| ||||||||||||||
ANALYSIS:
Faking Democracy: Americans Don't Vote, Machines Do, & Ballot Printers Can't Fix ThatMachines will produce 99.4% of the election results for the upcoming 2004 presidential election. 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.
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. Part of the reason may be that people believe the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) requires states to use voting machines. It does no such thing, not even for the disabled. Another reason the machine-free option is not widely discussed is the popular misconception that people will not "go back" to paper ballots. But they already have. Absentee voting continues to grow in popularity despite real security problems with the chain of custody of the ballots. It is particularly confounding to this writer that our foremost legal scholars and political scientists have yet to address this issue. Instead, a bold band of tech-heads are leading a charge against paperless voting machines. But, they are not looking at the broader Constitutional issues. Being technical, they're calling for a technical fix--ballot printers. The only fix that will give Americans back their constitutional right to vote is to ditch the machines.
In Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court said that a "legal vote" is one in which there is a "clear indication of the intent of the voter." Voting machines (lever, optical scan, touchscreen, the Internet, etc.) produce circumstantial evidence of the voter's intent, at best.Think of voting as a three-step process: marking, casting, and counting ballots. Once a machine is involved in any one of those steps, the result is hard evidence of the machine's output and circumstantial evidence of the voter's input. Many activists are calling for ballot printers, hand counts, and strict audits to ensure honest election results. That will not fix the problem of using voting machines. Voting rights are for people, not machines. The voting process must be transparent in order for voting rights to be enforced. Machines are not transparent. When voting machines are used, critical parts of the Voting Rights Act can't be enforced. Under Section 8 of the Voting Rights Act, 42 U.S.Code §1973f, Federal Observers are authorized to observe "... whether persons who are entitled to vote are being permitted to vote ...(and) whether votes cast by persons entitled to vote are being properly tabulated..." Under "Prohibited acts" in §1973i, the "Failure or refusal to permit casting or tabulation of vote"...can result in civil and criminal penalties. "No person acting under color of law shall fail or refuse to permit any person to vote who is entitled to vote...(and) Whoever...knowingly and willfully falsifies or conceals a material fact... shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than five year, or both." Voting machines violate those provisions. Vote casting and tabulation take place inside of a box. Federal Observers can't observe "... whether persons who are entitled to vote are being permitted to vote ...(and) whether votes cast ...are being properly tabulated.." Voting machines by their very design conceal a material fact. Although Susan Marie Webber and Congressman Wexler are suing to force states to require manufacturers to attach ballot printers to voting machines, the resulting ballot would still be only circumstantial evidence of the voter's intent. It's been predicted by election officials (and it makes common sense, to boot) that many voters won't bother to verify their ballots. In which case, who is to say if the vote cast matched the voter's intent? Some will say that it's the voter's responsibility to verify their ballot, but that view misses the point. Why should people verify the work of a machine? That places the voter in the position of playing second fiddle to technology. Whose right to vote is it? The contention that voters too often don't fill out ballots properly or the elections officials too often don't count correctly is not borne out by the facts, but is moot, regardless. Again, the right to vote and to observe your vote counted properly belongs to people, not machines. Consideration of time and convenience is another red herring in this debate. Those issues have simple no-tech solutions, anyway. If officials want a fast ballot count then they can limit the size of the voting precincts or increase the number of election officials. If more elections officials are needed they can be drafted into public service as is done all year around for jury duty. Likewise, voters who don't understand English could order ballots in their own language in advance of an election. Voting machines have been marketed as 'assisting voters' (i.e., President Bush's Elections Assistance Committee), rather than what they really do, which is to interfere with a citizen's right to vote. It's particularly galling to see the needs of the disabled voters used to force voting machines down the throats of the electorate. The simple ballot template, which is used in Rhode Island, Canada, and around the world, allows the blind to vote privately and independently, or as independently as possible. Actually, when the disabled use voting machines they certainly are not voting independently. They are relying on the machine to vote for them, just like able-bodied voters. It's insane when you think about it. Using machines in elections. Yet, we've been doing it since 1888. How can Americans be so naive? How can we surrender our precious right to vote to some hunk of junk? How can it be that so few people seem to notice or to care? How can we call ourselves a democracy? It is painful to think that as African Americans intensified their struggle for the vote in the 1960's, voting machines were already in widespread use and perfectly positioned to control election results, and, according to some accounts, were already doing so. Can you imagine how the Iraqi people would react if the U.S. government told them that their elections will be electronic and that Halliburton, the Carlyle Group, and Microsoft will provide the machines and the software they run on? Exactly. The Iraqis would burn the place down, some more. Yet here we Americans go again. Not connecting the dots. Shooting at the wrong target. Attaching printer machines to the voting machines that don't belong there in the first place. Asking voters to verify a machine's output, leaving the voter's input indirect and in doubt. I wonder what the United Nations think about a country that fakes democracy? They probably already know. Lynn Landes is one of the nation's leading journalists on voting technology and democracy issues. Readers can find her articles at EcoTalk.org. Lynn is a former news reporter for DUTV and commentator for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Contact info: lynnlandes@earthlink.net / (215) 629-3553. Copyright © 2004 The Baltimore Chronicle.
