June 26, 2003
Potential Washington Vote Fraud
Washington State is attempting to ram through a voting bill that allows electronic voting machines with no paper trail. This is bad, bad, bad. Tomorrow is the last day for public comment on this matter. Here is an informational article on the matter. Here is the page that has info on how to comment. This is what I emailed to them:You must, must, must include a voter verifiable paper trail in any electronic voting system. Democracy is invalid if the citizens don't trust the democratic process. Voting is how citizens voice their power. Citizens cannot trust democracy if they can't verify their power. Asking citizens to rely on government to trust government-appointed analysts is circular thinking, and is not sufficient; the point is to allow the CITIZENS to verify the process.Update: - Nice, they wrote me back and told me my comments would be included as part of the public record for this issue. I'm not sure exactly what that means, but at least it increases the likelihood that it would actually be read when it matters...You must protect against any appearance of impropriety. A black box voting process where we cannot see the workings has the appearance of impropriety. Do not support any effort that does not allow a voter-verifiable paper trail and does not allow for random sampling to check results.