Long ago and
far away when I was teaching school I was asked to be a reporter for UPI on an
election eve. My task was to go to a nearby town, wait for the counters of the
ballots to finish their counting and then phone the results to UPI. It was a
system that worked.
I wrote not
long ago that when I was given the option this year to vote by computer or by
paper ballot I chose the paper ballot, a change of mind for a mini tecky like myself. I
had grown to trust computers more than frail human counters and this trust no
longer exists. We have just had too many abuses of this system to trust it.
Even when the problems have been found they have been largely ignored.
There is a book
out called Broken Ballots: Will Your Vote
Count? By Douglas Jones and Barbara Simons which goes over the history of
technology in elections. They talk about the voting machines that were used in
the 19th century, they were the same type of machine I caste my
first ballot in an election in my hometown in the 60’s. These machines had a
paper trail that could be verified unlike today’s computers.
Their findings
are that the risks of these technologies frequently outweigh their advantages.
They are far from alone in the conclusions that computer based voting was a bad
idea. This seems like a clear and well researched book that both parties need
to heed as they both have been victims of bad counting in this country.
And to think
when we moved to where we are I thought it was quaint when they handed me a
paper ballot. Now I demand it.
I also recommend seeing the documentary 'Hacking the Vote'. Chillingly demonstrates how easy it is to hack voting machines and change the tally by hundreds, thousands, or hundreds of thousands while leaving no trace.
ReplyDeleteThat's how elections will be stolen. You won't see conservative politicians talking about it though because they're looking for imagined forms of fraud that give them an excuse to launch authoritarian measures, creating more voting restrictions, registration restrictions, etc. to screen more voters out of the process. They don't want to address election fraud in any substantive way.
Polls show 64% of citizens believe there is serious voter fraud. But as the NYU School of Law
ReplyDeletedemonstrates, voter fraud is minimal. The 'fraud' involved is the masking of voter suppression policy in the false name of 'voter fraud'...blatant, underhanded..and effective.
Voter fraud is real, and getting rid of the fake voters does not suppress actual voters.
ReplyDeleteThe only people who oppose the efforts to get rid of the fraud are political groups that gain from fake votes.
Voter impersonation fraud is just the latest boogeyman, another fake crisis from a party that now specializes in manufactured controversies. From 'Climategate' to the Birth Certificate rubbish, the GOP has made an industry of this. They end up being wild goose chases of course, but serve their political purposes.
DeleteI'd love to see someone substantiate the claims with something, anything substantive. But so far it's all been bogus. Because you'd have to be nuts for starters -- each offense is worth 5+ years in PRISON and $10,000+, so you risk these things to gain... ONE incremental vote?! That's the big payoff here? Risking your future life for something that is astronomically unlikely to have any tangible result WHATSOEVER?! And I'm supposed to believe this is a "real" problem? Seriously?? Necessitating all sorts of expensive bureaucracy, added paperwork, and verification, staffing, etc. that the GOP has yet to say how they'll pay for? How stupid do they think we are?
The goal is to increase the bureaucracy, paperwork, time and expense in the whole voting process, to get the general public more disenchanted with it, particularly the poor and the elderly who don't have current driver's licenses. The next phase will be to add further restrictions to voting and registration, until finally, once it's gone far enough, you can do away with elections altogether and we'll have the President appointed by boards of corporations.
This sort of election fraud is not a bogeyman, but it is real. Consider the checks of voter rolls which have found as much as 3% illegal aliens on them.
DeleteYeah, 3% might seem low, and you can call it a "bogeyman"... until you realize that so many elections are decided on even less than this 3%.
And then there are efforts like those of ACORN to pack voter rolls with fake people.
The voter fraud problem is very real. The key is to solve it without inconveniencing real voters. The 'problems' you list about not having current drivers licenses, etc are problems to be solved, not reason to throw this needed reform out.
The only reason to be opposed to such needed reform is if you belong to a group that benefits from elections being stolen by bogus votes.
"Necessitating all sorts of expensive bureaucracy, added paperwork, and verification, staffing, etc. that the GOP has yet to say how they'll pay for?"
County clerks are paid handsomely, so what is the problem of them actually doing their job?
RE: "getting rid of the fake voters does not suppress actual voters." Voter fraud is against the law and the guilty face significant penalties. Probably why we don't see
ReplyDeletemuch of it. In the politically motivated overraction, with the imposition of requirements that affect the young, the elderly and the disadvantaged we see more legitimate votes thrown out.
I would be for similar penalties for those that would throw
out legitimate votes, basically disenfranchising the right of an American to have their vote counted. I would double the penalty in Texas where a concealed weapons permit is admissible as voter ID, but a university ID car is not....
The whole premise that Americans vote too much is just so phony anyway. It's hard enough to get an American to vote even ONCE. And the % participation by the bottom socioeconomic rung is worst of all, but that doesn't stop the GOP from trying to get it all the way down to zero.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's all just a smokescreen to distract from the real voter fraud issue, the easily hackable voting machines. THAT's where you'll find 'fake voters'. Thousands of them. They don't even have to come to the polls.
There's no easy answer on this. As we saw in Florida, there are problems with human counting, also. The counters tampered with the ballots (punching out the chads, which ended up littering the floor) and otherwise turned voteless ballots into votes for one guy or the other. At least a machine would do this type of counting without any bias.
ReplyDelete