Text 13443, 84 rader
Skriven 2006-11-01 18:25:32 av Rich Gauszka (1:379/45)
  Kommentar till text 13442 av Gary Britt (1:379/45)
Ärende: Re: How to steal an election by hacking the vote
========================================================
From: "Rich Gauszka" <gauszka@hotmail.com>


"Gary Britt" <glbNOSPAM@gencogDOTcom.com> wrote in message
news:45492c20$1@w3.nls.net...
 > Why didn't they beta test these things with a bunch of old retirement
> home Jewish ladies from Dade county.  You know the ones that couldn't
> punch a chad or follow ------------------->  to the proper hole.
>
> Gary

I like George Will's piece on it ( we use paper ballots in Detroit )

http://www.suntimes.com/news/will/114963,CST-EDT-geo29.articleprint

The hoariest jest in conservatism's repertoire is that the three least credible
assertions in the English language are ''The check is in the mail,'' ''Of
course I'll respect you as much in the morning'' and ''I'm from the government
and I'm here to help you.'' Which brings us to the exquisitely named Help
America Vote Act.

Having fixed Iraq and New Orleans, the federal government's healing touch is
now being applied to voting. As a result, days -- perhaps weeks -- might pass
after Election Day without the nation knowing which party controls the House or
Senate. If that happens, one reason might be the Help America Vote Act, that
2002 bit of federal helpfulness.

For more than two centuries before Congress passed the act, Americans voted.
Really.

Using pencils to make marks on paper, and later using machines to punch holes
in paper ballots, voters -- without federal help; imagine -- caused congresses
and presidents to come and go. Some ballots have been better designed than
others, as have some voting machines. Most have been adequate.

Then came 2000 and Florida and the 36-day lawyers' scrum about George W. Bush's
537-vote margin of victory. In response to which, Congress passed the act,
which in 2006 may produce fresh confirmation of the prudential axiom that the
pursuit of the perfect is the enemy of the good.

The lesson that should have been learned from Florida was: In Florida, as in
life generally, one should pursue as much precision as is reasonable -- but not
more. When, as very rarely happens, a large electorate, such as that state's
6.1 million voters in 2000, is evenly divided, the many errors and ambiguities
that inevitably will occur will be much more numerous than the margin of
victory. That is unfortunate, but no great injustice will be done, no matter
who is declared the winner in a contest that is essentially tied.

Unfortunately, the lesson the nation chose to learn from Florida was that
American technological wizardry could prevent such highly unusual events, and
no expense should be spared to do so. Hence the Help America Vote Act, which
made $3.8 billion available for states to purchase the most modern voting
equipment.

On Nov. 7, 38 percent of the nation's voters will use touch-screens to record
their choices, according to Election Data Services. Unlike optical scanners
that read markings put on paper ballots, most touch-screen machines --
including those which the New York Times reports will be used in about half of
the 45 districts with the most closely contested House races -- produce no
paper that can be consulted for verification of the results, if a recount is
required. Lawsuits have been filed in five states seeking to block use of
touch-screen machines.

Today's political climate makes this an unpropitious moment for introducing new
voting technologies that will be administered by poll workers who often are
retirees for whom the task of working a DVD player is a severe challenge. So we
should not be surprised if, on Nov. 7, new voting machinery does what new
technologies have done through history: malfunction.

Football, in its disproportionate pursuit of error-free officiating, now relies
on instant replays because . . . well, because it can. This technology does
indeed reduce human error. But it also reduces games to coagulation as players
stand around waiting for officials to study video in the hope of achieving a
degree of precision and certainty more appropriate to delicate surgery than to
the violent thrashing of huge padded men in what is -- lest we forget, as the
judicial solemnities of instant replay cause us to forget -- a game.

Democracy is not a mere game. But -- write this on a piece of paper, using a
No. 2 pencil -- neither is it an activity from which it is sensible to demand
more precision than can reasonably be expected when, on a November Tuesday, 100
million people record billions of political choices.

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