CALIFORNIA'S ELECTRONIC BALLOT BOXES FAIL AGAIN

OK, this is getting a little silly. I mean, how many examples of electronic ballot boxes being hackable do we need before we realize the futility of trying to find a way to electronically vote securely?

Here's a bit of [http://www.engadget.com/2007/07/29/california-white-hat-hackers-3-diebold-and-friends-0/|a July 29, 2007 post] at Engadget.com that reports on the latest example:

In a move which will bolster your undoubtedly high sensations of "faith" in the US voting process, a group of University of California researchers have just hacked their way through security on nearly every voting machine certified by the state of California. According to Secretary of State Debra Bowen, who initiated these tests, the team was able to "bypass physical and software security in every machine they tested."

See? Once again we see that electronic/computerized voting is NOT the way to go. It's just too easy to fix, hack or otherwise alter.

Am I suggesting we go back to the dark ages of paper ballots and hand-counting?

YOU BET I AM!

What's so bad with paper ballots and hand-counting? So, both take a while and are still not 100% secure. So what?

Democracy is worth the extra effort and time and I think it's a helluva a lot harder to stuff millions of ballot boxes than it is to write some nefarious code that would swap votes automatically in all of those machines.

In fact, considering that last part, you'd think the American government would be forcing us to deal with paper ballots--unless they like the idea of an easily fixable system of electing...

&nsbp;

Stay tuned for news on Florida's electronic ballot boxes... .

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