Will Your Vote Count in 2004?

[dangerrrdoll]

How will you even know? I voted in Berkeley this past Recall Election, with little credit card ballots and touch screens. It may have been easier than impregnating chads, but there is absolutely no accountability. We need touch screen voting AND accountability, and if enough people pressure congress, we can get it. Check out Verified Voting to find

Comments

mo' action

[neutron_x]

here
and
here.

Kevin Shelley, the guy here in California in charge of such things put measure into place for a voter verified paper trail, but it only requires new machines to do that by july 2005 and for all machines to have it by july 2006.... big fat hairy deal.

This is a big, big, big, big deal, in fact i'd say it's the most important issue we have going on right now.

-C.

[sonofkyuss]

I think the problem of wrongly distributed votes is more rooted in the electoral process.

[dangerrrdoll]

thats true, but there are also issues of software problems within the machines, and the point is that some people are trying to push the electronic voting without any kind of paper trail, or accountability for votes & "private" software.

[sonofkyuss]

good point, although the 2000 presidential election has proved to us that there's no sure way to account for paper votes either.

[dangerrrdoll]

i think the deal on verifiable voting is they want to make sure the software isnt undermined by anyone messing with it, and the paper trail is intended to keep record of voters' electronic ballots so, if "florida" ever happened again--not the chad part, but the people who said "i didnt vote for whoever" because they didn't read the ballot correctly--would be allowed to in essence "sign off" or confirm their vote. every step of the *counting* is always subject to corruption and error, but at least with this measure we would hold the system to some sort of accountability. it won't eliminate the problems but i think it will reduce them. hopefully the electoral college system is the next to go...