Just a Gwai Lo fun within prescribed limits [?]

Bob Wyman calls for Diebold to get out of the election systems business, and he may have a case. I did once talk to a Diebold engineer and yes, he was aware of the controversy surrounding the security and lack of paper trail of Diebold machines, and yes, that was the first thing a lot of people brought up when people found out who he worked for. Bob is careful to note that Diebold's primary business is not voting counting machines: according to the Wikipedia page, the company “is engaged primarily in the sale, manufacture, installation and service of self-service transaction systems (such as ATMs), electronic and physical security products (including vaults and currency processing systems), and software and integrated systems for global financial and commercial markets.” Bob cites former CEO infamous letter to wealthy Ohio residents with, evidently, the heading "Donate or raise $10,000 for the Ohio Republican Party." with the damning quote, "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year", referring to then- and current-President Bush.

Inspired by Christopher Hitchens' investigation into former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer's assertion that Americans should watch what they say (Hitchens found that there was a context to the quote that critics of Fleischer may have missed or omitted), I looked for the full text of the Diebold letter. And couldn't find it. I don't want to suggest that the CEO did not actually want Bush to win—my guiding assumption is that he did. I'd just love to read the full text of the document if it's available, to see the quote's context.

Though they are improving, newspapers are really bad at publishing the original material from which they quote or analyze. (Or linking to in their online version. That's in part due to the fact that newspapers think the job is over once someone has copy & pasted the article into their online CMS.) Bloggers are better at this, since a link is very often worth just as much as what they feel they have to say about that link. Since this is a document we're talking about (and not other types of primary sources, such as raw data, which is harder to gather and release in a usable format, though by no means impossible), it would be pretty easy to scan it and post it online and transcribe it for search engines. But my 10-minute search, for the famous sentence, couldn't find it: has the Diebold CEO's letter been published online, and if so, can someone out there in the Lazyweb help me find it?

Electronic Frontier Foundation on voting machine standards: "EFF supports the IEEE in taking on the issue of setting standards for electronic voting machines. We also support the idea of modernizing our election processes using digital technology, as long as we maintain, or better yet, increase the trustworthiness of the election processes along the way. But this standard does not do this, and it must be reworked."

While remaining ambivalent about the ability technology in general to improve our lives, certain technologies have positive effects. The EFF, in general and in principle, is a good organziation and is usually correct in matters concerning privacy. It is wrong, however, with respect to using digital technology in the electoral process, specificallly physical voting. Any standard that uses digital technology must, in other words, not be re-worked, but rather scrapped entirely.

I've argued this before: faith in people, not technology. With the system I propose (essentially Canada's), people will make mistakes. Under any system relying heavily on digital technology, when the technology fails, the technology is blamed, but with a system of paper ballots and people counting said ballots, people would get the blame for any mistakes. Will counting the ballots slow down? Almost certainly. Will the counting be 100% accurate? Likely not. Will there be paper records of the vote, with human recollections to go with it? Yes. Will people be held accountable for their failures and given a pat on the back for a smooth election? Yes.

America's fetish with technological solutions to social problems—got school shootings? Then more metal detectors but no, not an improved education system or improved dispute resolution in the classroom and hallways—political problems—can't find terrorists? Then more intrusive satellite technology and a camera on every street to watch our every move, but no, not improved intelligence-gathering on the ground and no, not an international system based on the peaceful settlement of disputes—and economic problems—famine at home or abroad? Then genetically modified crops, but no, definitely not improved political situations in developing countries and certainly not the removal of agricultural subsidies—would be fed and encouraged. The same goes with the Florida Debacle: the problem was not a confusing ballot (okay, yes it was), but it was the belief by those in government (technically, that's you, the people) that voters don't know how to mark an X in a box with the candidate's signature and that counting must be done with machines and not people because "machines are more reliable". An adequate, nay, preferable system is one of paper ballots with people counting the results. Transparency over speed, people over technology.

[via the mighty kottke.org]