Just an off the cuff type of post. I see many people arguing about voter fraud and how to prevent it. All this talk about paper trails and electronic voting fraud seem silly to me. To me, and this of course is just a rambling opinion, the main factor in fraud is the inability to track a vote based on a person.
Yes, paper receipts would help, but only if those receipts didn't fall into the care of those doing the fraud. I can't imagine it would be that hard to print up a bunch of receipts and switch them out. God knows I've never fudged a receipt in my life!!!
Why is it so important that who you vote for remains a private decision? I mean, what you do in the booth affects the entire public, why should it be so secretive? If you had discrepancies in voting counts, pinpointing who voted for what would be an easier way of determining where the errors were.
Could who you vote for be used against you? Sure. God knows I'm dealing with that issue now and I've not voted yet. I wouldn't think the list would be made public unless there was a legitimate reason to question the outcome.
Just like the Internet, hiding in anonymity can cause problems because it's difficult, if not impossible, to track events to those responsible for them.
I dunno, just a thought. Anyone got any other points on this?
rolled out on
Wednesday, October 06, 2004 8:51 AM