IN BRIEF
·
The
Facts:
The long voting lines caused by the breakdown and malfunctioning
of our voting machines is characterized in the mainstream as a complicated,
multi-faceted and difficult to solve problem, rather than being founded on one
simple fact.
·
Reflect
On:
Can we use the reality of voting machine malfunction as another
entry point into the realization that we are living in a thinly-veiled
deception that actually makes a mockery of true democracy?
If you
follow mainstream media, the answer to the question of why election voting
machines break down so much is ‘complicated.’ Much too complicated, in fact,
for us to come up with any kind of permanent solution. An article like Wired’s
‘Voting Machine Meltdowns Are Normal—That’s The
Problem,’ will fill us with the nitty-gritty details: paper ballot
scanner malfunctions, machines actually ‘flipping votes’ because of some kind
of ‘bug’, machines running with ‘outdated’ Windows operating systems, about
which the article states, “it stands to reason these antiquated systems would
break down under pressure.” But far and above all this was the detailed
explanation that the rain may have had something to do with votes not
getting processed properly:
Simply replacing old machines with new ones wouldn’t
guarantee an incident-free election, though. Take the claim that the rain
messed with people’s ballots—it isn’t just an excuse. Kings County in New York
and Madison County in Alabama both use an optical scanner machine called the
DS-200. According to its operating manual, Stewart says, it’s designed to
operate in 10 to 15 percent humidity. In both Kings County and Madison County
on Tuesday, the humidity was more like 98 percent. The irony there, Stewart
says, is the DS-200 isn’t one of the old machines we always hear about becoming
obsolete. It came out at the end of 2015. “It’s a more persnickety piece of
equipment, giving you greater security,” Stewart says. But that sophistication clearly
comes with unforeseen consequences.
More on this later. But even as budgetary issues, late delivery of
funds or new machines or other bureaucratic matters are also pointed out as
having an impact on the problem, the articles concludes that even these
problems of neglect, incompetence, and disorganization, as with the voting
machine issues, have to be accepted as the “new normal.”
Bull Cookies, as M*A*S*H*’s Colonel Sherman Potter used to say.
True Source Of The Problem
The true
source of the problem is so simple. The people that have long held the power in
the United States don’t want us living in a true democracy. They certainly want
us to believe we live in a democracy, and think we have true freedom and
representation; the fact is that in all realms of society, we have
long been living in an oligarchy controlled by a wealthy elite who is more than
happy to keep the ‘democracy’ charade going for as long as it suits them.
A thorough background check on who gets to make the voting
machines and the kinds of profits they get for the sale of these pathetic
contraptions, and who approves the purchase and implementation of these
machines and on what basis they are approved as anchor points of the democratic
process reveals of litany of self-service, conflict of interest, fraud, greed,
intimidation, and corruption of the highest kind.
Then there
are the machines themselves and the ridiculous extent to which they are not
secure from hacking and external manipulation. As this New York Times article points
out,
In the 15 years since electronic voting machines
were first adopted by many states, numerous reports by computer scientists have
shown nearly every make and model to be vulnerable to hacking. The systems were
not initially designed with robust security in mind, and even where security
features were included, experts have found them to be poorly implemented with
glaring holes.
Let me get this straight: systems that were built to be at the
heart of American Democracy ‘were not initially designed with robust security
in mind’? Have you ever heard of anything so ridiculous in your life? And we
are supposed to believe that this was some kind of ‘oversight’ and not
part of the hidden agenda of the powers that be in America to manipulate voting
results?
The fact of the matter is, it is not only obvious that airtight
security should be one of the prime characteristics of voting machines even
before they get off the drawing board, and would be if true patriots were in
the positions of power in the country; it also needs to be stated that creating
a secure voting machine that works 100% of the time for decades would be one of
the simplest-to-make machines known to man, an unchallenging two-week
homework project for a first-year mechanical engineering student.
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If We Had A True Democracy
I am sure many people have devised a voting system while waiting
for a bus or getting a haircut that would be a vast improvement over the
one currently in place. Please indulge me as I explain how easy it would be–if,
indeed, the powerful forces in our country actually valued democracy over their
own personal agendas.
1. There would be one system country-wide
that would be agreed on at the Federal level in cooperation with state
representatives that proved to be the best, most secure, most reliable, and
easiest to operate and use. While I am a strong advocate of decentralization of
power and the rights of local and state governments over the Federal
government, I still believe an independent Federal election agency would be the
best thing for implementation of this system (Of course, this is contingent
on it being an honest, uncorruptable agency)
2. Funding matters we hear about are all
hogwash. Not only would overall funding be significantly reduced through the
mass production of a single model of voting machine of the highest quality that
would be readily available as needed, the cost would further be slashed
tremendously if there were no special interests and middle-men gaining huge
amounts of money in these transactions. With an honest Federal agency
getting the best price for the American people, the cost would be an absolute
pittance, a drop in the bucket, and would likely be touted as one of the most
important and worthwhile expenditures in the federal budget.
3. The machine itself simply needs to help
the user fill in a simple online form. Each machine would be linked to a
State database (that could be off the internet, if this was a security concern)
which would contain one read-only database file with the ballot information
(candidate, party, referendum questions, etc) and one read/write file to record
the voter’s identification and their votes on candidates and proposed
laws.
4. Each voter would work with a
touch-screen to make their choices, laid out clearly, one-by-one on the
screen. When they had finished, they would be able see all their
votes on the screen and ‘CONFIRM’. Then they would get a paper copy of all
their votes under their vote id (consisting of, for example, a combination of
State code, District code, Polling Station, Machine number, and timestamp), and
would again be able to check if their paper copy exactly matched the screen,
before pressing ‘END’.
5. Each machine would record transactions
on their own hard drive as well as sending them to the state database.
Vote-counting would be instantaneous for each state, complied by secure
programs accessing the state database. This information could then be securely
uploaded to the internet on a federal government website. All citizens
would be able to see their own vote as part of a detailed list of vote count by
state, by district, by polling station, even by machine, based on their
vote id.
I’m sure there are better systems out there, which is fine. This
is really just off the top of my head. My personal preference would be a system
through which voters names were made public on the internet, and verification
of fraud would become much simpler, but that is a matter for a later
discussion. Suffice it to say that, solely based on my 8 years as a computer
programmer/analyst in earlier days, making secure software for reliable
machines grounded in a reliable system seems like a simple project to me,
let alone for the technological wizards in the country who could be brought
into such a project, if only the sole motivation was the proper
functioning of this aspect of the democratic process.
The Takeaway
If you’ve read some of my previous articles, you will recall that
I have said there is no good reason to waste your time voting under the
current circumstances, because indeed, I don’t believe we are currently living
in a representative democracy, but rather a thinly-veiled, poorly
disguised mockery of it. But I wrote this article in order to bring
forth the idea that our democracy is not failing due to the haphazard
incompetence, laziness, or even greed of our elected officials, vendors,
technicians, and bureaucrats. Our democracy is failing because many of the
citizens of this country have stayed asleep while the powerful elite
has continued to push its agenda of control and domination right under
our collective noses.
I believe the Founding Fathers had great wisdom and the best of
intentions setting up the Republic in the way they did through the
Constitution; they were very well aware of the dangers posed to
our liberty by the powers that are afforded to centralized
governments and the undue external influence that is brought to bear upon them.
If we are to honor the Founding Fathers and be part of the process of
reclaiming our liberty, we will do so by awakening collectively to the veil of
illusion that we live under now, and creating the conditions through which such
deception is no longer possible.
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