Faith-based voting: Letting right-wing corporations count your vote

Sure, all the major companies that are now installing electronic voting machines all over the country are Republican-owned, but why should liberals worry? Heck, if it was the other way around, I'm sure Rush Limbaugh wouldn't utter a peep in protest. Just because there's no way to verify that your vote was counted the way you cast it, c'mon -- have you no faith? That's right, this is faith-based voting!

Now the "our vote should count" nazis are all up in arms about the latest scandals, where computer "scientists" (who believes in science anymore?) say that the voting systems are easily hackable, even from the voting terminals themselves! "It's the most severe security flaw ever discovered in a voting system," said Michael I. Shamos, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, about the most recent discoveries ofvulnerabilitiess, reported in the NY Times and elsewhere. "This is the barn door being wide open, while people were arguing over the lock on the front door," said Douglas W. Jones, a professor of computer science at the University of Iowa. Hmmm, barn door, eh? Maybe we should take a closer look...

Turns out, these are just the latest scandals surrounding the new electronic voting machine industry. There have been problems from the beginning. The Election Assistance Commission (EAC) was put in place by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) to look into any problems. When confronted with the obvious shortcomings of these machines, however, they say they "don't do" voting systems certification, that part is not their job. I guess they're just there to watch our vote get swallowed into the big electronic beast, and then say, "yup, it works!" Nice job -- thanks guys.

Naturally the corporate media has been ignoring the story up until just recently. Hey, who cares about the validity of elections anyway? What about the mountains of evidence showing the last few elections were highly questionable? Old news, Americans aren't interested in that stuff! Too technical! There are celebrity stories to cover!

When the Leon County, Florida elections supervisor Ion Sancho found flaws in their Diebold machines, the company tried to get him fired by refusing to do business with him. Naturally, the state backed Sancho, right? Uh, no. Well, surely all the other states are learning from these revelations of insecure voting systems, right? Well, a few are. But most seem to think the way to deal with these problems is to dig a hole in the sand and promptly place their heads in them.

I'm no Luddite. I like technology. Heck, how could I be blogging my humble little opinions without it? But when it comes to voting, I like the old-fashioned way. Back in the old days, votes were hand counted, while observers watched. It was pretty much impossible to hack the vote, andefinitelyly impossible to do it on a massive scale. Now, all it requires is a little computer knowledge, some hacking skills, and a big lack of conscience.

Are we really in so much of a hurry to find out who won that we'll let the cheater win, just to get the news quicker? I say, let's take our time and do it right.

For more information on this all-important issue, check out: http://www.votetrustusa.org, http://www.democracyinaction.org, http://www.blackboxvoting.org, http://verifiedvotingfoundation.org