E-Voting Reform Bill Gaining Adherants

JeremyDuffy sends us to Ars Technica for a look at an e-voting bill making its way through Congress that is gaining the support of the likes of Ed Felten and the EFF. Quoting: "HR 811 features several requirements that will warm the hearts of geek activists. It bans the use of computerized voting machines that lack a voter-verified paper trail. It mandates that the paper records be the authoritative source in any recounts, and requires prominent notices reminding voters to double-check the paper record before leaving the polling place. It mandates automatic audits of at least three percent of all votes cast to detect discrepancies between the paper and electronic records. It bans voting machines that contain wireless networking hardware and prohibits connecting voting machines to the Internet. Finally, it requires that the source code for e-voting machines be made publicly available."

Comments

Good, but so what?

[Seumas]

I'm all for auditable voting, but what kind of naive idealist would expect this to make any difference whatsoever? And even if it did, there is a worse problem than which of two assholes wins the vote. Such as - you know - which assholes are accepted enough by the corporations, religious nuts and lobbiest groups in the first place to even become viable candidates.

This would be a good move (though a little late), but it's little more than picking one kernel of corn out of a large, steaming pile of political shit.