Chad 2.0

Computer voting was supposed to revolutionize elections. But has it just updated old problems?

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


The lessons of Florida’s 2000 election debacle were painfully clear:
Butterfly ballots and punch cards are no way to run an election. Vowing
never again, Congress pledged nearly $4 billion to fund voting
modernization, and tech firms rushed computerized voting terminals to
market, promising modern convenience and digital accuracy.

But a closer look at electronic voting finds the new machines far from
fail-safe. Tech experts say voting-terminal technology lags years behind
the state of the art in both encryption and design. Not only are the
machines susceptible to the kinds of voting mishaps–undervotes,
misvotes–that produced Bush v. Gore, but they also may be vulnerable to
hackers bent on stealing an election.

Voting companies claim that scenarios involving serious fraud
are theoretical and nearly impossible to pull off: Few people have
access to the source code or the machines. But the call of “trust us,
we’re experts” took a blow this summer when the Cleveland Plain Dealer
outted Diebold chief executive Walden O’Dell as a major GOP operative. In
addition to hosting a $1,000-a-plate fundraiser at his Columbus, Ohio,
home, ODell sent out solicitations boasting that he’s “committed to
helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.”

Meanwhile, the appeals for greater oversight of computerized voting are
growing. “We’re very concerned about the software, about the security of
the ballots,” said Governor Perdue of Georgias voting terminals. “If they
turn out to be not reliable or can be tampered with, then
they’re–frankly–useless.”







Fact:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2024 demands.

payment methods

Fact:

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2024 demands.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate