand em a pen, piece of loose leaf, and tell them to vote.
Escort the citizens home, and while this takes place, create a win/win situation in regards to voting ;)
Or you could do what we do here - have voting stations, people who want to show up, vote with paper n a pen, VOILA!
And who thought it could be done so easily?
Sheesh...
OUT,
Wonderlific One
...and would require a fundamental overhaul of many bureaucracies...
Um, you do know who is charged with overhauling bureaucracies don't you? They call them Bureaucrats. Our government has done this many times in the past 200 years. Most recently, we got the DHS and a new pay system.
WHoop-de-freaking-do
That was another part of what I was getting at. It ain't gonna happen because it will be the people who stand to lose a lot of power being the ones tasked with doing the reorganization of the information systems to help crack down on voter fraud. Fewer employees would be required, which translates out into less power... the bane of bureaucrats.