Voting: A Touchy Subject - Provo Utah, Daily Herald

Voting: A Touchy Subject

Sunday, June 11, 2006
Voting: A Touchy Subject | Print |
ALAN CHOATE

The Diebold AccuVote TSx stands about 4 feet tall and weighs about 26 pounds. Its 15-inch screen is touch-sensitive at 35 million points and can display ballots in at least nine languages.

Voting is as easy as touching the screen with your finger. The programming won't let you invalidate your vote by choosing more than one candidate per race, and you'll be reminded of any races you skipped on your way through the ballot. If the power goes out, the machine can run on batteries for as long as four hours.

If all goes well, at the end of the day there's no need to count punchcards or paper ballots -- officials just plug memory cards into a central server, although there is a paper record of each vote. The hope is that both voting and tabulating the results will be faster, easier and more transparent for everyone involved.

The technology is no longer remarkable to anyone who's used an ATM, played video poker or checked out using a self-service lane at the supermarket.

But those everyday devices have everyday uses: getting cash, frittering it away, and buying milk. The AccuVote TSx records your vote -- your sacred American vote. For Congress. For county commission. To make or break a tax increase.

And that, perhaps, coupled with the fact that most Utah voters will use the machines for the first time this month, is why some critics are shouting that nothing less than the end of representative democracy is at hand.

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is some evil outsider," Jones said. "Historically, the biggest problem with the elections in the United States has been corrupt political officials who are part of a political machine."

Some how the fox always seems to be in-charge of the hen house.

As William Marcie Tweed said "who votes is means nothing, who counts the votes means everything." I have also seen this attributed to J. Stalin.

Over in Ohio The secretary of state is running in the election, is supervising the election, and received a $30,000 contribution from Diebold the maker of the machines. The way to fix an election it seems would be to corrupt the company representatives assisting in the elections.