this was an editorial in my local paper. yes, it makes accusationg -- that's NOT the thing i want to point out, though. so without ANYONE (please) going off on how stupid floridians are or how the dems are never happy, i really feel that this should be of concern to *every* voter: the lack of a paper record of your vote.
do you feel comfortable using touch-screen only voting? i don't. why? because computers, as we all know, do crash. i don't want my vote to be lost because of a hiccup in a computer system.
because it's difficult for me to get from our vehicle to the ballot area and can't stand in lines, i considered absentee voting. after all i've heard from many diverse sources, i DEFINITELY will do so.
editorial
Maybe punch cards weren't so bad
www.wilmingtonstar.com 2 aug 04
Florida's vote-counters are stumbling again – which sends a warning to voters and election officials nationwide.
The warning is that touch-screen machines that don't produce paper trails cannot be trusted to tally every vote correctly every time. Nor can they be trusted to save the results.
Florida's voting procedures are controlled by a Republican governor and a Republican secretary of state. They are resisting calls for touch-screen machines to keep a paper record of votes. They are telling Floridians that the machines that replaced punch-card ballots in 15 counties will work perfectly.
The state's Republican Party is telling some Republican voters a different story: Because these voting machines leave no paper trail, they cannot "verify your vote." So vote by absentee ballot instead. That way, your vote will be on paper.
The Republicans have good reason to worry about the machines' reliability. Miami-Dade County first used them in 2002. Not long thereafter, the vote-counting system crashed. Then it crashed again.
There was no backup. The voting records disappeared. Poof.
Since none of those 2002 races were close enough to cause serious dispute, the disappearance of the voting records didn't throw the results into doubt. But needless to say, election results sometimes are close enough to require re-examination.
In addition to the possibility of mechanical failure, computerized voting systems also remain vulnerable to deliberate tampering.
Yet a spokesman for Gov. Jeb Bush says, "People need to have confidence in these machines."
Just as passengers needed to have confidence in the Titanic? It was "unsinkable," you know.
It's one thing for your favorite candidate to lose an election fair and square. It's another to have the election stolen by a hacker or hijacked by Gen. Protection Fault.
