Electronic Voting And Its Perils

I was highly annoyed with Dan Walters' column a few days ago, where he chastised CA Secretary of State Debra Bowen for trying to implement fixes of vulnerable electronic voting machines. He tries to hold her to a standard of criminal 'reasonable doubt', a far higher standard than people who are trying to prevent disasters that haven't yet occurred in California can reasonably be held to. Why Walters doesn't hold Diebold and others who build systems to the same exacting standard is beyond me. After all, the folks who design SDI missile systems, for example, are never held to standards as high as Walters wants for election equipment:

Secretary of State Debra Bowen, a lawyer by trade, should reread that section of the Penal Code. She cast aside the principle of reasonable doubt when she tried and convicted electronic voting system manufacturers of making unsecure devices -- delivering her verdict in an odd, post-midnight news conference Saturday.

Bowen decertified the machines that California counties had purchased to quiet concerns about the security and accuracy of paper ballots in the wake of the 2000 presidential election's hanging chads. She directed local election officials, in effect, to return to paper ballots for all but disabled voters.

Why she did it is more than a little difficult to understand, at least by any reasonable standard. But it may have something to do with her campaign for secretary of state last year.

After Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed Republican Bruce McPherson as secretary of state, he certified the electronic machines. Democrat Bowen, then a state senator, made it a cornerstone of her campaign against him. She alleged the machines, especially those made by Diebold, didn't offer sufficient security. Among other things, Bowen included items about electronic voting on her Internet site and aired a campaign ad showing thieves stealing a voting machine.

Whether heartfelt or opportunistic, her position reflected the "black box" paranoia that had developed on the fringe left about Diebold's touch-screen machines, with conspiracy theorists alleging that they were used to deliver Ohio's electoral votes to President Bush in 2004. It's somewhat akin to -- and about as rational as -- those who worry about an invasion of space aliens in flying saucers.