Dem Victory Punctures E-Voting Conspiracy Theories (From Information Week)
By Marianne Kolbasuk McGee
Nov 10, 2006 at 08:11 PM ET
Sure, there were problems with e-voting systems during Tuesday’s elections. But all in all, they worked. What’s the proof? The Democrats won big.
Among the various e-voting conspiracy theories prior to the midterm elections were allegations that one of the biggest suppliers of the systems — Diebold — would rig voting because of supposed ties between the company and the Republican party.
Well, if Diebold or anyone else rigged, hacked, or tampered with any of those systems to skew the outcome, they didn’t do a very good job. Or maybe e-voting hysteria is just like the Y2K panic.
Like I said, sure there were problems — including voters inconvenienced by delays and some whom unfortunately weren’t able to vote at all. And I’m not predicting that there won’t be problems, hacking, or rigging-schemes in the future. But like our democracy, e-voting isn’t perfect, but it works.
What do you think? Is e-voting a success?
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It is this kind of logic that just floors me. It is because I didn’t see it, it didn’t happen — kind of logic. It is like standing outside and because you didn’t get wet you walked back inside and say it hasn’t rained at all today. The only way to prove that electronic voting machines worked is to compare the electronic voting machines to exit polls or to paper ballots in the same districts. That is the only way to truly prove your hypothesis. Anything else is simply conjecture. Just because your opponent won, doesn’t mean that you didn’t try to stuff the ballot box. It simply may be a case that you didn’t stuff the ballot box with enough votes or that your opponent was better at cheating than you were.My suggestion is that this author needs to go back to eighth grade and take a course on logic.
