Uh, Oh! Election Falterings

With the Presidential Election only two weeks away, my fear of reiterations of the 2000 election à la Florida debacle has escalated to new levels. Combine the mass move in many states to electronic voting machines without paper trails with the razor-thin margins each campaign is anticipating and we may have another election that must be decided by the Supreme Court. The situation is reaching a fever-like pitch with the media spewing out worst-case scenarios that have real plausibility, and the fiasco over the Diebold voting machine security lapses, law suits in-progress in several states over the wanted removal of Ralph Nader from the ballots, and moves in Florida to continue using the inaccurate no-vote felon lists underscore the possibility for true disaster.

Ironically, the state many wrongly view as backwards and cowboyish, my home state of Nevada, is the only state to have implemented a proper electronic voting system statewide. We use touch-screen voting machines (DREs) from Sequoia, but also print a paper receipt to ensure a paper trail and no lost votes. After the election, a sampling of machines will be taken and the paper and electronic vote tallies compared to ensure no problems occurred that would require counting all paper receipts. Secretary of State Dean Heller spearheaded this initiative, the first in the country, and can claim success after the system’s first use in the September primaries. (On top of his great leadership, he is my personal hero for his quote at a Bush rally here in Reno, where he joked that Senator Kerry has been caught in more positions than a Nevada prostitute!)

I can only hope that our elections do not degenerate into court battles. That would be very embarrassing for our status as the eminent democracy republic.

[update] Minor grammatical errors fixed.