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By Applelinks Senior Editor John H. Farr
This is one of those stories that is very difficult for most people, not to mention quick-and-dirty Web site writers, to get a handle on. But we consider it to be of the utmost importance and feel the time is ripe for speaking out on the issue. Here's just one fact for starters: the software used by the Diebold touch-screen electronic voting machines rapidly being installed in many states has specifically been designed to be compatible with WinCE 3.0, making it at least theoretically possible to manipulate the program from a remote location using a PDA.
This article by Andrew Gumbel for the British newspaper site The Independent is as good a place to start as any, and we guarantee that reading the full story will leave you more than a little upset. Given the shoddy inspections and lack of official certifications of many of the machines used in the last presidential election in Georgia, for example, the voting may have been illegal. In fact, there are enough juicy bits in the Georgia tale alone to make conspiracy theorists out of the most mild-mannered citizens. Take the WinCE 3.0 compatibility, for example: emails have been discovered betweeen Diebold company executives and others indicating an attempt to conceal this fact from independent inspectors. They didn't want anyone to know, obviously. Considering that someone could literally cruise by a polling place, execute a few commands on a handheld computer, and change the results recorded on the voting machines, we're surprised.
Even if you have enough faith to doubt that anyone would ever be so unscrupulous, you have to admit that basing any kind of vote-recording software on any kind of Windows system is asking for trouble in the first place. But here's the Big One: wih electronic voting, there are no hard copy ballots to go back to if anyone raises a fuss. Recounts are impossible! Let's run that by again: with electronic voting, there can be no recounts. If fraud was committed, there's no way to prove it.
This isn't right, folks. It just isn't right.
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