Kenneth Blackwell Brings To Mind An All-But-Forgotten 70’s Sci Fi Classic

by tristero

[Update 2: The Poor Man Institute is underwhelmed by the RFKJr article (in particular the accuracy of exit polls) and recc’ds this pdf instead.]

[Update: Kennedy’s article is now online. Read it. Rolling Stone also has links to additional documentation. Kennedy’s article makes serious charges in a deeply serious fashion. The ad hominem attacks from the rightwing trackbacks this post has received just ain’t gonna cut it. The specifics have to be engaged.]

It’s not online yet but Robert Kennedy, Jr. has a blistering article in the current Rolling Stone on what happened in Ohio in 2004. Plain and simple, the Republicans stole the presidential election and Kenneth Blackwell, who seems to be up to his eyeballs in the shenanigans, is quite an accomplished liar. (Confession: I have not been following this issue closely – no particular reason other than it’s impossible to follow everything. The article may be old news for some of you, but it does collect a lot of creepy stuff in one place.)

The real question, of course, is what will be done about it and NO! I refuse to give into fashionable cyncism! So yes, dear friends, I really do believe the country will focus like a laserbeam on our corrupt election practices. I have no doubt the moment there’s a squeaker and the Republicans lose a big one by 2% or less, the MSM will ensure that election reform becomes the only subject worth talking about, even more than the civil rights of 1 day-old fertilized eggs! (Unless there’s a missing young white woman that week, but that goes without saying.)

In an editorial, Rolling Stone calls for an investigation of Diebold. Well, yes. And yes to a paper record of all ballots. And yes to open source software for the machines. But actually, I always thought that Canada’s voting technology, as described by Robert Cringely made the most sense:

Forget touch screens and electronic voting. In Canadian Federal elections, two barely-paid representatives of each party, known as “scrutineers,” are present all day at the voting place. If there are more political parties, there are more scrutineers. To vote, you write an “X” with a pencil in a one centimeter circle beside the candidate’s name, fold the ballot up and stuff it into a box. Later, the scrutineers AND ANY VOTER WHO WANTS TO WATCH all sit at a table for about half an hour and count every ballot, keeping a tally for each candidate. If the counts agree at the end of the process, the results are phoned-in and everyone goes home. If they don’t, you do it again. Fairness is achieved by balanced self-interest, not by technology. The population of Canada is about the same as California, so the elections are of comparable scale. In the last Canadian Federal election the entire vote was counted in four hours. Why does it take us 30 days or more?

The 2002-2003 budget for Elections Canada is just over $57 million U.S. dollars, or $1.81 per Canadian citizen. It is extremely hard to get an equivalent per-citizen figure for U.S. elections, but trust me, it is a LOT higher. This week [December 11, 2003], San Francisco held a runoff mayoral election that cost $2.5 million, or $3.27 per citizen of the city. And this was for just one election, not a whole year of them.

We are spending $3.9 billion or $10 per citizen for new voting machines. Canada just prints ballots.

No voting system is perfect. Elections have been stolen and voters disenfranchised with paper ballots, too. But our approach of throwing technology at a problem with a result that election reliability is not improved, that it may well be compromised in new and even scarier ways, and that this all costs billions that could be put to better use makes no sense at all.

On second thought, never mind. Looks like Canada’s going Diebold as well:

A 2000 year-end report from Global Election Systems (now owned by US company Diebold and called Diebold Election Systems) states “Global reports add-on sales of 60 AccuVote systems to the City of Ottawa and 70 to the City of Hamilton as well as first-time sales of 60 AccuVote-TS systems to the City of Barrie”.

Oh, well. There’s no reason to think Diebold would purposely rig their own machines. That’s silly. Let’s go to the movies!

There’s a sci-fi flick from the seventies called Logan’s Run starring Michael York. In the 23rd Century, you’re not allowed to live past 30, but you enter Carousel (misspelled on the site, nobody’s purrfect) and try to fly to the top where, if you make it there, your body will be Renewed. People root for their pals to go the distance, but their friends fail and die. Strange…no one can actually remember anyone ever succeeding in getting Renewed. Very odd. But y’never know. Next time someone really could beat Carousel and live!

Pass the popcorn, friends.