Electronic Voting

Before viewing the film "Hacking Democracy" I was clueless to the extent of distrust the American public should hold for our voting system. Upon reading Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s article "Will The Next Election Be Hacked?" from Rolling Stone I was further frightened by the substantial claims made. Diebold voting machines are unreliable in many ways. A test done in "Hacking Democracy" showed that even when Diebold machines haven't been tampered with they are still faulty. Which is particularly scary since in the states of Georgia and Maryland, "The company [was given] complete authorization to put together ballots, program the machines and train poll workers across the state - all without any official supervision"(Rolling Stone). Not only do Deibold's products often have break downs and malfunctions, but the company has repeatedly conducted illegal acts, installing new patches and/or memory cards into machines without the approval or knowledge of the state. It was only after an election that Georgia government officials became aware and then provided a "punch list" of problems with Diebold's product that they wanted fixed. There is no documentation on what actions Diebold then took. But it was common knowledge throughout the company that during the 2004 presidential primaries there was an uncertified, illegally installed software present in the machines used. Many studies have been conducted by reliable, intelligent, authorized personnel that prove that, "With electronic machines, you can commit wholesale fraud with a single alteration of software"(Rolling Stone). These alterations have been found to take less than a minute to complete, yet can spread to all of the other machines being used when only placed in one. The machines have the capability to be programmed to automatically give one candidate a certain percentage of votes. There have been cases where voters will make their selection and it will automatically be switched to the other option, in front of their very own eyes. To give specific proof, Rolling Stone states, "In heavily Democratic areas of Youngstown, nearly 100 voters pushed "Kerry" and watched "Bush" light up. At least twenty machines had to be recalibrated in the middle of the voting process for flipping Kerry votes to Bush. Similar "vote hopping" was reported by voters in other states." I could go on explaining more examples and problems I have recently learned of, but I think you get the point. We cannot and should not trust electronic voting, Diebold products in particular. If I were in charge of monitoring the elections in California I would remove all electronic voting machines. I would have each individual cast their vote on a paper ballot, a scantron (what they use for standardized tests) type of idea. These paper ballots would then be scanned through a machine that would tabulate the results. Which would then be compared to the human count of the ballots. This would be time consuming and tedious but it would ensure that the results would be accurate. And really, what's more important, speedy results with incorrect answers or an elongated process that provides an accurate outcome?