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Ask a "Star" of HBO's Voting Machine Documentary
Herbert H. Thompson, PhD ("Hugh" to his friends), is one of the people featured in the HBO documentary, Hacking Democracy, that Diebold tried to keep from airing. Hugh is a long-time Slashdot reader who called me to volunteer for this interview — on his own, not through anyone's PR department. Here's a YouTube excerpt from a CNN Lou Dobbs show with Hugh in it. (Find more articles by and about Hugh here. And perhaps check this brand-new MSNBC story about e-voting, too.) Hugh suggests that you give him "your wildest questions about what went on behind the scenes and how safe the e-voting systems actually are." Let's take him up on that challenge, hopefully while following Slashdot interview rules. Note to Diebold and other voting machine companies: We welcome comments and questions from you, same as we welcome them from everyone else. If you feel you are being vilified unfairly by Slashdot readers, please respond and set the record straight.
This is a really basic question and it seems I should know an answer, but it never seems to be discussed: Why are the electronic voting machine companies generally so dead-set against emitting verifiable and auditable paper records? It can't just be cost, because they could and would just pass that on to their customers.
What, exactly, is the argument against pen-and-paper voting? It seems to me that everybody wants to migrate to voting machines - electronic or mechanical - but so far nobody has explained to me what's wrong with good old-fashioned "put an X next to your candidate's name" voting.