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Touchscreen Vote Stealing, etc.
Questions continue about the reliability of various touchscreen voting technologies produced by private companies like Diebold. In one of the latest news articles to come out on the subject, the Florida Dept. of State has decided that there's no need to include touchscreen voting machines in any future manual recounts. You see, according to the state of Florida, the reason for a manual recount is to determine if the voter made a clear choice, and there is absolutely no question on that when it comes to the new technology. I would have thought the reason for a manual recount would be to discern whether or not the original count was accurate, but I guess Florida made it clear in 2000 that that wasn't a particular interest of theirs.
Regardless, since these machines do not lie, there's no need to recount with them. More than likely, this is rather because there is no paper trail associated with these machines, thus, nothing to recount. You have a number, that's your number. Of course, don't worry about the fact that these machines have huge, documented security holes, can easily be hacked by a 12 year old, and are produced by a company run by a CEO who is a known large Bush campaign contributor on the record as intending to "deliver Ohio's votes to Bush in 2004."
These machines may play a much larger role in the 2004 election than anyone is expecting. They are already suspected in strange, poll-defying election results in 2002. We know that Bushco will go to great lengths to illegally sway elections their way (i.e. have your cousin call the state of Florida for you on Fox News, then have your brother halt the recounts, have your daddy's friends step in and direct traffic, etc., etc.). How are these machines going to be trusted in '04? What happens if a state is close, and there's some question regarding these machines? Heck, what happens if a state is really not close ... can we trust it? This question goes for either party, incidentally.
This technology, and the code behind it, should be open source. Without clear scrutiny from a talented public, there is no way to ensure its integrity. But really, this whole thing should be created and managed by the government, not a private corporation. In another great example of privitization of services by Bushco that should be public, we are leaving perhaps the most important piece of the democracy puzzle to a handful of people whose primary motivations are greed, wealth, and power.
Anyway, what really led me to write about this today was to lead you to one of my favorite sites on the net--Mark Fiore's political satire cartoons. Mark is regularly featured on Salon, and maintains a gallery of all of his political cartoons. These are often brilliant, engaging, and revealing satires of current events, and make for great laughs. One of his latest is about the topic of touchscreen voting. I encourage you to watch every one of his cartoons when you have the time.
Posted on February 15, 2004 06:17 PM
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