[Media-watch] Programming Bush's second term

[John Meed]

Dear Mediawatch

Following the last US presidential election, American states are keen to
avoid the problems associated with traditional voting equipment. The Help
America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) offered large sums of money to the states to
replace old lever-type and punched-card voting equipment with new systems.
Many states are buying 'Direct Recording Electronic' voting systems, called
DREs. Voters vote on these machines by touching the screen - but they don't
get a print out to show their vote has been correctly registered, and there
are real concerns about the results that such systems are producing.
(http://www.wheresthepaper.org/)

The main concerns are twofold:

- The companies, including Diebold, who are developing the computer systems
are all major contributors to the Republican Party. The boss of Diebold,
Walden O'Dell, wrote to Ohio republicans saying that he was 'committed to
helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year'.
(http://www.diebold.com/whatsnews/inthenews/executive.htm)

- There are also concerns about the security of the systems. An analysis of
the Diebold system from the Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute
concludes: 'Our analysis shows that this voting system is far below even the
most minimal security standards applicable in other contexts... We conclude
that, as a society, we must carefully consider the risks inherent in
electronic voting, as it places our very democracy at risk.'
(http://www.avirubin.com/vote/)

Elections carried out using these systems have produced some unexpected
results. For example, in the November 2002 elections in Georgia, democrat
candidates with opinion poll leads were defeated in the electronic
elections. The governor saw 16 points taken off his opinion poll standings.

There was a recent article by Andrew Gumbell in the Independent about this
(http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=453116) but
the issue deserves more attention. For the latest American articles on the
subject, see http://www.verifiedvoting.org/newsfeed.asp.

John