Please Be Confident in Electronic Voting
The Sacramento Bee has an opinion piece today by Paul DiGregorio, illustrious chair of the US Election Assistance Corporation, which is not on the paper’s website. The thrust of the story is that rumors of defects in the electronic voting equipment will discourage voters from participating in the elections.
This stance is interesting in two respects. First, he implies that people should be confident in the same voting machines, which have performed so poorly — except, perhaps in pushing elections in favor of Republicans. Second, the Republicans have been going out of their way to discourage participation.
My sense of irony is overwhelmed.
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They stuff paper ballot boxes too. I think the Australian system has proven its worth, in terms of a bourgeois democracy. Voting is compulsory…I mean, you’re fined $50 if you fail to vote. So, all the questions about what would change, if the lazier, more cynical part of the body politic voted are cast aside. We still get the social conservatives in the saddle of the federal government. Ahem……Also, I don’t think that ballot boxes get tampered with. No evidence anyway…and we don’t have to worry about the hacker type follies you lot have in the USA with electronic (Diebold) voting.