technology and democracy

The Washington Post has an interesting special report on the technology used for new electronic voting machines, "E-Voting: Promise or Peril?""

Fifty million Americans will use touch-screen voting systems to elect the next president this November. It is part of a nationwide bid to eliminate voting error and fraud, but an ever-growing group of critics claims that electronic voting machines will create more abuse and uncertainty than before.

Given the political firestorm over what happened in Florida in the 2000 presidential election, I predict that we'll unfortunately see something similar this November. The precedent has been set that our elections are not beyond reproach. The BBC reports that European observers have been asked to monitor our elections, a process that is not uncommon on the global scene...except we're usually the ones doing the observing.

Young Americans are already less inclined to vote than those in an older demographic. Wouldn't it be sad if their first adult experience of national elections were to be tainted with uncertainty and skepticism over the validity of the whole process to begin with? I am surprised and disappointed that in the four years since the 2000 presidential elections, we have not made a bigger priority out of establishing a standard, credible process that we can all believe in. Such a process should be as transparent as possible (we should all see and understand how it works, including its security features) and it should also be auditable, with a paper trail (we should all be confident someone hasn't hacked the machine and changed the data while no one was looking).

Update: Former President Jimmy Carter has an opinion piece today on this topic:

After the debacle in Florida four years ago, former president Gerald Ford and I were asked to lead a blue-ribbon commission to recommend changes in the American electoral process. After months of concerted effort by a dedicated and bipartisan group of experts, we presented unanimous recommendations to the president and Congress. The government responded with the Help America Vote Act of October 2002. Unfortunately, however, many of the act's key provisions have not been implemented because of inadequate funding or political disputes.