The federal advisory panel created by Congress to advise the Election Assistance Commission has rejected a proposal that "would have required electronic machines used by millions of voters to produce a paper record or other independent means of checking election results."
The failed resolution, proposed by Ronald Rivest, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology computer scientist and panel member, closely mirrored a report released last week warning that paperless electronic voting machines are vulnerable to errors and fraud and cannot be made secure.
Some panel members who voted against the proposal said they support paper records but don't think the risk of widespread voting machine meltdowns is great enough to rush the requirement into place and overwhelm state election boards.
"They should be longer-range goals," said Britain Williams of the National Association of Election Directors. "You are talking about basically a reinstallation of the entire voting system hardware."
BaB's Jill (who gets the hat tip), retorts: "And....what's your point, Mr. Williams? The 'entire voting system hardware', as you call it, doesn't work, and doesn't accurately count the votes. As an American, I don't give a shit about overwhelming state election boards. I have a right for my vote to be counted the way I cast it which outweighs the right of state election boards to have an easy time of it."
Seconded. And I'm not sure how two years isn't enough for each individual election director to sort out his or her piece of this admittedly large puzzle. At some point, someone's just going to have to make a damn decision to get this done once and for all so we can all trust in the integrity of our elections again. It's always going to be a pain in the ass, and delaying it isn't going to lessen the posterior agony. Enough excuses. Just get it done.
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