Voting

The election of George W. Bush as president of the United States of America showed a somewhat unexpected weakness in our democracy: the technology of voting.  Most Americans knew campaign money corrupted our democracy; what we did not realize is that  the actual process of counting votes was equally corrupt.

Clearly, America needs to invest in modern voting technology.  Early estimates said outfitting every county in the United States with touch-screen voting would cost approximately $3 billion, less than the cost of one month of Bush's Iraq occupation.   Put another way, better voting machines for every American costs just a little bit more than one B-2 bomber.  Building and installing the systems will create thousands of jobs, and the money will circulate through the economy.  Touch-screen voting has already been used in dozens of states and counties in the U.S. Companies which design and build electronic voting equipment could prosper by exporting their wares to other countries.

But serious questions have been raised by opponents.  Electronically submitted votes can be difficult to verify.  Mistakes in the basic code for some of these systems leaves them open to hackers.  Experts doubt whether they will ever be completely secure, but its hard to say for sure since the private companies which make these systems claim their code is proprietary and will not release it for review. Trusting our precious votes trusted some corporation's secret code is probably not the best move for democracy.

The poster-boy for electronic-voting fraud could well be Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel, who continues to be dogged by speculation he somehow rigged the vote in his state, by manipulating the thousands of voting machines which just happened to be built by his former company.  Among other questionable races tabulated electronically were those for senator in George and Minnesota, where popular Democrats were beaten at the last minute, throwing control of the U.S. Senate to Republicans.

The potential for great harm to democracy is at least as real as the potential for benefits; therefore, all voting systems must follow a few simple rules.  They must:

• Produce a voter-verified paper trail, which can be recounted if discrepancies arise. (Sign the petition to support a paper voting trail.)
• Read back and summarize the completed ballot to the voter, who can change any mistakes before submitting.
• Be run by code which is open to, or owned by, the people and maintained by publicly-employed, non-partisan professional staff.

In addition, Americans need to be leery of voting "reform" efforts which put voters lists in the hands of partisan elected officials.  This led to the exclusion of some 94,000 voters from the Florida rolls before the 2000 election.  More than half of those excluded were ethnic minorities who probably would have voted for Gore.

Today's election systems are only the beginning of what is possible.  Developing electronic voting while following the above guidelines could speed the path toward true democracy.  From electronic voting we could one day have internet voting, and from there we get to electronic town halls, where we can vote on issues right from our bedroom.

On the other hand, poorly developed, proprietary and corporate-controlled voting technology will be a tool to steal our votes and further undermine democracy. These are heady times for the technology of voting, but the people must remain vigilant.