In 2004 we stand poised to jettison centuries of tradition and to embrace, apparently without question, technologies and companies that will undermine the integrity of the electoral process. You should be asking Why?

 

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The Hack the Vote icon at 200x200 or 100x100 pixels and larger.
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Some Hack the Vote clothing and posters.
   
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2004 Sep 19: The New York Times gives a solid overview of the whole issue. Although the tone is balanced, the paper correctly raises the problems critics have had with the current plans. We've definitely entered Phase 2 of the steal: Now, "oops, there really are issues, but it's too late to fix it." If only we had begun fixing it early last year, when the problem first became blindingly obvious...
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2004 Sep 18: The New York Times has an editorial title "They Said It Couldn't Be Done", laying out how Nevada -- despite all the claims of impracticality and doom -- ran a statewide election using electronic voting machines that included a voter-verified paper trail. For over a year election officials have been decrying the call for such trails as nightmarishly complicated and unworkable. Nevada's election, however, came off without a hitch -- and that's the first time any story about electronic voting could include those words. VVPTs are such an obvious thing; now that they have been shown to also be eminently doable, one has to wonder: Why are all those election officials balking, really?
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2004 Sep 12: The Devil will not be mocked but sometimes that's the best weapon: Dave Barry weighs in on electronic voting. "It's also possible that your ballot will go back in time and participate in the election of 1848, or wind up in a distant galaxy, helping to elect an alien being with 73 eyeballs" ... "But aside from that, electronic voting machines are a great idea, according to people who make millions of dollars selling them."
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2004 Aug 30: Black Box Voting has an article detailing how the central tabulator of Diebold systems can be "hacked" (&) so that an insecure (editable) bogus vote tally can be created. This vulnerability was reported to the manufacturer over a year ago and remains unfixed.
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2004 Aug 17: Paul Krugman has an excellent Op Ed in the New York Times on how we can "Save the Vote". The best suggestion? Request an absentee ballot.
  & I don't know if it's fair to call something a "hack" if it only involves entering a single two-digit number...
   
  Other, probably more complete sites:
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Black Box Voting:
  • An organization doing active investigatory work exposing the flaws in electronic voting.
  • Profiled in the New York Times on 2004 August 7.
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Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition
  • A non-partisan group trying to avoid a repeat of the 2000 debacle.
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Notable Software
  • A consulting company (be warned) with particular expertise on electronic voting.
   
 
For fairness, the other guys:
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Diebold Election Systems
  • The 800-pound gorilla.
  • By the by, the CEO of this company (Walden O'Dell) has publicly stated that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president" [ref].