As now-discredited punch-card machines are being abandoned, there has been a shift to electronic voting machines with serious reliability problems of their own. Many critics, including computer scientists, have been sounding the alarm: through the efforts of a hacker on the outside or a malicious programmer on the inside, or through purely technical errors, these machines could misreport the votes cast.The editorial cited the recent election in Florida I mentioned here as an example of problems with electronic voting and called for a requirement that the machines produce a paper trail.
They are right to be concerned. There is a fast-growing list of elections in which electronic machines have demonstrably failed, or produced dubious but uncheckable results. ... It is little wonder that last month, Fortune magazine named paperless voting its "worst technology" of 2003.
As the Times cogently remarked, "This is no way to run a democracy."
Footnote: The editorial also addressed gerrymandering, noting that in
four states that are almost precisely evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats - Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan - Republican legislators drew district lines so that 51 of the 77 seats are Republican, a nearly two-to-one edge.The Supreme Court has heard arguments in a case challenging Pennsylvania's lines. At issue, ultimately, is whether districts drawn distinctly for partisan advantage that do not reflect, indeed are intended to overcome, the actual division of opinion among the electorate violate the so-called "one person, one vote" principle.
If the Court rules based on law and justice, Pennsylvania's redistricting will be chucked, which then raises the possibility of challenges to those in other gerrymandered states. If it rules based on political considerations, well - let's just say that with this Court I'm not confident of the outcome.
Footnote: Previous posts on touch-screen voting are here, here, here, here, and here.
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