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(s)Elections See other (s)Elections Articles Title: A Cure for America's Corruptible Voting System When I went to vote last week in New York City, using an absentee ballot (because I will be out of the country on election day), I had a surreal experience that was also very ordinary: I marked my ballot – put it, as advised by the nice man behind the counter, into a sealed envelope, handed it to him and … nothing. That is, he looked at me quizzically as I waited. For what? I realized that in every transaction I ever had with the government, I get some kind of receipt or documentation. But I had just handed over my most precious possession, my vote, and I had nothing to show for it. No scrap of paper noting for the record what I had done, and no way to verify that what I wished to do got recorded accurately. The fellow offered, when I expressed some wish for something like this, to use my phone camera to take a picture of me holding the sealed envelope – for proof I had voted. Seriously. We treat the black hole where our votes vanish as if we don't dare to validate them partly because the process is so highly mystified. One aspect of this mystification, which gatekeepers use effectively against us, is the glamour around the secret ballot. That noble "secrecy" is what keeps citizen groups from observing the vote count, demanding verification slips, and so on. The secret vote was, in its time, a great idea. Before the secret ballot was popularized, it was standard practice to intimidate and threaten voters. But few know that America hasn't always had secret ballots. Indeed, the secret ballot didn't even originate in the US – the system we use is known, actually, as the "Australian ballot". The majority of US states did not move to that system – in which publicly-provided, printed ballots with the names of the candidates are marked in secret – until after 1884. Until 1891, indeed, Kentucky still held an "oral ballot"; and it wasn't till the election of President Grover Cleveland in 1892 that the first US president was elected entirely via secret ballot. Why do I point this out? Because our mystification of the secret ballot is one of the strange ways in which we treat our nation's voting system with truly weird magical thinking – much like the magical thinking (about which I have written here) that often attends global warming: a defiant, seven-year-old's refusal to connect point A and point B. By now, reams of solid reporting have documented the aberrations, high jinks, missing hard drives, voting machines that weirdly revert to one candidate, voting machines owned by friends of the candidate of one party, and other aspects of systematic corruption that attend America's voting. The dogged and deeply patriotic Mark Crispin Miller has meticulously documented masses more of these examples – notably in the last election in Ohio – in his masterful Harper's essay last month, "None Dare Call It Stolen." But this is what is weird about the way we are asked to think about the vote: as if nothing could ever ever ever go wrong with it, and as if it is crazy to entertain the notion that it might. To even raise the issue, with solid documentation, as many reporters and citizens have found out, is to risk immediate mockery – as Miller notes, citing 2004 headlines: "Election Paranoia Surfaces: Conspiracy Theorists Call Results Rigged," chuckled the Baltimore Sun on 5 November; "Internet Buzz on Vote Fraud is Dismissed," proclaimed the Boston Globe on 10 November; "Latest Conspiracy Theory – Kerry Won – Hits the Ether," the Washington Post chortled on 11 November. Meanwhile, solid reporting on the war on voting, and on the corruption of the voting infrastructure, continues to mount, as in the Rolling Stone piece this summer on the GOP's "war on voting". and the Huffington Post notes the eyebrows raised when a pro-Romney company buys a stake in the company that makes the machines that count our votes. Well, as a student of closing societies, I can tell you that it is crazy to ask Americans to have pure faith that the system is incorruptible, and to ask them to just drop their votes into a black hole and trust in the Lord – or Diebold. If you look at weak democracies, the oligarchies that have taken undue control of them always seek to tamper with the vote. It is important for oligarchs to have elections to give their guy a veneer of legitimacy – and important for the vote always to turn out "their way". Indeed, something that is never reported in major news media here is that former President Carter's voting accountability organization sees America's system as relatively flawed and corrupted compared with the systems of many other nations. That is a situation that would typically bring observers from aid organizations like his to our polling places to help us count our vote. (See what happened to foreign poll observers in Miller's Harpers story who tried to watch the vote in America.) Here is my modest proposal: let us end the secret ballot, because we have reached a point, with the internet, in which transparency and accountability is more important than absolute secrecy. Don't panic, because this is what I mean: your vote won't be publicly available, but why can't I get a number when I hand in my ballot, or when I vote in a machine – just as I do with bloodwork, or computer passwords, or