Richard WarnickDodging the E-voting Bullet
The main storyline of the Democrats gaining majorities in the House and Senate seems to have caused the traditional media to conclude that e-voting is not as big a threat to democracy as many people have claimed. For a more realistic view, check out this article in Computer World by Brad Friedman of BradBlog fame.
The nation dodged a significant bullet when George Allen conceded in his Virginia Senate race Thursday. Had he not chosen to do so, America would have found itself smack-dab in the middle of another Florida 2000 crisis with the balance of Congress depending on voting machines that offer absolutely no way to recount ballots to achieve any form of accuracy or clarity in the race. The battle of the forensic computer scientists trying to figure out what happened would have been another long national nightmare.
But that didn’t happen, so everything’s cool. Right?
And, as Brad notes, this election isn’t actually over yet. As many as ten House races remain undecided. There are 18,000 e-votes that have gone missing in Florida’s Sarasota County. Victoria Wulsin currently trails Rep. Jean Schmidt by less than half a percentage point in their Ohio 2nd Congressional District race, where the recount will rely on hackable Diebold AccuVote TSx touch-screen machines and unreliable ES&S optical scan machines.
It’s worth reading the whole article.
UPDATE: Christine Jennings, the Democratic candidate in the Florida 13th Congressional District race, may contest the election results. The problem is those 18,000 missing votes in Sarasota County.
November 12th, 2006 at 3:59 pm
With any luck, the Diebold hackers in Ohio will hang Schmidt out to dry.