By Brigitte L. Nacos
As I went to my polling place on Long Island, N.Y., earlier today, I was happy to see the good, old voting machines (with their curtains and the rows of levers that one pushes to cast one' votes) instead of new optical scan machines. Although the place was busier than in “normal” off-year elections, there were no problems with any of the machines; there were no long lines. Everybody seemed content. But the news is not as good from the many states that switched to modern e-voting technology. It is no secret that the most advanced e-voting devices can be tampered with easily. But even if there is no intention to commit outright fraud, non-functioning machines and poll workers who are unable or unwilling to fix the problems will do the trick. Long waiting lines frustrate people who cannot or will not wait forever to cast their votes. I just read an instructive account from a polling place in a county in Ohio that illustrates these problems. How can the United States, the most technologically advanced country in the world, develop and utilize voting machines that are not ready to perform their task and are not fraud resistant? Equally disturbing are reports of phone calls that guided voters to wrong polling places urging them (warning them???) not to cast their ballots.
It is once again obvious that we are not
only faced with problematic policies but with a problematic voting process that one might excuse in newly democratizing countries, not in the United States.
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