Electronic Voting & Hacking Democracy

Houston, There's Still a Problem:

After reading this article, I have become extremely worried for the experiment known as "Democracy." Electronic voting machines are counting a majority of votes this election cycle and we cannot trust a single count they output. The name of this article should be enough to scare the pants off anyone using electronic voting machines this Election. Isn't it bad enough that there are those among us who want to scare voters into not voting?

First, I need to make everyone aware that I am a network administrator for a retirement benefits firm. I fix/repair PCs on a daily basis, I setup printers, fix program installations and do firewall maintenance. Being a techie I know that these voting machines are not all that difficult to get right in a controlled test environment. With proper field testing, there is absolutely no reason we should still be having trouble with these machines. Yet they still aren't working properly.

Hacking Democracy:

Having watched the excellent documentary, Hacking Democracy (Video can be seen => HERE <= and is well worth the time), I also know Voting Machines can be hacked and results manipulated without a proper paper trail. So this leaves us with "dirty tricks" and "voting machine malfunction" as the two major woes of Election Day '08. I live in North Carolina and we still use paper ballots. For this I am grateful. I wonder, if they had known we were going to be a swing state this time around, do you think electronic voting machine legislation would have been brought up sooner?

Solution?:

What are we to do to ensure proper voting results?

Simple...eliminate all electronic voting machines and do regulated hand counts where a representative from each involved party certify counts of 1000 ballots. In this day of "must have it now" human thinking we need to re-think how quickly the results must be delivered. I know this may kill the ratings for CNN, Fox News & MSNBC to not get the results election night...but at least our peace of mind will be intact. Knowing who won the presidential election RIGHT NOW should not overshadow knowing who REALLY won. Yet, somehow, in this crazy technology age we live in, this is lost on many people. It's frustrating and should make everyone as angry as I am. Voting machines that have proof in the field that they do not function properly should be eliminated from the system, PERIOD.

Conclusion:

It appears that with less than one month to go, we are still having random voting issues across this great country of ours. This should sadden everyone that we are prisoners to an election process that has been hijacked by technology that DOES NOT WORK. Technology that has not been tested properly, not been battle readied in a live, working test environment and not been certified by an independent auditor, should NOT BE USED. We are prisoners to those that use money to wield power. We are prisoners to electronic voting that could shape an election not based on fact, but based on error. We are prisoners in an invisible cell of silence that will only be realized when it's too late. If you still don't believe me, then you haven't seen Hacking Democracy.

John McCain may have one right:
My fellow prisoners...