Onko Bush voittanut 2004 vaalit jo nyt?

NY Timesin (vaatii rekisteröimisen) David Pogue miettii mikä vaikutus vaaleihin on sillä, että äänestyksessä käytetään Dieboldin äänestystietokoneita.

So what's wrong with that?

Wrong Thing 1: Wally O'Dell, the company's chief executive, is a Republican fundraiser. He writes letters to wealthy Bush contributors vowing to "deliver" his state's electoral votes to the Bush campaign. He hosts campaign meetings at his house. He's also a member of Bush's "Rangers and Pioneers" club (each member of whom must contribute at least $100,000 to the 2004 re-election campaign).

No matter what your politics, you can't deny that there's a strong whiff of conflict of interest here.

Pogue käy läpi muitakin ongelmia Dieboldin laitteista, mm. niiden ohjelmiston huonon laadun, minkäänlaista "paperi jälkeä" ei ole jne.

Wrong Thing 4: Diebold points out that the software is inspected and tested by election officials before it's certified. There's only one problem: Diebold engineers can slip in and make changes to the software even AFTER it's been certified.

Worse, they do exactly that. A Wired article quoted a Diebold engineer as saying that his team made no fewer than three rounds of software changes to the machines in Georgia's 2002 election for governor--after the machines had been certified but before the election began. (That election "ended in a major upset that defied all polls and put a Republican in the governor's seat for the first time in more than 130 years.")

Elektonisessa äänestämisessä on monia ongelmia, mm. läpinäkyvyys. Nyt äänet voidaan aina laskea käsin uudestaan. Mutta entäpä jos tiedot ovat vain tietoneiden muistissa? Kuinka voidaan luottaa, että kaikki tieto on mukana? Tai, että tietoa ei ole kukaan muuttanut?

New Jersey:n kongressiedustaja Rush D.Holt, joka ajaa läpinäkyvyyttä elektroniseen äänestykseen toteaakin."Someone said to me the other day, 'We've had these electronic voting machines for several years now, and we've never had a problem.' And I said, 'How do you know?'")