I hassled Charlie Crist when he was the Republican candidate for Governor of Florida. But now that he sits in the governor's chair, I must confess that he has done the right thing: He wants to replace the compu-vote with paper ballots.
YES!
Of course, I'm still suspicious. In fact, my first response was to say what Anthony Quinn says toward the end of Lawrence of Arabia (after Omar Sharif offers an unexpected apology): "This is a new trick!"
Indeed, even with the computers banished from the booths, much room for chicanery remains. What about the "mother machines," as Mrs. Kerry once put it -- that is, the machines which tabulate the optical scan ballots? A recount should -- theoretically -- display any differences between the paper vote and the tabulated vote, but a recount is triggered only when the election is extremely close. Even if one party pays for a recount, the system can be gamed, as we learned in Ohio.
The Ohio debacle (and the investigations of Greg Palast) have also taught us that optical scan ballots can be spoiled in Democratic-leaning districts. Scroll down for a chart showing the suspicious spoilage pattern in Cayuhoga County back in '04. Turning a Democratic ballot into an overvote is a simple matter: One need only thrust a needle through the right hole in a neat stack of ten-or-twenty ballots.
Still, when all is said and done, Crist's decision is great news. Florida's vote will be cleaner. Not clean enough; the fight continues. But we must applaud every positive development.
1 comment:
Of course interferrence with the counting process and deliberate degradation of scanning documents has been a problem since the 1970s. (See Votescam - linked). But it is a much messier proposition, requires direct participation from much greater numbers, and is more easily detected. Moving away from pure electronic voting is definitely progress, no matter which way you cut it.
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