BBV: Why does NYT's KATHERINE Q. SEELYE hate democracy? [View All]

He Pushed the Hot Button of Touch-Screen Voting
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
California's secretary of state is taking the arcane matter of voting machines and turning it into a hobbyhorse that he could ride to the governor's office.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/15/politics/15vote.html

Man, where to start? Seelye seems to be taking the hobbyhorse of fascism and is intent on riding America off a cliff. Since when is counting every vote "arcane"?

I sent the SoS an email telling him how worried I was about this issue, and when he started talking about it I was under the impression that he was listening to citizens' concerns. I'm glad that Seelye has set me straight. It's just political opporutnism.

I wish the NYT would put a reporter who cares about democracy on this story.

Here's some funny parts of the article:

Local officials say that despite demonstrations from computer experts that hackers can break into the machines, there is no evidence that anyone has done so. Moreover, voters may expect an actual, individual receipt after they vote; what happens instead is that a paper record, visible to the voter, is created in the machine. Officials have also expressed concern about paper jams.

This is her summary of the state of the debate? Lord.

Mr. Shelley's insistence on paper trails has prompted officials in four California counties to sue him. The clash is being repeated in other states and courtrooms and has even roiled the venerable League of Women Voters, where advocates of paper trails tried to overthrow the league's establishment, which has been against them. They settled yesterday on a compromise resolution to support "secure, accurate, recountable and accessible" systems, all code words for paper trails.

Seelye should have mentioned that the LOWV's support of the wrong side of this debate just roiled members into rejecting that support this past weekend. Now the list of supporters of unauditable TS voting is down to the venerable disability rights group that took a $1 mil payoff to roil courtrooms for Diebold.

Conny B. McCormack, the respected registrar of Los Angeles County, the biggest voting jurisdiction in the country, has emerged as one of Mr. Shelley's chief critics. Ms. McCormack said that Mr. Shelley had confounded local officials by handing down directives that require a technology that does not yet exist. Rather than inspire voter confidence, she said, Mr. Shelley has undermined it."

Many DU'ers following this debate might challenge "respected" as the adjectived decribing McCormack.


(Manufacturers have said that if the technology were required, they could supply it, but not in time for the November elections.)

"He put out a report on April 20 saying that touch screens were 100 percent accurate," Ms. McCormack said. "And then two days later he decertified them." She said such actions had "destabilized the entire election process in California and potentially nationwide."

Right.