other transactions in which I get accountability, but not disclosure of my actual name? Then, the votes get tallied and posted – with their corresponding numbers – online on a public site, and major media reproduce the lists. And I can check my number (unidentifiable to anyone else) to check whether my vote was correctly registered. This would allow, in one sweep, all citizens to watch the watchers. It does not compel anyone to reveal his or her vote – but gives him or her the option of challenging a discrepancy, and the means to verify what he or she had actually intended to do. And in one easy, inexpensive, technically feasible gesture, it takes the power away from the Diebold-type private corporations and the various parties and the officials, and allows actual verification that cannot be spun or falsified. Most importantly, it removes a psychological blinder, which the American people are asked to wear every two and four years – the blinder that infantilizes us, that has highly interested individuals and groups say to us, "we are impartial, this is a magically noble and incorruptible process: trust us." As President Ronald Reagan put it in another context: sure – trust, but verify. Poster Comment: Article comments: "This election cycle has made it abundantly clear that the candidates for 'both' parties have been selected by the plutocratic war mongers" "When the two-party system arrests and detains eligible third party candidates from participation or attendance in presidential debates, it becomes clear that the choices have already been made ~ but not by the voters." "It is time to get our votes OFF electronic equipment. As a retired mainframe programmer, I was against puttng our voting process on computers, and believe our elections cannot be trusted until bi-partisan groups count paper ballots. Go to signon.org and search for 'Stop Computerized Voting' if interested in signing a petition to that effect." "In Oregon we used to have to sign in at our precinct and sign out when we handed in our ballot, when the ballot went into the box. Now, we have mail-in ballots. I always hand deliver mine because who knows what can happen with the US Mail? I'm just saying..." "Absentee and Provisional ballots are the least secure way to cast a vote. They are often simply not counted or are challenged" "(I'm not convinced it's really a secret now anyway - especially when a diebold system scans your id and prints a ballot for you). I've seen party officials go through lists in narrow precincts looking to challenge ballots based on party and signature. quite a few people have relatively illegible signatures; now try to duplicate your signature on an electronic pad at an angle with no wrist support... once challenged, someone else decides to throw out your ballot and you don't even get a defense in the matter (it's happened to me)." "It is the counting of the votes that is the issue and problem. Even paper ballots mean nothing if they are counted in secret on a hacked or malware manipulated machine. Even if you have a copy of your ballot, there is no way to "prove" the machine did not count your vote correctly. This is nothing like your bank account where you have access to all the numbers and transactions!" "What is needed is an official receipt with a number, as indicated in the article so one can verify that their votes were tabulated correctly, AND that mirrors their votes that they can then produce if the election website shows something other than what was voted for. This would be something similar to the keno games in Nevada or state lotteries that give you a printout of the numbers you chose prior to the game played." "if someone then claimed that their vote had been recorded incorrectly, how would they prove it, if it isn't a paper ballot? i reckon you need to get rid of voting machines and go back to paper, paper that can be scanned, stored and retrieved for verification if challenged." "After you vote you would receive a document showing who you voted for and a corresponding account number. You can then verify that vote online and show document to authorities if incorrect." "In California I get a numbered receipt torn from the top of my ballot as proof that I have voted. Probably my voter record can be confirmed by refering to this number." "Even with an identification number, that you can check on line, does not deal with the problem. There could be millions of fake numbers and no one would be the wiser." "if everyone was given a coded unique number, and all numbers and votes were posted in the internet in an open file so that people could check that their own votes showed up, that might work." "we need a publicly observable vote count where every citizen can observe the count and know that the votes have been counted as cast. We need to demand the end to the secret count via easily hacked and manipulated with malware electronic voting and vote counting machines. Again, it is the machines and those that own them that are the problem as they count the votes in secret." "What about having the Supreme Court tell us who is going to be President. Particularly when two of the five were appointed by his father." [My note: SCOTUS isn't authorized to do that. See Constitution Amendment 12 - Choosing the President, Vice-President] Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
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