From AlterNet: Well, my faith in democracy's pretty much shot, how about yours? Internet voting is proceeding:
Nonetheless, the Pentagon is moving ahead with plans to have a private corporation conduct Internet voting for overseas GIs in 2004, and many fear it'll be used as a beta test for more widespread Internet voting across the nation. While many Americans think the ability to vote from home or office over the computer would be wonderfully convenient, the results could be disastrous: even the CIA hasn't been able to prevent hackers from penetrating parts of its computer systems attached to the Internet.
As for such private corporations that fund the voting machines, that's shady business too; this article says that one voting machine company "was partially funded at startup by wealthy Republican philanthropists who belong to an organization that believes the Bible instead of the Constitution should govern America." Let's hope there are some good hackers in the Green Party or Democratic Party.
Hmm...
It's pretty worthless voting in the national elections anyway, as the debacle with Dubya illustrates. Even if the elections weren't pre-determined, when the only choices we're offered is one international-corporation representative over another one, who cares? I have as much faith in the integrity of the voting system as I have in the integrity of the WWE! Even Stalin's elections were more believable than this theatrical nonsense we view each term.
The American government is run at the expense of the people, to the detriment of the people. As far as I'm concerned, the only morally righteous thing we can do these days is commit civil disobedience Thoreau-style.
I also think we should stop encouraging people to vote, especially when we do so from a lectern. Encouraging people to vote just encourages them to buy into the delusion that we're living in a democracy--in other words, you're promoting a dangerous and potentially fatal ideology.
The best political advice I can offer anyone is to carefully examine his/her own life, refrain from voting, and refuse to pay taxes. Also, remember to vote Barton in the next election. ;-)
resources for electronic voting
I think this is a huge deal, especially considering the effect the HAVA act had on sending states rushing to buy computer voting systems, despite their recorded security risks. No one seems to be seeking an open source solution to this, which would be at least one way to deal with the non-transparency of compnaies that are "protecting" their proprietary software at the expense of voters' trust.
Here in Florida, we have Sandra Mortham, who was the former Secretary of State (before, but probably equally partisan as, Katherine Harris) and is the founder of "Women for Jeb Bush" endorsing voting machines while working for Florida counties. Data Base Technologies, the company that disenfranchised many legal voters (and a disproportionate amount of minorities) by purging Florida voter rolls before the 2000 election has been bought by one of the companies now working on software for electornic voting machines, Choice Point systems(Bernard Marcus, the founder of Home Depot and a large Republican donor, happens to be on its board of directors). The two largest electronic voting machine companies, Diebold Systems and Election Systems and Software, according to this article from the Dubya Report, "are owned and operated by major contributors to the Republican party."
Here are two good resources page for info on electronic voting:
Verfiedvoting.org
Electronic Voting - this is a resources page from a professor whose dissertation was on Electronic Vote Tabulation
There's tons of articles out there right now as well, here's a few:
More Calls to Vet Voting Machines
Voting Machine Study Divides Md. Officials, Experts
LEST WE FORGET: THE BUSH PUSH IN 2004 - obviously not a fan of Republicans, but scary in its claim that electronic voting is an industry highly connected to Republican groups/interests.