Gambling on Voting

[struggle4progress]

If election officials want to convince voters that electronic voting can be trusted, they should be willing to make it at least as secure as slot machines. To appreciate how poor the oversight on voting systems is, it's useful to look at the way Nevada systematically ensures that electronic gambling machines in Las Vegas operate honestly and accurately. Electronic voting, by comparison, is rife with lax procedures, security risks and conflicts of interest.

On a trip last week to the Nevada Gaming Control Board laboratory, in a state office building off the Las Vegas Strip, we found testing and enforcement mechanisms that go far beyond what is required for electronic voting. Among the ways gamblers are more protected than voters:

1. The state has access to all gambling software. The Gaming Control Board has copies on file of every piece of gambling device software currently being used, and an archive going back years. It is illegal for casinos to use software not on file. Electronic voting machine makers, by contrast, say their software is a trade secret, and have resisted sharing it with the states that buy their machines.
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3. There are meticulous, constantly updated standards for gambling machines. When we arrived at the Gaming Control Board lab, a man was firing a stun gun at a slot machine. The machine must work when subjected to a 20,000-volt shock, one of an array of rules intended to cover anything that can possibly go wrong. Nevada adopted new standards in May 2003, but to keep pace with fast-changing technology, it is adding new ones this month.

Voting machine standards are out of date and inadequate. Machines are still tested with standards from 2002 that have gaping security holes. Nevertheless, election officials have rushed to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to buy them.
<snip>

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/13/opinion/13SUN1.html?ex=1087704000&en=92ca0a2303aef842&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE


Why aren't voting machines more important than slot machines?

[TreasonousBastard]

1. Casinos profit from secure slots...

and politicians profit from insecure voting.

[struggle4progress]

2. Nice epigram. But I think many Repubs could easily be convinced ...

that they too want a paper trail. :evilgrin:

[Raster]

3. what comes around, goes around...

[struggle4progress]

4. Yes ....

And many conservatives naturally expect us liberals to hack the vote, an anxiety which should be gently nourished.

[Merlin]

5. NYT editorials 2 days in a row! Great news!

Bev Harris has done a great job working with the NYT. This is their 2nd editorial on the subject in 2 days. They are making this campaign into conventional wisdom.

This piece is especially well written. The final line is a kicker.

[Vitruvius]

6. And the final line is: "There are many questions yet to be resolved

about electronic voting, but one thing is clear: a vote for president should be at least as secure as a 25-cent bet in Las Vegas."