i-sako.com

Okay, this blackbox touchscreen voting situation is getting a bit too weird. There are still very reasonable doubts about the accuracy of these voting systems, as shown in this recent Wired article:

E-Vote Machines Drop More Ballots

Six electronic voting machines used in two North Carolina counties lost 436 absentee ballot votes in the 2002 general election because of a software problem, raising increasing doubts about the accuracy and integrity of voting equipment in a presidential election year.

That’s 436 votes. President Bush is only in office today because of 537 votes. Isn’t that a concern? I would think so.

But the article goes on:

ES&S, Diebold Election Systems and other electronic voting-machine makers are coming under increasing scrutiny about the accuracy of their devices. The manufacturers claim their machines work fine and don’t need auditing mechanisms—like printers that would give voters receipts confirming their choices. But opponents are finding more and more anecdotal evidence of discrepancies and anomalies.

I’ve written before about how the head of Diebold is determined to see that Bush wins the election, which seems like an inappropriate bias for someone in the electronic voting business to have.

“All of this just underscores the need for voting machines to have a paper trail,” said Stanford University computer science professor David Dill, who runs Verified Voting, a group that is pushing election officials and legislators to mandate voter-verified paper ballots that provide a way to audit.

Yes, I believe it does! But what do we see coming out of Florida, the state responsible for the most screwed up election in our nation’s history? (Thanks to Kos for the tip.)

State: Touchscreen ballots don’t have to be recounted

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - The Department of State has notified elections supervisors that touchscreen ballots don’t have to be included during manual recounts because there is no question about how voters intended to vote.

While touchscreen ballot images can be printed, there is no need and elections supervisors aren’t authorized to do so, Division of Elections Director Ed Kast wrote in a letter to Pasco County Supervisor of Elections Kurt Browning.

What’s worse is the Florida Secretary of State is insinuating that even the act of raising the issue is wrong, because it “politicizes” the issue!

Secretary of State Glenda Hood said there are no certified methods of printing records of touchscreen votes, but she stressed that the machines are reliable and accurate and can’t be tampered.

“We’re working very hard to educate the voters, to build the comfort level and to get rid of some of the myths out there,” Hood said. “I think these things are raised for political purposes and distractions. Any effort to undermine that public confidence is a tactic that is wrong and I believe it weakens our democracy by causing voters to doubt if their vote has been counted.”

That’s just nuts. The whole point of verifying election results is to make sure that elections cannot be manipulated “for political purposes.” Of course, we’ve seen how previous Secretaries of State in Florida have scrupulously avoided using elections for political purposes, haven’t we, Katherine? Perhaps Glenda Hood is just trying to follow in Katherine’s footsteps.

Let me see if I’ve got all of this straight: At least some voting machine makers are determined to throw the election to Bush. The state of Florida (where Bush’s brother is governor, for crying out loud!) is determined to side with the voting machine makers and to eliminate the possibility of recounts like the ones that embarrassed the whole nation in 2000.

Does anyone want to take bets on which way Florida will go in 2004? I don’t need job approval ratings or exit polls to predict this one.

Update: I see that even people outside the United States are beginning to have doubts about the accuracy of these voting machines. The following article excerpt comes from the Independent.

Voting chaos looms for American election

The electronic voting system designed for the forthcoming American election is fundamentally flawed and could undermine the trustworthiness of the entire US democratic process, a scientist has told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

[Note: The emphasis added here is mine. --Sako]

That’s a pretty strong claim, one that I feel is worth taking seriously. Why aren’t legislators falling all over themselves in an effort to address this glaring problem? A cynical mind would begin to suspect some kind of conspiracy.