News item: Hoping your vote counts*
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLI
TICS/08/08/international.observers/index.html
Jeez, I hope all that somehow helps...
Today, to beat
the 100 degree heat here in Oregon, I bought some ice cold grapefruit juice at my neighborhood supermarket with a
credit card. Three separate pieces of paper were handed to me to document the purchase. (The clerk, I assume,
documented it thoroughly for the store as well.) I was looking at the paper, thinking "God, think about the
deforestation caused by all of everybody's purchases, from as small as a pack of gum. I wonder whether all this
paper is really necessary for every trivial purchase? Then, it struck me -- this is three more pieces of
paper than will document 1/3 of the votes in the upcoming presidential election!"
Currently, it looks
like about two thirds of our total votes will be merely counted by computer, while roughly 1/3 of our total
votes (about half of the 2/3) will be recorded and entered electronically as well. So although the
first portion is certainly vulnerable to fraudulent counting in a variety of ways, the latter portion will leave
no paper trail whatsoever. Therefore there will be no way to truly trace, verify or recount the votes.
I
sure hope the four private e-voting corporations involved will be ethical about all this!(The stated
corporate guiding behavior principle of "maximizing shareholder wealth" exactly = everyday human ethics anyway,
right?) Two have documented ties with the Republican party, and the other two have had problems with malfunctions in
elections before (e.g., in California).
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