Democrats Drop Paper Plank From Platform
The platform committee of the fourth district democratic party had the paperless voting question before them and got rolled. They backed away from the clear language adopted statewide in 2004 when the platform said
We support ยท Using only paper ballots tallied by electronic scan machines;
This time the platform writers were faced with a Pocahontas county resolution for
*voter-verified paper,
*open source computer code for electronic vote counting, and
*a required random audit of some precincts just to see that the computers and the people had done things properly.
The platform that came before the convention on Saturday omitted the audit idea, and blurred the other two ideas into a worthless plank.
The new fourth district plank calls only for “reviewable” computer code and “independent” methods of recording the votes. Apologists for paperless voting can already claim these goals are met, so we have a weaker plank than last year.
The new plank is weak in that it fails to say who can review the code. Since vendors already hire “independent” testing labs to “review” the software, they are covered. But “Whoever pays the piper calls the tune” and “We get what we pay for,” and other cliches probably apply here. How about “Caveat Emptor!”
Moving on to the requirement that votes be recorded in an independent manner— What does that mean? Barcodes? Two hard drives in the computer? Two databases?
This is OBVIOUSLY an attempt to avoid voter verified paper ballots. Who was on that platform committee anyway?
I could have raised the issue if I had seen the platform plank coming, but I did not know until too late. Yesterday I wrote a long snail mail to a state platform committee member. In fact, the only two platform writers that I know do not have home computers. It is pretty hard to keep up with this issue without the world wide web.