If A Vote Fails To Be Counted, Is It Really a Democracy?

Several articles have appeared in the news concerning the electronic voting machines. Among them:

http://www.oxfordpress.com/hp/content/oh/story/news/local/2008/08/28/hjn082808voting.html

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/08/16/eveningnews/main4355733.shtml


"Premier Election Solutions (aka Dibold) recently conceded that the problem may not be caused by anti-virus software, but may be an error that has existed in the machine's code for more than a decade."

This is the same company who has refused to allow outside independent testing of it's code. The same company who has insisted for over a decade that there was nothing wrong with the machines, and that all elections counted by these machines were legitimate and safely conducted.

And only now, because various states and voting municipalities are starting to sue, has Dibold started to admit maybe these machines are not as reliable as once thought. After the federal gov't has spent millions of dollars buying and implementing the machines. After states have spent millions of dollars on maintenance. After several close call elections that may or may not have been counted correctly.

For our last election 2 years ago, we had to use the electronic machines. Our poll workers did not know how to run them. They got confused. They kept crashing the system. When I questioned whether my vote would indeed be counted, they got huffy with me. "Well of course it will," said the election supervisor. " Our government would not spend the money on them if they weren't thoroughly tested and proven reliable." Uh-huh.

I recently voted in the primary. Our new voting system was a felt tip marker pen and the ballot. You filled in the bubble next to the candidate's name. No confusion, no crashing, no fears of hackers breaking into the system. And there's a paper trail, to verify the votes.

Makes you think. Newer technology isn't alwasy better. Sometimes a pen and paper will do the job just fine.