Comments | avacon: Anti-FUD and the general need for audits of elections

avacon

Anti-FUD and the general need for audits of elections

Nov 12, 2004 12:18

The NY Times (registraction required) has an article today on blogs doing amateur election fraud analysis and on examples of where they were recently wrong:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/12/politics/12theory.html?hp&ex=1100322000&en=bef1453564cd6e4e&ei=5094&partner=homepage

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2004/11/11/politics/ ( Read more... )

Comments 4

76trombones November 12 2004, 09:29:40 UTC

to make sure that the electronic count and the paper counts

I think you a verb. :)

(Feel free to delete this comment when/if it's no longer relevant.)

avacon November 12 2004, 10:47:52 UTC

I the verb. :)
Thanks.

ocschwar November 12 2004, 15:43:32 UTC

Care to tell us how questioning the honesty and good character of the election workers of our United States will restore voter confidence, comrade?

thomb November 12 2004, 16:14:15 UTC

A very interesting part of the article was where they reported that election officials are a little miffed at having their integrity questioned.

I certainly understand why an honest person would be miffed, but this is exactly why we have things like audits and records. My hope is that the officials will be sufficiently miffed to insist on having technology and procedures by which they can prove that they are being fair, rather than just expecting us to take their word for it.

Any elementary accounting textbook makes this point very well. One of the most important roles of good accounting procedures is to display the honesty of the honest people, so that their integrity is above suspicion.

So if honest officials are miffed, I hope they will take their miffitude and turn it into a demand for more transparent voting process.