New York Times Becoming Wary of Electronic Voting Machines

While computerized voting has been a hot topic in the blogoshere, the subject has slowly been receiving coverage in the mainstream media (partially for reasons I’ll address later). The New York Times reviews the topic today:

Dozens of states have adopted electronic voting technology to comply with federal legislation in 2002 intended to phase out old-fashioned lever and punch-card machines after the “hanging chads” confusion of the 2000 presidential election.

But some election officials and voting experts say they fear that the new technology may have only swapped old problems for newer, more complicated ones. Their concerns became more urgent after widespread problems with the new technology were reported this year in primaries in Ohio, Arkansas, Illinois, Maryland and elsewhere.

This year, about one-third of all precincts nationwide are using the electronic voting technology for the first time, raising the chance of problems at the polls as workers struggle to adjust to the new system.

“I think there is good reason for concern headed into the midterm elections,” said Richard F. Celeste, a Democrat and former Ohio governor who was co-chairman of a study of new machines for the National Research Council with Richard L. Thornburgh, a Republican and former governor of Pennsylvania.

The New York Times has considerably more information on the issue, which will help to separate legitimate concern for fair elections from the tin foil hat theories which some promote. Such separation is necessary to get both the media and the general public to take the issue seriously.

While you would think that those involved with this issue would be happy to see this article, Brad Friedman, who is probably doing far more harm to the cause of election reform than good, displays irrationality in his response to this article:

Nice going waiting until it’s pretty much too late to do a damned thing about it. NY Times has, once again, failed the American people. Jerks.

For those who are unaware, Friedman runs a blog which is the intellectual equivalent of The National Enquirer where virtually any unsubstantiated claim is reported as fact, and what facts there are are often used justify unrelated conclusions. To Friedman, his conspiracy theories are fact and therefore there is no value to a major newspaper such as The New York Times reviewing the issue at this date. If a past or future election is ever actually proven to have been stolen, this is far more likely to be reported in (and taken seriously from) The New York Times than Rolling Stone.

For the vast majority of people, election reform is barely on their radar and this is the type of article which is necessary. If election reform is to be successful, liberals must disassociate themselves from those who are unable to remove their tin foil hats and practice the same “reality based” thinking applied to issues such as Iraq, stem cell research, and global warming. The fact that the machines can be hacked cannot be claimed to be actual proof that they have been hacked. Reports of errors, and even intentional shenanigans, cannot be used to claim a wide spread conspiracy without better evidence.

Russel Shaw recently adapted a quotation from Tom Hayden at Huffington Post to election reform and the blogoshere which liberal bloggers should keep in mind:

And to the bloggers, I say stick to standards of evidence that will convince the mainstream voters. Sometimes we stray from what we know, and what can be proven to the public, into the world of, well, conjecture. We cannot fight against a faith-based crusade with one that sometimes appears to be fantasy-based. We cannot fight the conservative model with a conspiracy model. The facts are staggering enough to cause deep public questioning and, in time, a radical public awakening.

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