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Why the Best Voting Technology May Be No Technology at All

My model for smart voting is Canada. The Canadians are watching our election problems and laughing their butts off. They think we are crazy, and they are right.

I’m hoping that all three of you that read this site understand that I find this to be absolutely crucial. If we have no confidence in our voting system, then the system falls apart.

Also, the most amazing part of this article is the discussion of costs…

The 2002-2003 budget for Elections Canada is just over $57 million U.S. dollars, or $1.81 per Canadian citizen. It is extremely hard to get an equivalent per-citizen figure for U.S. elections, but trust me, it is a LOT higher. This week, San Francisco held a runoff mayoral election that cost $2.5 million, or $3.27 per citizen of the city. And this was for just one election, not a whole year of them.

We are spending $3.9 billion or $10 per citizen for new voting machines. Canada just prints ballots.

Now this is the kind of stuff that gets me. $10 per citizen just for the MACHINES! Canada runs their entire year of elections for $1.81/citizen. As he points out in the article, Canada and California are roughly equal in population, so it’s not a stretch that we’d be able to do this for a similar cost.

No Confidence Vote

If you spend any time on the Internet in the U.S., it is almost impossible not to know about the scandal involving touch screen voting machines.

Well Bob, you could say I spend a little time on the Internet…

Hack the Vote

Chilling.

Inviting Bush supporters to a fund-raiser, the host wrote, “I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.” No surprise there. But Walden O’Dell, who says that he wasn’t talking about his business operations, happens to be the chief executive of Diebold Inc., whose touch-screen voting machines are in increasingly widespread use across the United States.

From a news item at Forbes, Ineffective Steel Tariffs Now Illegal, Too

“The United States should not buckle under pressure from the European Union,” Daniel DiMicco, vice chairman, president and CEO of Nucor and chairman of AISI, said in statement last week. “The steel industry is a test case for problems facing all sectors of U.S. manufacturing. The way to send a clear message that the U.S. is truly committed to a level playing field for domestic manufacturing is to keep the president’s steel tariffs intact. This is the tip of the iceberg and all of America is watching.”

Level the playing field by keeping the tariffs. Right… right… that’s the ticket….

People should stop whining and figure out how to compete on the world stage… Without tariffs and protections from our supposed “Free Trade” President.

Howard Dean, Elections 2004 and the Democratic Party (washingtonpost.com)

The nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute last week provided some evidence supporting Rosenberg’s view. “What is also different about 2003 is the emergence of a well-financed candidate — Howard Dean — who depends on large donors ($1,000 or more) for only 22 percent of individual contributions and gets 54 percent from small donors (less than $200),” the institute found.

In contrast, President Bush, who has raised $83.9 million, collected 85 percent of it in contributions of $1,000 or more and 10 percent in gifts of less than $200. For other major Democratic candidates, the percentages of large and small contributions were: retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark, 45 percent to 35 percent; Sen. John Edwards (N.C.), 88 to 1; Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (Mo.), 78 to 8; Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), 77 to 11; and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.), 78 to 6.

(Emphasis above is mine) Interesting article…

I’ve just found this excellent article entitled,All The President’s Votes? over at The Independent.

Any American not living in a cave knows about the Florida debacle in our last Presidential election, and the subsequent push towards modern voting systems. Many states have rushed to implement touch-screeen systems, and there is a large amount of federal money available to help with that transition.

All of this is being done however, without any sort of accountability or investigation into the security of these machines and this new process.

Our democracy depends on verifiable elections, and when that goes, so goes our country.

This article is absolutely chilling. Even leaving out the conspiracy theories you’re left with an exremely scary scenario that any lover of democracy will want to see rectified. And if you are into conspriacies, here’s some fuel to the fire.

In many Georgia counties last November, the machines froze up, causing long delays as technicians tried to reboot them. In heavily Democratic Fulton County, in downtown Atlanta, 67 memory cards from the voting machines went missing, delaying certification of the results there for 10 days. In neighbouring DeKalb County, 10 memory cards were unaccounted for; they were later recovered from terminals that had supposedly broken down and been taken out of service.

I suggest that anyone who reads my site, read this article.

There is no end to the adventures we can have if we seek them with our eyes wide open.