(DISCLAIMER: I am
not saying in this diary that vote fraud happened, only that e-voting makes it much, much easier. I am sure this has been said here many times but maybe I'll say it a bit differently. Anyway the issue needs to remain front and center.)
Whether or not electoral fraud can be proved, the most important issue is whether the current electoral system can be trusted.
Clearly it can not. The GAO report is unequivocal. Electronic vote tampering is not only possible, it is down right easy. It can be pulled off with relatively little effort. Whether or not we believe that the 2004 election was stolen is not the point here. My point is that because of the way e-voting is implemented, the electoral system is ripe for unprecedented abuse and we need to do some serious hell raising. Quickly.
Let's keep in mind that this country has no uniform electoral standards, has contracted out vote collection and counting to unabashedly partisan corporations, is putting its trust in secret and proprietary (and crappy) e-voting software, lets e-voting companies pay for their own testing and certification, and allows campaign chairpersons to run elections.
Why is America so trusting? Why is it so hard to hold this thought in our heads: electoral fraud is now possible on a scale never before imaginable.
There's always been electoral fraud. From both sides. The big difference now is that e-voting makes it trivial for very few individuals to tamper votes on a massive scale.
Paper ballot frauds can't scale. Paper is matter. Disappearing or altering large amounts of matter is hard. It takes lots of time and people. Large conspiracies are hard to pull off and hard to keep secret. So paper ballot fraud is self-limiting.
E-votes are bits. Moving, altering and disappearing bits is nearly effortless. Any self-respecting hacker can write code that automatically penetrates thousands of vulnerable computers, alters vast amounts of data and covers its tracks. It only takes minutes to run the code. One guy, alone, can conceivably pull this off. No complicated conspiracy, no loose lips.
E-voting is a brave new world. Conventional wisdom from the paper ballot days does not apply.
For a while most people will think that nothing much has changed, except that the voting machines now look like their PCs. Wrong. Everything's changed. And until people wake up to the fact, massive electoral fraud will be a very real possibility.
And an irresistible temptation.