On the Paper Trail…

There is a huge problem with the way we vote in this country. Currently, there exists the possibility for widespread, massive fraud to be committed invisibly, without any form of detection and error correction what-so-ever. It can happen anywhere in the chain of command: from the people administrating the polls, to the tech jockies on site, to the people who make the voting machines and, finally, to the actual voter themself.

This problem is allowed to continue because of the use of paper-less electronic voting machines. These machines, many of which are created a company named Diebold, whose President is quoted as saying that he would be “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year” as the 2004 election cycle was ramping up. Mind you, I am not calling conspiracy, I am merely remarking on the inappropriateness of the president of the company tasked with making our voting machines to say something like that.

Now, electronic voting is not, in and of itself, a bad thing. It can make it easier for the handicapped to vote (although they could do this fairly easily with a helper before…) and… well… boy are they pretty lookin’! However, they carry a whole host of other problems with them. The Diebold machines are easily manipulated via a simple script and a couple connectors. Best of all: there is no real way to trace what happened! It all looks the same from the frontend, and there is NO WAY TO TRACE VOTES due to the lack of a verified paper trail. If you would like more information on how exactly to hack a Diebold voting machine, check this page out.

This is horrifying. Democracy should not be able to come down this easily. If any of our readers use electronic voting machines in their home district, ones without a paper trail, contact your secretary of state and tell them about how easy vote manipulation is.

So what can be done, you may ask? Well, first, scrap the Diebold paperless voting machines. They are insecure and poorly programed. Find another supplier who is more reliable. Have the code be verified by an independent agency, and have the code be open for public criticism. If I am going to have a machine counting my votes, I want to look at the code, along with thousands of other eyes, to verify that it is doing what it is supposed to be doing. Companies will complain about trade secrets or whatnot, but in reality: the machine should just be a simple counter with a GUI. Press button A, ++1 to row A column 1. Not very difficult to program. Lock the database in a secure, encrypted file. Plus: the companies are getting a big, fat government contract to do this. The government just needs to say “these are the terms, take them or walk”. But the code needs to be released to the public and allow both parties to check the code on each machine to make sure the code is the same (using MD5 sums and hashes) as what was posted. Also, the machines need to print out a piece of paper with each submitted ballot, that the user can verify before they leave the booth.

Or you know, we can just go back to scantron voting machines like we have here in Michigan. Those seem to work well, count quickly AND leave a verifiable paper trail. Plus they are much cheaper! Seems like a no brainer to me, but if the government really wants electronic voting machines, they should at least do it right.

Our democracy is at stake with it being so easy to fix elections. Something must be done about it before the next one. The governor of Florida is calling to get rid of their e-voting machines, but Congress is being slow to act, citing costs.

Let your representatives know that you want democracy, regardless of cost. I mean, after all, isn’t that what the war was about, right?