All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent. This story was published on April 16, 2004. |
Local News & Opinion
01.26 Local Democrats Invited to Brainstorming Session on Sun., Jan. 31 Ref. : Local Newsbriefs Travel
Books, Films, Arts & Education
02.04 'The Power of Nightmares': Underwear vs. Reason Letters
Ref. : Letters to the editor Open Letters:
Health & Environment
Video National Health Care Systems In Other Countries 02.03 Drugmaker Got Kickbacks for Nursing Home Patients 01.18 Drugmaker Got Kickbacks for Nursing Home Patients Media Watching
02.04 Err-America 02.03 The Right Gets Itself 'Wired' Ref. : The Daily Howler Legal Matters
01.25 Thinking About Fictions 01.24 US Democracy's End of the Road 01.22 Editorial: U.S. Supreme Court Nails Down the Coffin of Democracy 01.22 Security Fools US Politics, Policy & Culture
02.09 Palin, Psy-Ops & 'Condescending' Libs 02.09 Growing Hunger in America 02.08 The US Government has Lost its Reason for Being 02.08 Thinking About Oracles 02.06 No Direction Home: Pakistan and the Imperial Principle 02.04 Howard Zinn and the State of the Union 02.04 The US Supreme Court: Vanguard of Friendly American Fascism? 02.04 The New War Against Money 02.04 David Brooks Goes After Greedy Geezers 02.02 Obama's Budget Ducks Pentagon Cuts 02.02 Budgets, War and Blind Ambition: The Limited Minds of the American Elite 02.01 Thinking About Definitives 02.01 Remembering Howard Zinn (1922 - 2010) 01.29 American History 101: We Are Devo 01.29 Obama's Outreach to Americans: Empty Rhetoric, Business As Usual 01.28 The Supreme Court's Partisanship 01.27 Freeze Frame: Flopsweat and Farce in the Hollow Halls of Power 01.25 Granny D on Campaign Finance Reform 01.25 S.C. Republican’s Plan: Starve the Poor So They’ll Stop “Breeding” 01.23 It's Time for Kucinich, Conyers, Feingold and Other `Progressives' in Congress to Take a Stand 01.21 Massachusetts' Message of Stupid 01.21 Terrorism Defined: Bill Clinton Lights Our Way to Truth 01.21 How Obama Lost His Way 01.21 Political Earthquake Rocks Massachusetts 01.20 Obama Cuts Deal that Will Reduce Social Security, Medicare and all Entitlements 01.20 Critical Mass: Dem Agenda Opens Right-Wing Doors 01.19 Outsourcing War: The Rise of Private Military Contractors High Crimes?
01.25 The Silence and the Shield: Depraved Indifference to the Atrocities of Power 01.19 Dark as a Dungeon: A Brutal System Stripped Bare Economics & Business Non/Mis/Malfeasance
02.07 AIG-Gate: The World's Greatest Insurance Heist 02.06 The Free Market Fetish 02.04 The Crisis is Not Over 02.03 States Face Worsening Recession with Health Care Funds on the Chopping Block 02.02 Rule by the Rich 01.29 The Battle of the Titans: JPMorgan vs. Goldman Sachs 01.27 State of the Union: Obama’s “Automatic IRA” Plan Could Make Bush’s Wildest Dreams Come True 01.26 Obama, Read Your Reagan on Capital Gains Taxation 01.24 Funding Public Health Care with a Publicly-Owned Bank: How Canada Did It 01.18 Thinking About Accelerants International
02.08 Aafia Siddiqui: Victimized by American Injustic 02.07 Annals of Liberation: Obama Surge Driving Thousands From Their Homes 02.05 Human Rights Abuses in Israel and Occupied Palestine 02.03 Child Slavery in Haiti 01.30 Blood is His Argument: Tony Blair's Gentle Cuddling at Iraq "Inquiry" 01.28 Obama Ignores Key Afghan Warning 01.27 Haiti's Earthquake: Natural or Engineered 01.26 Helping Haiti’s Elders 01.26 Focus on Israel: Harvesting Haitian Organs 01.25 Focus on Haiti: Washington's Militarized Takeover 01.22 The Lessons of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions 01.18 Disaster Capitalism Headed to Haiti We are a non-profit Internet-only newspaper publication founded in 1973. Your donation is essential to our survival.
|
| ||||||||||||