Letter to the Editor, Intelligencer, February
28, 2008
Voting must be transparent
To the Editor:
During the Bucks County commissioners meeting of Feb. 20, the issue of voting integrity was hotly debated with little positive outcome. The
commissioners agreed to hold a voting integrity-specific meeting, which will be open to the public and will allow members
of the Coalition for Voting Integrity to present their best case as to why Commissioners Jim Cawley and Charley Martin should
reconsider their present position on retaining existing computer-based voting machines.
This follow-on meeting is all well and good; however, I fear that it
will fail for the very reasons that it needs to be held. They (the commissioners) don't get it, and they don't get it because
they lack an understanding of the fundamental principles associated with voting in this American democracy.
Transparency of the voting process is at the heart of voting integrity.
Without beginning-to-end transparency of the process, the vote can never be considered secure or verifiable. Computers, because
of their esoteric nature, cannot now nor can they ever pass the transparency standard. If the voting mechanism is paper ballots,
then transparency is preserved for average voters because they can read the ballots and they can count. Thus, any voter can
audit the vote.
However, when we voters cast our votes into touch-screen voting machines,
the status and whereabouts of our votes are unknown and unknowable except to those auditors who have sufficient technical
expertise to perform a forensics computer check. Typically, those experts would be in the employ of the people who manufactured
the machines. We can all see how that would be a major conflict of interest.
In defense of the commissioners, they, like so many other officials all
across America, have been painted into a corner by the ill-thought-out Help America Vote Act.
Those folks who described HAVA, and those who voted for its acceptance, also need some remedial training in American democratic
fundamentals. It is really all so simple when you keep the principle of transparency in sight. When you understand transparency,
voting into a computer is unthinkable.
James Strait
Erwinna
http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/320-02282008-1495234.html
