The medical profession has a useful rule: First, do no harm. Congress has no such rule.
Thus, wanting to look like they’re “doing something,” it’s common for congress critters to approach a problem by introducing a bill that does more harm than good. Such is the case with a bipartisan bill in the senate to “fix” the problem of unreliable, fraud-prone electronic voting machines.
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These computerized systems are infamous for miscounting and manipulating our votes. The worst feature is that the machines provide no verifiable paper record of how each voter casts his or her ballot, instead asking us to have faith that the computer is tallying everything accurately and honestly. Voters all across the country have learned the hard way that “faith-based” voting is not to be trusted, and they’ve forced many districts to scrap the faulty machines in favor of systems that give us paper records.
Voters also are pushing for a national law to restore ballot integrity. Unfortunately, senators Diane Feinstein, a Democrat, and Robert Bennett, a Republican, have responded with a “reform” bill that is as fraudulent as the machines themselves. Instead of requiring a paper record of every vote, their bill bows to the manufacturers of electronic systems, allowing one computer to verify the honesty of another, with no human eyes permitted to see the actual votes. The Feinstein-Bennett bill does harm to America’s electoral system, for it poses as reform without delivering it, essentially giving federal sanction to the inherent fraud of paperless electronic voting machines.
Come on, senators, this is not that hard of a problem to fix – if you’ll just go at it straight. To restore integrity to our vote count, require paper ballots (or at least a paper record) for every vote cast. That’s it. For help, go to verifiedvotingfoundation.org.
“A Bad Electronic Voting Bill,” The New York Times, August 3, 2008.
“Verified Voting.org Warns New Feinstein/Bennett Legislation is Step Backwards,” www.verifiedvotingfoundation.org, July 30, 2008.
“Senator Diane Feinstein introduces new bill July 1, 2008,” www.fairelectionswi.com, July, 2008.
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