The
Eureka Times-Standard published an opinion piece today on supporting the
No Confidence Resolution. Such pieces normally appear on the paper's website, and the editor assured me this would too. But since it is only available in print thus far I invite you to read it in the GuvWurld blog:
http://guvwurld.blogspot.com/2005/01/building-confidence-through-election.htmlEnsuring every vote counts is a service to society. It is also a very tall order. Many thousands of "glitches" and "irregularities" arose in our last two presidential elections. How many times will this repeat before they are considered regularities?
Many aspects of our current electoral system ensure a shroud of uncertainty will taint future elections. Consider whether private corporations should own voting machines. The purpose of a corporation is to make money for shareholders. This motive has caused more than a few corporations to behave unethically. By keeping the source code of voting machines a secret, and also by denying a voter-verified permanent paper record of one's vote, the motive to manipulate an election is accompanied by the means.
Motive and means are usually joined by opportunity. Consider whether it is appropriate for votes to be tallied in seclusion, with the media and other observers explicitly barred from the room. This happened in Ohio. Opportunity also exists simply by virtue of the machines in use, regarded unequivocally by computer scientists as highly susceptible to tampering.
It is not my intention to argue that fraud was or was not committed in the most recent election. Many have tried due to the large number of statistical anomalies including lost data, negative vote totals, tallies equaling more votes than there are registered voters, and persistent automatic vote swapping from a voter's chosen candidate to an opponent. Apparently, the numbers alone just don't cut it. Many prominent people with much to gain by challenging the legitimacy of the outcome have instead shied away for lack of hard evidence. Is it irony, then, that in many places there is also no hard evidence to demonstrate how voters voted?
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