Vote early, and carefully
There are two questions hanging over Utah's first general election using the new Diebold Election Systems electronic touch-screen voting system.
One: Will people who want to steal the election be able to hack the system to their nefarious ends?
Two: Will people who only want to cast their true and legal ballots be able to understand the dang machines and vote for who they really wanted to vote for?
Salt Lake County Clerk Sherrie Swensen utters a curt rejection of the first concern. "You can't do it," she firmly told The Salt Lake Tribune Editorial Board when she called on us last week.
I don't think she's lying. But I still don't believe her. That's because I've read the second of two scathing articles in Rolling Stone by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the newest one called "Will The Next Election Be Hacked?" He writes:
Studies have demonstrated that hackers can easily rig the technology to fix an election - and across the country this year, faulty equipment and lax security have repeatedly undermined election primaries. In Tarrant County, Texas, electronic machines counted some ballots as many as six times, recording 100,000 more votes than were actually cast. In San Diego, poll workers took machines home for unsupervised "sleepovers" before the vote, leaving the equipment vulnerable to tampering. And in Ohio - where, as I recently reported in "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?" [RS 1002], dirty tricks may have cost John Kerry the presidency - a government report uncovered large and unexplained discrepancies in vote totals recorded by machines in Cuyahoga County.
As to the second question, Swensen is clearly worried. That's why she came up to The Tribune offices, with a real-life voting machine to demonstrate. And we see why she's worried.
It's like any other mechanical contrivance. Once you've driven it around the block a few times, you could do it in your sleep. If we're still using it 12 years from now, we may wonder what all the fuss was about. But, while the technology will not be totally foreign to anyone who's used an ATM machine or bought TRAX tickets, it is of necessity more complicated. It just requires you to make a lot more choices than "$20? $50? Overdraft?"
And the security measures that are installed -- including the paper-trail that should give Utahns a greater feeling of security than those voting in states without that back-up -- mean even more possibility of error. (The machines are also stored in a secure warehouse, not in poll workers' spare rooms.)
The key to success, for individual voters and for the state, will be that each voter pays attention and reads every instruction on the machine. Do that, carefully, and you should be OK. Fail to read the instructions, or get rattled because of the long line of impatient voters behind you, and all could be lost.
That's why everyone should take the same test drive we did. You can do it on-line, via the Utah Lieutenant Governor's Leave Your Print Web site. It's a pretty good hands-on, or mouse-on, demonstration of how you vote, how you change your vote, how you can write in a vote and how, when you are all finished deciding, you officially cast your ballot.
Of course, if you are Web savvy enough to do that on-line, you are not the target audience of folks who will be the most confounded by the new machines.
Better still, avoid the rush and vote early. All the information on how and where to do that is on Swensen's County Clerk Web site, and other county election officers around the state will be doing similar things.
We may need to be afraid. We do need to be ready.
-- George Pyle
One: Will people who want to steal the election be able to hack the system to their nefarious ends?
Two: Will people who only want to cast their true and legal ballots be able to understand the dang machines and vote for who they really wanted to vote for?
Salt Lake County Clerk Sherrie Swensen utters a curt rejection of the first concern. "You can't do it," she firmly told The Salt Lake Tribune Editorial Board when she called on us last week.
I don't think she's lying. But I still don't believe her. That's because I've read the second of two scathing articles in Rolling Stone by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the newest one called "Will The Next Election Be Hacked?" He writes:
Studies have demonstrated that hackers can easily rig the technology to fix an election - and across the country this year, faulty equipment and lax security have repeatedly undermined election primaries. In Tarrant County, Texas, electronic machines counted some ballots as many as six times, recording 100,000 more votes than were actually cast. In San Diego, poll workers took machines home for unsupervised "sleepovers" before the vote, leaving the equipment vulnerable to tampering. And in Ohio - where, as I recently reported in "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?" [RS 1002], dirty tricks may have cost John Kerry the presidency - a government report uncovered large and unexplained discrepancies in vote totals recorded by machines in Cuyahoga County.
As to the second question, Swensen is clearly worried. That's why she came up to The Tribune offices, with a real-life voting machine to demonstrate. And we see why she's worried.
It's like any other mechanical contrivance. Once you've driven it around the block a few times, you could do it in your sleep. If we're still using it 12 years from now, we may wonder what all the fuss was about. But, while the technology will not be totally foreign to anyone who's used an ATM machine or bought TRAX tickets, it is of necessity more complicated. It just requires you to make a lot more choices than "$20? $50? Overdraft?"
And the security measures that are installed -- including the paper-trail that should give Utahns a greater feeling of security than those voting in states without that back-up -- mean even more possibility of error. (The machines are also stored in a secure warehouse, not in poll workers' spare rooms.)
