Tuesday, July 11, 2006

But what if they all vote?

Thinking about elections, how close some of them have been in recent years. Thinking about Florida in 2000. Thinking about Ohio in 2004. In 2005 the statewide race for Attorney General in Virginia was decided by only 323 votes.

Thinking about those spooky Diebold voting machines and how crazy it is to rely on such contraptions. A trusted friend of mine is a programmer in an experimental department of a huge Internet player. He understands what’s inside electronic voting machines; he says we should never trust a system that leaves no paper trail. That’s good enough for me.

All that brought to mind the ‘toon above that I drew six years ago. Now I’m thinking about 2006 and what’s at stake. Can we trust the robot vote-counters?

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