A Call For Dumping Diebold Machines — From A Republican
Usually it's Dems who say that electronic voting machines are dangerous for our elections. But now a prominent Republican Governor has just come out and not only said exactly the same thing, but has also called for scrapping the $100 million voting machine system he oversees. According to the Washington Post Gov. Robert Erlich has called for dumping the state's Diebold voting machines in the wake of widespread malfunctions in last week's primaries — and it's the state Dems who oppose him on it. More after the jump.
Ehrlich's argument comes not from the paranoia sometimes seen on the left about the machines being rigged to steal votes, but instead is based in a much simpler notion: they don't work reliably. From the Post:
"I'm not sure we can afford another experiment," Ehrlich said after the Board of Public Works hearing. "I want to play it safe."
Ehrlich's goals are ambitious, but also difficult. His minimal objective is to replace the electronic poll books used for checking in voters with paper logs, but he is also interested in dumping the state's Diebold machines altogether and moving back to paper ballots.
Either move would have to involve calling a special session of the Legislature, and as of yet the state's Democratic leaders at the state and local level are opposed to the idea. A spokeswoman for the Montgomery Board of Elections said "there isn't much time" to replace the machines and re-educate voters, and the Democratic leaders in both houses of the legislature cite the massive amounts of money — estimated at $106 million — already put into the system.
So if they can be made to work reliably, they're OK? Never mind the hackability factor?
As far as functionality goes, in Chicago, Sequoia optical scan machines were first used in the March primaries and it wasn't pretty. Poll workers had no clue how to deal with malfunctions and glitches and some of the cartridges containing the votes were mishandled. Touch screen voting was available on a limited basis. The jury's still out on how they performed.
I know there were chad problems in Florida in 2000, but wouldn't better maintenance on the punch card apparatus - sharper styli, chad clearing from the holes and ballot verification have been a cheaper and simpler solution? Electronic voting with hackable machines is the biggest threat to democracy because we'll never know which bits were flipped. Forget the paper trail. How could paper ATM-style receipts be reliably used to verify an election?
September 21, 2006 3:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
I wonder how much of this is an attempt to get Linda Lamone, Administrator, Maryland State Board of Elections.
She's an idiot, who has relentlessly opposed any paper trail, an Erhlich wants to get rid of her and replace her with a Republithug.
-- It could be worse. I could still be living in Texas
September 21, 2006 3:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
How about a working link to the WaPo article Eric?
September 21, 2006 5:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Maybe they should go back to those little punch-card machines? They seemed to work perfectly for decades until several thousand people in Florida quite suddenly became overwhelmed by the mental difficulty and the challenge in dexterity to use them properly.
Perhaps if States brought back those tried and true machines, we could hold "Hole-Punching" workshops in Florida several weeks before elections for those challenged voters.
September 21, 2006 7:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Or perhaps even clean out the machines after each election. The Florida machines that had the problems had not been cleaned put of old chad build up for over a decade. No amount of "Hole-Punching" workshops is going to help get the hole punched if the hole is full. It's so elementary that I'm sure it's beyond the comprehension of any Republican (no absolutes, no secret encoded messages from some god, no something-for-nothing get-rich-quick pillage-n-loot tax swindle, how could a Republican mind even fathom something so elementary??).
September 22, 2006 11:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
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