[snip]From the Utne Reader website:
[snip]Now, weird things like this do occasionally occur in elections, and the figures, on their own, are not proof of anything except statistical anomalies worthy of further study. But in Georgia there was an extra reason to be suspicious. Last November, the state became the first in the country to conduct an election entirely with touchscreen voting machines, after lavishing $54m (£33m) on a new system that promised to deliver the securest, most up-to-date, most voter-friendly election in the history of the republic. The machines, however, turned out to be anything but reliable. With academic studies showing the Georgia touchscreens to be poorly programmed, full of security holes and prone to tampering, and with thousands of similar machines from different companies being introduced at high speed across the country, computer voting may, in fact, be US democracy's own 21st-century nightmare.
I done been a computer -- OK, a computer *programmer* -- for over 30 years now. This essay "rings true". Over 25 years ago, Joseph Weizenbaum spoke of reality being defined by the behavior of "incomprehensible programs" (_Computer Power and Human Reason: From judgment to calculation_).
And somebody saw the obvious in New York magazine a couple years ago (yes, I have the citation), when he attributed a large part the causation for the advent of the "creative accounting" in the age of Enron to the way spreadsheet programs turn business planning into a computer game.
First do no harm. Amazing how far out of reach such a seemingly seemingly modest hope is.
\brad mcormick
-- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----------------------------------------------------------------- Visit my website ==> http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
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