Welcome to the forum thread for "Election Reform: How We Vote," the Justice Talking show for the week of March 10 - March 16, 2008.

In every election year, questions arise about the fairness of the voting process. This edition of Justice Talking will take a detailed look at some of the key issues: from the debate over requiring ID to cast a ballot to the controversy over electronic voting machines. Do these measures improve our election process or just make it more difficult for voters on Election Day? Election reform and how we vote, this week on Justice Talking.

Please post your comments on this Justice Talking issue using this thread.

Thanks for your participation!

Judy Jarvis
Outreach Coordinator 

Writing as attorney and lecturer in law and public policy.  Also served as Chair of County Party; Chair, By-laws committees for Party; member of Party State Committee-elected post; 15 plus years as precinct committeeperson; candidate for state-wide office in PA, inter alia.  Opposed to ID requirement.  Electronic voting only with paper traill subject to audit verification.

Regarding the use of touch screen voting machines, I was very disappointed to hear Thad Hall brush aside the concerns that have finally, after much research and much prodding of the press, gained some modicum of public attention. I strongly encourage you to include the viewpoint of someone more conscious of the perils that these machines pose for our democracy. You might start by interviewing Mark Crispin Miller on this topic. His insights would serve as a corrective to Hall's bland assurances.  Thanks!

Is Thad Hall, Wilson Smith, a media Uncle Tom? This flagrant whitewash of a system that serious experts have shown to be rift with flaws can only be proof of Orwell's profile:

"A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude. To make them love it is the task assigned, in present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda, newspaper editors and schoolteachers." -- Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) Author Source: Forward to 'Brave New World', 1932

NPR joins the Bush team!

jimmy

Please interview at least one of the vast majority of experts who disagree with Thad Hill on the worth of electronic voting machines, especially Direct Voting Electronic Systems, known as DREs.  I suggest Dr. Aviel Rubin, of Johns Hopkins and/or David Dill of Stanford and/or Dr. Rebecca Mercuri, who is an expert in computer security, especially in electronic voting where she has been researching, writing about, and testifying since 1989 and who completed a fellowship at Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, where her research focused on transparency and trust issues in computational systems.