E-Voting, a good idea? Helen M. - 5/9/2004 8:48 AM No. In the age when 12-year-olds can, steal your identity, hack into government agencies’ web sites and snoop into your hard-drive, the last thing I want is the sanctity of my vote in the hands of a programmer located outside my nation. I don't trust my bank to spit out $50.00 from the ATM. I check my phone bill for the regular errors. I watch the scanner at the grocery store for the incorrect prices. What makes any rational person believe the government wouldn't screw up electronic voting? I want to touch my ballot, peruse the type, and rub my fingers over the paper. I want to fiddle with the #2 pencil, which is tied to the corner of the ballot housing by a cotton string, frayed, slightly dirty, ending in a massive messy knot. I want the ritual of the vote. I want to know somebody will "see" my ballot and place it in the pile of those others who want the same candidate to succeed. It is more than the blip of 0s and 1s. It is the single most important thing I do as a citizen. My argument against this technology is that it is no advance. Simply applying a layer of technology to a process does not increase its veracity. Removing the human touch from the voting process cheapens it. No programmer, or company, can guarantee the soft- and hardware used for electronic voting is error free. And any program can be manipulated. And hard copy generated may not reflect the voter's intension. A recount would simply re-run the program and always repeat the same results. If the system failed and data was lost there would be no means to tabulate those ballots. The day the technocrats can produce and error-free program that can be verified by independent means, call me. Most of the argument pro electronic ballots revolve around speed and accuracy. I know of no reference in the Constitution where the ballots must be counted at lightening speed. But I'm very confident the Founding Fathers did consider the necessity for accuracy of counting those ballots. Yes paper ballots take time to count, but since the election and the transfer of office is several weeks under the Constitution, I can't see that is a very honest argument. Even if it required three days to count the ballots, so what? It would pose no threat to the nation, none. The ballots could be recounted if challenged. The second argument revolves around accuracy. People can manually count and tabulate. Scrutinizers over see the process, represented by all parties. It’s all very simple. Slow but accurate. Over the last several weeks I have watched the latest parliamentary voting in India. The largest democracy on the planet is the 760 million voters of the sub-continent of India. The manual voting process takes several weeks. The Indians manage just fine, thank you. I’m an unashamed news junkie. I love all the "instant, as it happens news"; I'm a product of my time. But I don't need the news live and breaking. If arrived 3 hours later, what difference would it make to me? None. I can be patient; I don't need to know who wins by 8:05pm. If it took a day to count, it might afford the west-coasters the feeling that their vote really does count. Imagine how the Hawaiians would feel. They could join in the process of discovery. But I do like, no, cherish, the ritual of voting. The one act I perform which helps shape my nation and life. It is important to me and to everyone.