"Feeling Okay this Morning … and you know." Ahh ... I love the Talking Heads.
Good morning, Greenwalans, I hope today finds you well. Yes, it’s November 2, 2010, the day that a healthy 25% of us heads off to vote in our local midterm elections. We’re informed on the issues, passionate about the future of our country, and ready to make the world a little bit better for the next four years. Sadly, the other 75% consists mostly of wild-eyed racists who don’t understand the definition of the word “Socialism”, and who have muddied the political landscape with so much hate and misinformation, that the great silent majority of Americans will most likely stay home. A big thank you goes out to cable news pundits for spraying that idiot fringe across our television sets and newspapers like a broken sprinkler head.
But, veering away from downer-town, I am here this morning to discuss one of the great environmental innovations of the past twenty years: the voting machine. Now, I know what you’re going to say,
“But Andrew, they use electricity, they’ve been inaccurate in the past, and they’re easier to hack into than a box of Cheerios.”
This is all true. But, just about anything is greener than handing out a few hundred million slips of paper. We might as well spray paint our vote onto the sides of polar bear cubs. And when you consider how many people actually get up early, shower, dress, drive to their local polling station, and then write in a vote for “Mickey Mouse”, this paper holocaust seems unnecessary.
That said, using computers to do anything is always risky. As we all know, machine armies will soon be marching down our streets, reciting orders into megaphones, and rounding up healthy humans to work as farmers in the electron fields. This is inevitable/the b-plot to a scifi script I’m writing called “Robots in America: Act 1: Robots for Breakfast.”
The other glaring issue is that many voting machines still record their data on paper ballots. This is at least partly due to the fact that people just don’t trust an entirely computerized system of Electronic Ballot Makers (EBM), similar to the one that put Clippedy Clop the idiot boy in the White House for eight years.
So, we’re left with a dilemma: How do we keep the EBM process green, while also keeping it protected from a system-wide attack?
Here are my suggestions:
1) Any network is corruptible. Therefore, each voting machine needs to remain independent from any network throughout the entire voting process. Does this make infiltration impossible? No. But, going from machine-to-machine is much more labor intensive than simply hacking a public network, the same kind of network through across which many of the vote tabulations have historically been sent.
2) The evidence of each vote should be recorded as digital video by a closed circuit camera inside the voting booth. This camera would only record the actual hand pulling the actual lever. It wouldn’t reveal the voter’s identity, and wouldn’t be connected to the EBM in any way. If a recount were called, reviewing the footage would take roughly the same amount of time as counting a zillion paper ballots, and would be just about incorruptible. Altering millions of digital images before count time would be pretty tough, even for James Cameron.
3) Tabulation should be done slowly and in the view of as many people as possible. Knowing the winner the night of the election is great, but perhaps a bit impractical. I’m talking a room full of people watching each machine’s numbers being added to the total. It’s a return to simple arithmetic, and while it takes a little longer, it is worth the peace of mind.
Since Communism doesn’t work, good monarchs/dictators are hard to find, and anarchy is just too dangerous, Democracy is the only way. And in order to facilitate change for the betterment of our environment, it needs to be preserved. Check out your voting machines today. Ask how they work. Make sure the employees at your local polling stations know you’re invested. While the radical, screaming fringe may be distasteful on both sides, voting is the only way to shut them all up. Let’s keep the process green. Let’s keep it honest. And let’s do it on the damn weekend.
Photo: TecheBlog
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