How do you know they are not stuffing the box?

After 23 years as Emery County clerk, Bruce Funk will decide this morning whether he will resign because he cannot endorse an election on Utah's new voting machines. [Salt Lake Tribune]

Following the debacle that was the 2000 elections, the race has been on to replace the various forms of voting systems in the United States with something a bit more modern, if you consider modern to be a closed black box handling what is one of the most important functions that take place in the country. The Department of Defense has better security around their systems than what has been proposed for electronic voting machines to replace the punch cards and pull leavers currently in use.

The problem is that one company is selling the only product. At least, they have managed to scare off everyone else. Creating a voting system is not difficult. There are several good programs on the Internet that will allow you to cast your vote for any topic you would care to name. The issue is security and veracity. Security, to protect the contents of the ballot box (which may or may not be attached directly to the voting booth, which introduces additional security concerns) and veracity that the voter not only voted, but only voted once and that the vote was correctly entered. Again, none of this is difficult. There are several very good programs that will do all of this and when put together properly, will do it efficiently.

Efficiency has never been the watch word of the US Federal Government, or its associated little governments. As illustrated in this article, when an individual, who is charged with certifying the results of the election has serious questions about the veracity of the results, his concerns are brushed away, threatened or otherwise ignored. In what other area of endeavor would independent observers be so quickly dismissed? And since when was the election (and the results thereto) not the most important issue on the front desk of every governor and elections official in the United States. The more questions that are asked and the less exposure to review that Diabold comes under, the more the integrity of the election will be questioned, to the point that people will begin to doubt the process in total. When that happens (and it is not that far from reality), the underlying values of the democracy will be questioned. Then where will the United States be? Certainly not worth listening to in matters of free and open elections.