JaBbA's Hut

A study released last week by the Brennan Center Task Force on Voting System Security concluded that the nation's most commonly purchased voting machines are vulnerable to software attacks. From c|net:

Rep. Rush Holt, a New Jersey Democrat who has introduced legislation to upgrade security for electronic voting machines, arranged to attend a news conference on Capitol Hill on Tuesday where the report was to be released.

Holt's bill has 192 cosponsors, most of them fellow Democrats, an aide said. He introduced the bill last year and it remained unclear whether Congress would enact it into law.

The measure would require all voting machines to produce a paper record voters could inspect to check the accuracy of their votes and election officials could use to verify votes in the event of a computer malfunction or other irregularity.

"Anything of value should be auditable," Holt said. "Votes are valuable, and each voter should have the knowledge and the confidence that his or her vote was recorded and counted as intended."

When discussing voting machines, I'm often asked if I trust ATM machines, because people equate ATMs and voting machines. The answer is no, I don't completely trust ATMs - but I do trust the auditing process at the banks and I check the records. Every transaction shows up the next day on a website, in my Quicken software, and on a paper copy at the end of the month. So I use ATMs because it's verifiable and documented. Same with web transactions, Paypal, Amazon, etc...

If there's something wrong with a banking transaction, I can challenge it and get my money back. My vote is no less valuable. When voting machines are verifiable, auditable and documented then I'll trust them. Until then, I'm voting absentee.