A Stitch in Haste

Will chaos be declared the winner on Election Day?

In one week, more than 80 million Americans will go to the polls, and a record number of them — 90% — will either cast their vote on a computer or have it tabulated that way. When that many people collide with that many high-tech devices, there are going to be problems. Some will be machine malfunctions. Some could come from sabotage by poll workers or voters themselves. But in a venture this large, trouble is most likely to come from just plain human error, a fact often overlooked in an environment as charged and conspiratorial as America is in today.

This is not new news. We have seen it coming ever since Florida 2000 and the resulting Help America Vote Act.

[A]t least 27 states have built in a backup that requires electronic voting machines to provide an attached voter-verified paper trail — a running ticker that allows voters to see on paper that their votes are recorded as cast.

"At least" 27 states? How could that be anything less than "all electronic voting machines"? Who could possibly have sat down with the task of designing an electronic voting machine and not come up with the requirement that it produce a receipt, just like an ATM? I find this situation totally dumbfounding.

George Will has a slightly different statistic:

[M]ost touch-screen machines — including those that the New York Times reports will be used in about half of the 45 districts with the most closely contested House races — produce no paper that can be consulted for verification of the results if a recount is required.

Again, who could possibly have designed these machines in other other way than by saying, "These voting machines will be a lot like ATMs, so let's start with the basic design and functionality of an ATM and proceed from there..."?

One last hasty stitch: The Help America Vote Act, which mandated modern voting technologies, also gave $3.8 billion of taxpayer funds to states to help underwrite this mess. Why exactly should local governments, and local taxpayers, not pay for their own voting machines? This is the federal version of the Politics of the the Warm Fuzzy Feeling: Federal politicians and bureaucrats did something, just in case state and local politicians and bureaucrats didn't. Because federal politicians and bureaucrats are just so much better and wiser than state and local local politicians and bureaucrats, right?

The results speak for tabulate themselves — just without a paper trail.

More laughs thoughts from Jason Fox.