Wake Up

After the debacle that was the 2000 election, several states have been pushed by the Help America Vote Act into looking at electronic voting systems to replace their older voting machines. While it’s a nice concept in theory, there are problems with actually implementing such a system.

Earlier this year, there were serious questions raised about the security of many of the new electronic voting machines, which are apparently quite vulnerable to manipulation from both outside and inside the system. The fact that the vendors of this technology have attempted to keep their code and methods secret has only made the situation worse, as all they can seem to do is suggest that people should trust them.

Now there are also questions about the influence that Bush and the Republicans may have with the leading vendors who build the e-vote systems, and the possible ability of those companies to affect the outcome of elections by miscounting votes.

This is obviously a matter that is going to need further study, and there is going to need to be a lot more transparency on the part of the vendors if they want the public to trust that their votes are being counted fairly.

UPDATE: This article at Ars Technica brings up an important point: Why hasn’t the mainstream press given more coverage to this issue?