It's an article of faith among many Progressive activists that electronic voting machines are a thing of evil, that these machines are somehow programmed to steal votes from Democrats, and that any and all Democratic election losses are directly attributable to this electronic menace. And who knows, this contention may very well be accurate.
The problem with this perception is the same as that afflicting the arguments of so-called "Intelligent Design" advocates, namely that faith-based assumptions rest on thin evidentiary reeds. Despite what is alleged to be a massive, nationwide and ongoing fraud that would constitute a federal crime, no successful court case has yet been brought, let alone litigated successfully, that would support the assertions of the Dieboldistas. Now, this may be because everyone is in on the conspiracy; but the more natural conclusion, and one more in line with Occam's Razor, is that this vast conspiracy does not exist. The test may very well be the litigation underway over the contested results in Fl-13. But as things stand today, the verified-voting crowd is setting up an argument which is essentially not falsifiable – "votes are being stolen in ways we can't see or verify", and that should, in my mind, offend the reality-based community.
My personal argument with the Dieboldistas is this: there is, as noted, a bit of a disparity between the fervor with which they advance their claims, and the underlying evidentiary record; and more importantly, by engaging in a small-bore faith-based conspiracy theory, they're discrediting and hindering a realization that should be manifest to everyone, namely that our system of elections is deeply and perhaps irredeemably flawed. I'd go further and say that the Diebold crowd, by positing fraud as the proximate cause of every problem with the electoral process, weakens the case that must be made for fixing the system itself. Ironically, they argue for fraud in exactly the same way that, as noted, advocates of "Intelligent Design" argue for their designer, as the root default cause that explains everything. Tin foil hats are fashionable across the political spectrum, it seems.
All of that said, there should be little doubt that, in the interest of government transparency and to further confidence in the vote, private systems not open to public inspection, and lacking means of verification, should not be acceptable to the electorate. Those who believe that partisans insidiously manipulate every perceived means to skew results can point to examples of just that. But there is far more that is wrong with our democratic process.
Partisan election administrators: As we saw in Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004, election administration by partisans is inherently detrimental to the confidence of the public in the results. Elections need to be administered by non-partisan bodies that can engender trust in voters.
Non-partisan redistricting: In the same vein, the districts created in a majority of states over the last decade have taken the partisan protection of incumbents to new heights. The re-election rate in most jurisdictions across the country is in excess of 90%, and not, one could argue, because we are blessed with such a stellar cast of legislators, but because they have rigged their districts to their own advantage.
Reliable technology: No matter how one feels about the claims of the Dieboldistas, it is entirely clear that the technology underlying the voting process is fragile. In this recent election, problems were reported, just off the top of my head, in Ohio, Virginia, Georgia, Florida, Texas, and Colorado. By comparison, Microsoft strives for a 99.999% on rate for its computer servers; it should be possible to have a system in place that achieves the same rate of reliability or better, no matter what the underlying technology is. By the way, just to irk the PB/OS crowd, there's video on YouTube showing the problems Jean Schmidt of Ohio encountered with an optical scanner, a stark reminder that no technology is foolproof.
Poll workers: God bless them, every single one of them. But please, train them. If that costs money, and it does, it should be considered an investment on the par with new highways, schools, and so on – because these poll workers are responsible for the integrity of our most important small-D democratic process.
No right to vote: Arguably underlying the problems with voter confidence in election results is the stark fact that you do not have a federal right to vote. That right is granted to you by the state in which you live, and is exercised through thousands of local bodies that all have their own standards of eligibility and execution. It's worth considering whether that right, and the resulting process, should be federalized, to at least ensure uniform standards and methods; however, that would require a constitutional amendment, and create a new federal administrative bureaucracy, not necessarily palatable options.
Campaign finance: An ongoing scandal, and the proximate root cause of public corruption, lobbying scandals, and so on. In New York state elections, for example, the "limits" are $50,100 for statewide races, there are no limits to giving to family members (Mark Green's brother wound up spending, I seem to recall, $600,000 on that campaign). Federally, the $2,100 primary/general limits seem reasonable; but PACs, for example, can give $5,000 to candidates, and the limits for so-called "independent expenditures" are a mockery. At the least, we should be striving for transparency in reporting requirements.
Voter intimidation: It happens all the time and everywhere. Nor, frankly, is it only a republican problem, as primary voters in, say, Brooklyn can attest. There need to be effective criminal, not just civil, penalties for this; and these penalties should be applied not just to whatever hired thugs do the work, but to the candidates for which they do it.
Outright fraud: Again, something that happens in every cycle. This year, we saw deceptive robocalls depressing the Democratic vote; we saw equally deceptive flyers that falsely called Michael Steele a Democrat; and every two years, regularly as clockwork, printed materials show up in minority neighborhoods advertising false election dates, threatening criminal penalties for voters, and the like. In 2004, republicans shut down the New Hampshire Democratic phone lines. Again, these activities, broadly defined as electoral fraud, need to be prosecuted as felonies.
So yes, there's a lot of work to be done to fix our broken system of elections. But focusing on the theoretical dangers of one small aspect thereof, and doing so with conspiracy rants, isn't really helpful. We have the challenge of restoring voter trust in the voting system. Verified voting is an important part of tthat; but we shouldn't be neglecting the systemic problems inherent in the process as it currently plays out.
