Posted on 08/29/2004 1:14:33 AM PDT by Former Military Chick
Here's a textbook example of how government operates:
A substantial portion of the population believes that our balloting system is flawed.
The government solution? Make the system more convoluted and less resistant to fraud.
In 2000, some Democrats in Florida had a tough time dealing with a simple punch card and ended up voting for a Reform Party candidate who many Republicans would admit had certain subtle fascist tendencies.
So, instead of simplifying the voting process and creating a verifiable ballot system to avoid a repeat of the ugliness, we're being pushed to embrace a problematic touch-screen system.
Electronic ballots have been rushed to the market to pacify calls for voter reform. It's a big mistake.
Electronic ballots can be miscounted as easily as paper ones. In fact, with computerized voting, it's only a matter of time before some smart-aleck teenage hacker puts a Libertarian in the White House so he can buy pot legally.
A preemptive strike at voter confidence in these systems has already been fired. Greenwood Village-based CIBER, for example, which produces many of these machines, has been outed as a hive of GOP supporters.
By donating to campaigns, these employees haven't done anything illegal, of course, but we all know Republicans can't be trusted.
Since plenty of people have comparable views about their Democratic counterparts, we all need to agree on a sensible solution.
For the first, and perhaps only time, I turn to Boulder for the answer.
Boulder has come up with a technological solution that is astonishingly trouble-free and, for the most part, resistant to fraud.
It's called a paper ballot.
"We don't believe touch-screen voting is secure," explains Boulder County Commissioner Paul Danish. "I am personally uncomfortable with it, as are a large number of our constituents. And it's pretty clear this stuff is not ready for prime time."
Danish, who was perfectly happy with the punch-card system previously used in Boulder, doesn't point to conspiracies for his reason, though he admits that concern exists in Boulder.
The commissioner points to widespread reports of computer problems with the new machines. Boulder is only doing away with punch ballots because of a congressional mandate to do so.
A review committee in Boulder, made up of representatives of the major and minor political parties and a slew of other experts, was convened.
They decided on a system called Hart Ballot Now, which scans each ballot to create a digital image.
Boulder County Clerk Linda Salas says that with this system, you can project the ballots on a screen to review.
"Our county did not want any kind of electronic voting system at the precinct level," says Salas. "They wanted to vote a ballot and drop it into the ballot box, because there is less ability to have failures in the system."
One of the only complaints about the new system is the slow result times.
Danish says one of the major objectives here is to maintain people's confidence in the system. Getting results in a reasonably timely manner is certainly part of that.
But he's not getting hung up on the media's need to report early. And anyway, nobody in the media would argue that it's better to be first than to be right (as if Boulder's results in the national races are ever in question).
"People certainly want results as they become available," says Danish. "It's kind of a tradition in this country. But the fact is, this isn't a race between counties to see who gets there first with the results. It's to see who gets there more accurately."
Danish is right. Keep it simple. Paper ballots work. And a slower result is still better than a 36-day recount.
David Harsanyi's column appears Monday and Thursday. Contact him at 303-820-1255 or dharsanyi@denverpost.com .
As if the news could not be more bleak on the ethics of the right to vote.
It was the media and the left that called for the electronic touch screen voting systems.
Thank you. I posted this in the event they have family/ friends living in the area and might be unaware of such events.
It is just a thought.
And, the beautiful thing about it is, if such a system were put in place nationwide, the conservatives/liberterians win big, because the democrats are far more prone to vote fraud than people who have morals and principles.
I live in Broward, too. Only idiots can't handle touch screens.
Or Alzheimer patients.
Excuse me, y'all had paper (punch card) ballots that were machine tabulated and the Dems tried to engineer a coup d'état.
Machine talleys (like Florida 2000) at least have the advantage of being unbiased.
As in, be careful what you wish for, you just might get it!!!
Now how do we make SURE that only legal voters are voting.
Motor Voter law is the main avenue to fraud.
Double registration.
Dead people on the registration lists.
It goes on and on.
No wonder the pundits talk about how low a voter turnout it is each election. The registration lists are bloated with dead, double, felon, and illegal intruder voters. Some serious purging of the registration lists needs to be done. Everyone thinks this is a joke. Look at it long and hard. It is not funny.
Would you pay a district or a school for "students" which don't exist>?? I think not. What is the difference?
Voter registration drives are the first step to absentee ballot fraud.
There is no cross-checking of polls with absentee ballot voting.
Yup.
It's also a lie that some voters were confused by the ballot and accidentally voted for Buchanan.
The left lies, period. Lies and lies and then lies some more.
Lee hired numerous petition circulators in Colorado, including MaCarthy, and paid them $3 for every Democratic and unaffiliated voter they registered.
Surprise surprise surprise
The far left will never agree on that.
Here in Arizona when the dems held the first ever primary including online voting, I opined to my lib friend that it seemed rife with fraud possibilities. She agreed but thought this was a good thing. (We no longer speak)
So we can expect Boulder to be one of the last Colorado counties reporting and, if it's close, be able to manufacture thousands of extra votes at the last minute for Kerry. How original!
Methinks the Democrats just don't know how to rig the new system so they are staying with the tried and true methods they already know how to rig.
I think the Dems are preparing a massive vote fraud the likes of which we have never seen before. It means that much to them.
Congress passed and Bush signed a Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in 2002 and part of it is about cleaning up the voting rolls nationwide. Problem is that the deadline for compliance is beyond 2004.
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