Excellent Cle Plain Dealer Op Ed: Computer voting isn't fool-proof

[Kolesar]

I hated to edit this, but I had to! http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/othercolumns/index.ssf?/base/opinion/1065951213314010.xml

Computer voting isn't fool-proof

Lawrence M. Krauss

Anyone who was not in a coma in November 2000 remembers the agony caused by the now infamous butterfly ballots and hanging chads. Concerns about a possible repeat of events almost caused the California recall election to be delayed.

Following the election debacle in Florida, Congress became determined that in the next elections the winners actually would be determined by all the votes cast. Last October, they passed the Help America Vote Act in order to help states prepare for the next election. Unfortunately, the solutions being proposed, involving an assortment of computer-voting systems, may be worse than the problems they were designed to fix.

...snip....

In the Science Applications International Corporation report, commissioned by of Maryland (which nevertheless plans to use the Diebold machines in its next election), "several high risk vulnerabilities" were identified - even based on the assumption that the machines are isolated and not connected to the Internet. But in a March primary in California, the Diebold machines were connected to the Internet with election tallies posted on the Internet before polls closed.

...two superb paragraphs....

It is interesting in this regard that Walden O'Dell, the CEO of Diebold, an Ohio company, was quoted in The Plain Dealer as telling Republicans in a recent fund-raising letter that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

As we rush to install computer voting systems, we should remember the admonition of a former chief scientist at Sun Microsystems Inc., who said in a television interview following the 2000 election: "If your life depended on the measurement of a single ballot, would you prefer it be read by a machine, or examined carefully by three different human beings?"

...snip....

Krauss is chairman of the physics department at Case Western Reserve University.

[Spazito]

1. Excellent Op-Ed piece!

I love how he brings in the paper ballot.

[blm]

2. Yeah....and thanks for bringing it here, SpikeTrees.

This is important. Cleveland is a great indicator for the direction the country takes.

[Kolesar]

3. It is not a physics experiment, you cannot repeat an election

Krauss had rather a high brow arguement there, but it was so correct. Pee Dee Op Eds have been rather lame of late, I think this revived them.