"Faking Democracy" by Lynn Landes - a must-read!

[JoMama49]

Lynn Landes on FAKING DEMOCRACY

". . . . With all the hoopla over voting machine "glitches," porous software, leaked memos, and the creepy corporations that sell and service these contraptions, and with all the controversy that surrounds campaign financing, voter registration, redistricting issues, and the general privatization of the election process - we are missing the boat on the biggest crisis facing our democracy.

Americans aren't really voting. Machines are. Call it faking democracy.

And no one seems to be challenging it. As far as I can tell from my own investigations and from discussions with law professors, attorneys, and others, there has never been a lawsuit that challenges the right of machines to be used in the voting process. Recent lawsuits that have been filed by Susan Marie Webber of California and Congressman Robert Wexler (D-FL) are based on verification. The plaintiffs want voting machines to produce paper ballots so that voters can verify that the machine's output matched their input. They also want paper ballots for manual audits and recounts.

But these lawsuits, as well as proposed legislation in Congress from Congressman Rush Holt and Senator Bob Graham, leave voting machines in control of election results. The public is being offered a set of false choices - paperless touchscreen voting machines or touchscreen machines with ballot printers. Machine-free elections are not on the menu.

More at: http://www.dissidentvoice.org/April2004/Landes0406.htm

[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. It would be nice if we could have a statute that demands that whoever

is "elected" is able to show tolerance, wisdom, and humility, and that he is able to do you know... high school type tasks.... at the very least.

[lapfog_1]

2. I think this hits the nail on the head

With various laws on the books limiting recounts to results where the
vote is "close", paper trail machine votes really provide a false
sense of security that the vote was not hacked!

My feeling is that vote preparation can be done via machine, probably
even a web based distribution. but the "vote" should be on paper
and then counted BY HAND (with three sets of eyes, the official vote
counter and a rep from each major party).

Otherwise, even with paper trail, you have a good chance that a
candidate wins by, say, 5 percent who all exit polls and even pre
election polls show losing by 5 percent... and with the "no recount"
laws on the books, the results are official.

We should QUIT trying to figure out who "won" as quickly as possible,
even going so far as to prohibit "calling" an election before 24 hours
AFTER the last polling location closes. Does anyone really NEED to
know the day of the election? can't we wait for the slow BUT SURE
process of manual counts by multiple people?

I'm not against automation, in fact I'm a computer scientist (and
former hacker)... and I KNOW how easy it is to hack the vote and
cover the trail.