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One Man, One eVote?
By Matt Margolis | June 2, 2004
Humiliated frontrunner-turned-loser in the Democrat primaries, Howard Dean, has taken his abortion-performing skills to the media by starting a new syndicated column..
His first topic was electronic voting.
Only since 2000 have touch screen voting machines become widely used and yet they have already caused widespread controversy due to their unreliability. For instance, in Wake County, N.C. in 2002, 436 votes were lost as a result of bad software. Hinds County, Miss. had to re-run an election because the machines had so many problems that the will of the voters could not be determined. According to local election officials in Fairfax County, Va., a recent election resulted in one in 100 votes being lost. Many states, such as New Hampshire and most recently Maine, have banned paperless touch screen voting and many more are considering doing so.
Without any accountability or transparency, even if these machines work, we cannot check whether they are in fact working reliably. The American public should not tolerate the use of paperless e-voting machines until at least the 2006 election, allowing time to prevent ongoing errors and failures with the technology. One way or another, every voter should be able to check that an accurate paper record has been made of their vote before it is recorded.
Personally, I am against eVoting, today, tomorrow, next week, next year, or anytime. The moment voting becomes electronic it becomes that much easier for the Democrats to tamper with votes. It’s basd enough that dead people can still vote for Democrats, and that they want kids as young as 16 to vote legally for Democrats, but paperless voting? Electronic voting? The next step would be voting via the Internet, which gives Democrats even more oppotunities to cheat.
When it comes to voting, I’m a traditionalist. I believe eVoting will cause more problems than it will solve.
Topics: Thoughts |
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June 2nd, 2004 at 1:32 pm
So after all of your insults… you end up agreeing with Dean.
June 2nd, 2004 at 3:33 pm
Matt - you’ve found an issue on which all of us who think the other side will stop at nothing can agree! We just don’t agree on which side would do the cheating, but we get to the same result.
June 2nd, 2004 at 4:27 pm
I’m extremely against e-voting and I’m very suspicious of any corporation or group that advocates it for the very reasons you suggested in your post. I believe that electronic votes have already been tampered with in some locations and that eliminating the paper trail will serve no other purpose than to destroy the evidence of any such tampering.
-jdm.
June 2nd, 2004 at 7:24 pm
I don’t totally agree with Dean. I think we should never implement evoting… any form of electronic voting, even via internet hss high risk of being tampered with by the left.
every system imaginable will have its flaws, - so i say stick with tradition.
June 3rd, 2004 at 1:57 am
Um, hate to break it to you, but “the left” (that horrible, evil monster) isn’t the only individual or group capable of tampering with it.
In saying they are, you’re saying one of two things: first, that only “the left” can do it because they’re the only ones capable; in saying such, you’re saying that this evil group has more techinological knowledge then what I assume you would call “the right.”
Secondly, you don’t need to be able to tamper with electonics to get the votes you want. Anyone remember Florida?
For the record, however, I too am against electronic voting.
June 3rd, 2004 at 8:26 am
yeah, in florida all you had to do was throw away military votes..
in all serious, yes, both sides could tamper with eVotes, but i strongly believe the Democrats are far more likely to do that.
June 3rd, 2004 at 1:14 pm
Why do you believe the Democrats are more likely to tamper, Matt? It would be very tempting to cheat for any party I would think. Of course, there is more to the process than the “two sides”. On the topic of voting, Matt, what do you think of Instant Runoff Voting? It has already proven to work well and I get really excited when I see local governments adopting the use of it. One example is the election for San Francisco Mayor. People were not afraid to vote Green in fears of losing their votes which is often the case in bigger elections. We saw a close race between the Matt Gonzalez and Gavin Newsom with Newsom pulling way ahead in the second round. I’ve even seen IRV work well for Student Government at the college I attend. Any thoughts?
June 4th, 2004 at 8:58 am
History shows that the Donks are far worse in this area i.e. JFK, Algore, Daley………….