Voting Machine Boondoogle Continues
Last September New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice issued a terrifying report titled “America’s Voting Machines at Risk.” According to the comprehensive study, computers used to cast and count nearly every single vote are “rapidly aging out.”
Coauthor Lawrence Norden told me the “biggest finding is that, in the vast majority of the country, [electronic voting] machines are at or rapidly approaching the ends of their lifespans, and that, right now anyway in most places, there aren’t plans or budgets to replace them.” Failing electronic voting systems in at least 43 states, Norden explained, resulted in some 500,000 to 700,000 votes lost in the 2014 elections alone thanks to long lines that occur when voting systems crash or don’t function properly.
While correct that it’s time to get rid of our aging machines, the Brennan Center’s “solution”— replacing them with new computers that will offer many of the same problems as the old ones—seems to be madness, given what we have learned in the years following the 2000 and 2004 election boondoggles.
At BradBlog.com I’ve spent the better part of the past decade highlighting failure after failure of these systems. They are easily manipulated by insiders and hackers alike. They often simply fail to count votes accurately. And I’m not just talking about the touch-screentype systems on which it is 100% impossible to verify that any vote has ever been recorded accurately for any voter during any election. I’m also talking about hand-marked paper ballot systems.