The key to success, for individual voters and for the state, will be that each voter pays attention and reads every instruction on the machine. Do that, carefully, and you should be OK. Fail to read the instructions, or get rattled because of the long line of impatient voters behind you, and all could be lost.
That's why everyone should take the same test drive we did. You can do it on-line, via the Utah Lieutenant Governor's Leave Your Print Web site. It's a pretty good hands-on, or mouse-on, demonstration of how you vote, how you change your vote, how you can write in a vote and how, when you are all finished deciding, you officially cast your ballot.
Of course, if you are Web savvy enough to do that on-line, you are not the target audience of folks who will be the most confounded by the new machines.
Better still, avoid the rush and vote early. All the information on how and where to do that is on Swensen's County Clerk Web site, and other county election officers around the state will be doing similar things.
We may need to be afraid. We do need to be ready.
-- George Pyle
5 Comments:
In the case of Matheson:
VOTE EARLY; VOTE OFTEN
Now, I see again in a story in today's Tribune that Matheson has no insides, no guts, no courage, no sense of reality.
Hastert, for God's sake, covered up for a pedophile! He not only should resign, he should be brought up on charges.
Matheson is a lunatic waiting to happen.
He is, as you earlier wrote, supposed to be of the party of opposition. Opposition to what? He's from the same idiotic cloth of Cannon and Bishop.
Let's not only get rid of Hastert, let's show this sheep in sheep's clothing the door.
Oh, and don't forget. Matheson's a Christian.
Executor mentions that Matheson is a christian. Geo. Bush claims to be a christian, but that hasn't stopped him from sending thousands to their deaths in an illegal war or using inhumane torture in violation of the Geneva Conventions.Of the three, Bush is doing far more danger to this country & its people.
This isn't exactly on subject, but I'm compelled to ask this question here, because you refuse to publish my letters to the editor. Why didn't the state's largest and, arguably, most widely read and, for some, most important newspaper, The Salt Lake Tribune, publish this morning, Saturday, this very important story that came out of Washington Friday afternoon?
Is anyone there reading the wires? Do you care about keeping your readers informad? I'd like to know your excuse for not giving your readers this important story.
-0-
By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - The latest casualty in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal was a key aide to presidential political strategist Karl Rove who once worked for the disgraced influence-peddler.
Susan Ralston stepped down Friday from her post as a special assistant to President Bush. A congressional report showed she had extensive contacts with Abramoff and had accepted tickets to sporting events and concerts from him.
Corruption and scandal are major issues going into the Nov. 7 elections. Ralston's resignation followed accusations that her contacts with Abramoff showed he was closer to Rove and Bush than the White House has been willing to acknowledge.
"She recognized that a protracted discussion of these matters would be a distraction to the White House and she's chosen to step down," deputy White House press secretary Dana Perino said.
A recent
House Government Reform Committee report listed hundreds of contacts that Abramoff's lobbying group had with the White House. Ralston had been administrative assistant to Abramoff and, after Bush took office, assumed the same post with Rove.
Ralston played an instrumental role in organizing and choosing presidential event sites.
Rep. Henry Waxman (news, bio, voting record) of California, the top Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, said he suspects the White House is trying to make Ralston a scapegoat.
"There is a lot that we don't yet know about the assistance that Ms. Ralston provided Mr. Abramoff from inside the White House, but there are also many unanswered questions about the assistance that higher-ranking White House officials appeared to provide Mr. Abramoff," Waxman said.
"The vast majority of lobbying contacts and meals with White House officials documented in the report were with White House officials other than Ms. Ralston," Waxman said.
Abramoff has pleaded guilty to fraud and is now cooperating with prosecutors in an influence-peddling investigation that has enveloped Capitol Hill even as lawmakers, facing elections, struggle with the fallout from a scandal involving former Rep. Mark Foley (news, bio, voting record)'s salacious messages to teenage male pages.
The latest Associated Press-Ipsos poll found that about half of likely voters consider corruption and scandal in Congress very or extremely important, and about two in three of those said they would vote for Democrats in House races.
The committee's report — based largely on Abramoff's billing records and e-mails — listed 485 lobbying contacts with White House officials over three years, including 10 with Rove. The report indicated that Abramoff and associates lobbied on behalf of more than 20 individuals for administration jobs but were successful only once.
According to e-mails, Abramoff and his team offered White House officials tickets to 19 sporting events and concerts. Ralston was the most frequent recipient. The report did not make clear whether Ralston or other White House officials paid for any of the tickets.
The federal gratuities statute makes it a crime to give anything of value to a public official for any official act performed by that official. Ethics rules prohibit federal employees from accepting gifts unless given because of personal friendships.
I am worried about the new machines, but also hopeful. Still, the political climate we have now, doesn't lead to serenity.
Post a Comment
<< Home