DISQUS

Community Page on DISQUS

www.techliberation.com Jump to website »

Subscribe
- New Comments
Community
Top Commenters
- eee_eff
  734 comments · -6 points
- Richard Bennett
  531 comments · 1 points
- Steve R.
  398 comments · 9 points
- Jim Harper
  256 comments · 1 points
- Adam Thierer
  128 comments · -1 points
Popular Threads
- Net Neutrality, Free Speech, and Tim Lee’s New Paper
  2 days ago · 22 comments
- 5 Digital Technologies That Improved My Life in 2008
  20 hours ago · 4 comments
- Debate: Does Google Violate its “Don’t Be Evil” Motto?
  5 days ago · 13 comments
- Network Neutrality and Transaction Costs
  1 week ago · 18 comments
- The Perils of Thinking of Broadband as a Public Utility
  3 days ago · 4 comments
Recent Comments
- I see that Coinstar now also offers vouchers for Starbucks or iTunes. How do you redeem the voucher with Starbucks? Do they give you a Starbucks card? Regardless, I've got a lot of coffee...
  2 hours ago by Adam Thierer
  
  in 5 Digital Technologies That Improved My Life in 2008
- Dude, I'm just joking with you Applebees. Chill. And yes, the stylus is soooo 1994. But some things from the past are worth preserving.
  4 hours ago by Adam Thierer
  
  in 5 Digital Technologies That Improved My Life in 2008
- Steve: Great comment, to which I would add just a couple of points. First, to the extent that a corporation that may provide the "pipes" is separate from one that provides the content,...
  6 hours ago by eee_eff
  
  in Net Neutrality, Free Speech, and Tim Lee’s New Paper
- My top 5: 1. <a href="http://ww.autohotkey.com/">AutoHotKey</a> - This is a simple yet powerful macro scripting program for Windows. I created a simple one-line script...
  8 hours ago by Adam Marcus
  
  in 5 Digital Technologies That Improved My Life in 2008
- "Don’t understand how you iPhone zombies get along without one." It does not help your argument any when you insist on insulting users of another device. You arguments come off as...
  10 hours ago by tim
  
  in 5 Digital Technologies That Improved My Life in 2008

The Technology Liberation Front

The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.

Jump to original thread »

E-voting and the Revolving Door

Started by TLF · 3 months ago

... Continue reading »

2 comments

Arlene Montemarano
1 year ago

Let's face it the only way to free our voting system from vendor control and influence is to go for all paper ballots, made out by the voter himself and then counted in the precinct where the voting takes place.

Without electronic technology, the system can be 100% transparent to any human, geek or not. No high level government certification needed.

The nearly four billion dollars behind HAVA could have bought us a lot of human labor in ballot counting.

Holt will only cement the acceptability of computers in elections, and for the first time give the Feds say over how we conduct elections. It should not pass.

reply

Tim Lee
1 year ago

Arlene, I agree that using paper ballots is the best policy. However, I don't think the Holt bill is necessarily going to cement the acceptability of computers in elections. Nothing in the Holt bill prevents states from ditching touch-screen voting machines entirely, which I hope that many states will choose to do. I would rather have legislation that flatly prohibits the use of touch-screen machines, but I don't see that on the horizon.

I'm also sensitive to federalism concerns, but I don't think those are a serious problem here. The bill leaves almost all of the implementation details up to states, and only requires that states certify to the federal government that their election processes meet certain requirements. I'm not wild about these provisions, but the only states that will be seriously burdened are those states that have adopted paperless touch-screen voting systems, and those states need to be burdened.

reply

Add New Comment

Returning? Login