Reply #28: NYT: Restoring Confidence in Voting (5 Letters)

[dzika]

Restoring Confidence in Voting (5 Letters)

Published: December 26, 2004

To the Editor:

Re "Count Every Vote" (editorial, "Making Votes Count" series, Dec. 20):

As demonstrated in Ohio and elsewhere, people with access to the machines, and the proper motivation, can change the election result. Paper trail or no paper trail, until this problem is confronted, an election conducted on electronic voting machines, including the one this November, is not to be trusted.

..

Americans of both parties must demand that only a fair and impartial entity manage the voting process, that all software in use produce a paper trail and be subject to scrutiny by all parties in the election, that voting booths be equally accessible to all qualified voters, and that all rules regarding voter qualification are openly published and adhered to.

Finally, there should be serious criminal consequences to anyone violating the voting rights of an American citizen.

..

As a technologist and a student of computer science, I can tell you that I will never willingly cast my vote on a computerized voting machine. What a computer prints out and what it actually records are two different things, and tampering with the voting software to rig an election is a trivial task, even with a paper trail.

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There are serious charges that voters in Ohio were systematically disenfranchised by violations of state and federal voting laws through, among other things, manipulation of the vote tabulator by a representative of the company that created the software.

Our American press, inexplicably, has been thunderously silent.


Link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/26/opinion/l26vote.html?ex=1104642000&en=1484e2325d37306d&ei=5006&partner=ALTAVISTA1