E-Voting: A Leap of Faith?

1. Richie
   November 1st, 2006 at 3:20 pm

   I have many questions still about how reliable it is, but it does seem like an obvious next step to fix the enormous issues that even paper ballets face each major election. The biggest problem is who can you trust?

2. floyd landis
   November 1st, 2006 at 3:41 pm

   It will just make it easier for the republicans to steal another election.

3. Nick
   November 1st, 2006 at 3:55 pm

   It will just give the democraps another excuse for loosing elections.

4. Tim
   November 1st, 2006 at 4:06 pm

   Republicans stealing an election is just a catch phrase, and contains NO facts.

   I like the idea of ink of a finger and keep those in Florida from voting 5 ballots at a time.

5. Anita
   November 1st, 2006 at 4:32 pm

   The idea of a democratic voting system relies on some level of honesty ... get enough dishonest people and you can throw off any election, regardless of the safeguards in place.

6. Dan
   November 1st, 2006 at 5:05 pm

   I agree with Anita,

   e-voting can be, and has been hacked.

   Paper ballots have been falsified for centuries.

   Hm... Which way to go...?

7. yawfren
   November 1st, 2006 at 5:05 pm

   If the Democrats are so loose, why are the Republicans losing their rightwing Christian votes to the Democrats because of their widespread corruption and declining family values?

   Oh, you meant lose.

   

8. reid
   November 1st, 2006 at 5:16 pm

   http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/evoting.ars

   e-voting is ridiculously insecure.
   here is a STEP-BY-STEP guide to hacking an election.

9. rick
   November 1st, 2006 at 7:24 pm

   2 e-voting companies count 80% of all votes cast in the USA. The presidents of both of these companies are brothers... and republicans.
   Diebolt's president promised to deliver Ohio for bush. What do you suppose his brother's allegiances are? The fact that patriotic Americans are only now starting to ask this question, 2 stolen elections later, shows how fucked up things in your country actually are.

10. Aleki
    November 1st, 2006 at 7:48 pm

    I just love how democrats say how much we need to support and rely on the supreme court. But when they make a ruling on an election all of a sudden it was stolen. Sunds like a losers limp to me.

11. Alex
    November 1st, 2006 at 7:59 pm

    e-voting can be done right (open source), see this Wired article.

12. Chad
    November 1st, 2006 at 8:34 pm

    did anyone pay attention to the news a couple days ago? early voters for the primaries in florida where given consistent republican favoring glitches every time they tried to vote dem.

    so um no I dont think e-voting is a good idea espescially when the only time there is a glitch it favors the liars and cheaters of our government!

13. Alex
    November 1st, 2006 at 8:43 pm

    Chad's referring to an incident, reported in Miami Herald, where:

    "Several South Florida voters say the choices they touched on the electronic screens were not the ones that appeared on the review screen -- the final voting step."

14. Mark
    November 1st, 2006 at 10:48 pm

    The reason e-voting is inherently insecure is that it takes a highly trained technician to determine whether a machine is functioning the way it's supposed to or not. This problem affects all high-tech voting systems.

    The problems that we had with the butterfly ballot, by contrast, were due to large numbers of new voters, a few of whom spoiled their ballots. But switching to a completely new system means that now EVERYONE is a "new voter". We should have stayed with the butterfly ballot, which was a system that the entire country understood intimately by the middle of December 2000. Instead, we're entering unexplored and much more dangerous territory.

15. Rob
    November 2nd, 2006 at 1:05 am

    I think both the Republican *and* Democratic parties are "wack," so to speak. Both have been at each other's throats for seemingly countless decades. The fact of the matter is this: it doesn't matter who's in office, they'll always be the bad guy, either literally or by the opposite faction's perception (or perhaps both, which is probably more accurate). For me, each and every election is about voting for the individual who seems to represent the least amount of evil, not no evil at all.

    As for the voting system, I agree with the comments stating that it can and will be fixed no matter what system is used. American liberties have sharply declined since the end of WWI, and they continue to do so with each passing year. I honestly don't believe the power behind the American government is its people anymore -- Republican *or* Democrat (or Green or Centrist, for that matter).

16. ben
    November 2nd, 2006 at 9:53 am

    It's a horrific idea. Our elections have been stolen for AT LEAST 6 years now. And tuesday will be no different. I'd suggest you look into --->> http://www.nightweed.com/usavotefacts.html

17. Tim
    November 2nd, 2006 at 10:58 am

    Someone forgot to take their meds... ^^^^^

18. roystr
    November 2nd, 2006 at 12:07 pm

    this 'puteriZed voting stuff,,,, is crapOla.
    the constitution means nothing at all,,, if the vote is tricked. every right we enjoy because of the US constitution becomes something you might want,,but not realy bet on getting.
    i think when the vote is lost,,or faith that a real count is taken,,, then i hope you are armed,,because the next civil war will begin.
    if anyone in power takes YOUR right to vote( same thing if the vote isnt counted) if your a patriot youll be willing to fight to get it back.

    roystr

19. ben
    November 2nd, 2006 at 12:11 pm

    If the logic is against you, argue the facts. If the facts are against you, call the other side bad names.

20. donna
    November 2nd, 2006 at 1:25 pm

    I'm a poll worker. I get a key. I've held th ememory cards - they're no different than what's in your computers. What gets printed on the paper doesn't have to match what's reported on the memory cards. I've programmed computers long enough to know that.

    And what gets counted by the counted machines doesn't have to match what's recorded on the memory cards, either.

    All we know for sure is how many people voted, and how many ballots were counted.

    I vote absentee ballot myself - on paper.

21. Alex
    November 2nd, 2006 at 4:53 pm

    There are some very valid points brought up here: fraud, regardless of the method of voting, can happen. But if we can transact billions of dollars in online shopping, surely we can tackle eVoting.

22. Mark
    November 2nd, 2006 at 10:59 pm

    "if we can transact billions of dollars in online shopping, surely we can tackle eVoting"

    Unfortunately eVoting is a much tougher technical challenge. When two people transact business over the online, they each have an incentive to keep an eye on the other. If the item or the money doesn't arrive as agreed one of them will complain. The problem with voting is that NO ONE is supposed to have a record that could trace a particular vote back to a particular voter. The concept of an "audit trail" is out the window from the start, you CANNOT build a system that makes it possible to check afterward that John Smith's vote was indeed for the Blue Party, just as he says it was supposed to be, or his privacy rights are violated.

    We can't even use the Iraqi system of having people dip their fingers in indelible purple ink when they vote to make sure they don't vote again later, which I guess is because we're concerned that people might somehow be intimidated from voting if they had to let everyone know they'd done so for days afterward. One of the hangovers of the bad old days when people used various ways of suppressing African Americans from voting, I guess.

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