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E-Voting Companies Answer Critics With ... Spin
Whammy666 writes "Wired has a follow-up article which tells of how Diebold and other E-Voting machine manufacturers have enlisted the Information Technology Association of America (a trade public relations and lobbying group) to 'generate positive public perception' of the companies and to 'reduce substantially the level and amount of criticism from computer scientists and other security experts about the fallibility of electronic voting systems.' It seems the concerns about the lack of an audit trail are finally being heard as the industry is reconsidering its opposition to giving the voter a paper receipt of his vote. Of course, a paper receipt given to the voter still doesn't allow for a manual recount should an election dispute arise unless the receipts are collected and secured by election officials." Reassuring PR is Stage Two; remember that Stage One is silence your critics.
After the Bush v Gore infamous recount during the 2000 presidential elections, the Democratic party has been rushing full force to discredit the "traditional" voting methods, through a constant political & media barage against punchcard & butterfly ballots. The general public now has a perception that paper is "bad" and the "better" alternative is via technology ... the electronic booth.
In reality it is statistically no more or no less accurate than traditional means, still has no audit trail, and still has no security between the time when the poll closes and the machines delivered to the final counting place (which is when I believe the real funny business takes place...) You read these reports where they "find" sealed ballot boxes that were never delivered, days after the election is finalized. What was that about Stalin counting the votes?
Paper ballots are cheaper, auditable. and better. Screw these "new" systems. The one we had wasn't broken. Congress just wanted to take heat off it's self because of the Florida fiascio where about 1% population thinks the election was stolen even after it's been proven it was not. The truth is about 10% of the voting population is to stupid to correctly mark their ballot and check it for errors and "hanging chads" when they are done. Perhaps if we had had some people running for office other than the total crap we had and have running more people would participate.
Diebold seems to have manufactured the craptastic swipe-card machines that allow us to pay electronically to use the washing machines in our dormitory. I can barely get 75 cents to turn into an activated dryer; there's no fucking way I'm voting with something those clowns made.
Wait, fuck, I live in Maryland.
Karma: T-rexcellent.