Red State / Blue State | An election season blog

In the December 2001 edition of the Atlantic, David Brooks wrote an essay titled "One Nation, Slightly Divisible," in which he suggested that America is divided largely into two political cultures, one "red" and one "blue." His idea is based on those electoral maps in 2000 that colored majority-Republican states in red and majority-Democratic states in blue. Brooks' witty essay pictures the red-state voter as trending rural, a salt-of-the-earth type, concerned with individual liberty and family values, whereas the "blue" voter trends urban, more of a book-reader, a Beltway-savvy intellectual, the environmentally conscious soccer mom or dad.

Cliches? Maybe. But Brooks does have his finger on two very strong currents in the American votership. It's not that Pennsylvania is a "blue state" or Alabama is a "red state." It's that our two political cultures don't talk to each other much, or even know much about each other. To bridge that gap, we've brought together two "red" voters - John Franklin and Cynthia Sneed - and two "blue" voters, Terri Falbo and Timothy Horner. Each week, they'll ponder and debate the issues arising in the election campaign. The hope is that they'll model an intelligent discussion, a great big conference room where red and blue sit down together.

Terri Falbo, Blue Stater

Question Number Fourteen: Given the amount of concerns over inaccurate vote counts, the discrepancy of polling equipment, voting machine malfunctions and allegations of potential voter fraud, how confident are you of our system of counting votes for the Nov. 2 election?

Think hanging and pregnant chads were a nightmare? Well, the supposed cure of $4 billion for electronic voting machines could be worse than the disease.

One problem is the lack of a paper trail with most of the electronic voting machines. This makes a verifiable recount next to impossible should the stated results be under question. Though manufacturers claim a higher accuracy rate for electronic machines than with paper balloting, computer specialists, scientists, and engineers have demonstrated the potential of errors or deliberate election-rigging through the use of these machines.

Another problem is that the manufacturers of the voting machines are privately owned companies with dubious interests and ties. Although "trial runs" and testing of sorts is done, their systems and programming are considered secret "proprietary information" and not open for inspection.

Three private companies supply virtually all the electronic voting machines in the United States. Top officials from these companies have been convicted of vote fraud, plead guilty to bribery, and have ties to the mob and oil interests. There is even one who recently stated that he was committed to turning out the vote for President Bush. (For verification, do a Web search for "voting fraud," and many reputable sources will be displayed.) With companies like that, who needs enemies to undermine elections?

Not to mention the torn-up registrations and all the recent trouble getting absentee ballots for disabled voters. (I personally know two Florida residents who are having problems in this area.)

It is probably too late for this election, but we as a people desperately need to take a stand to move more toward democracy. Bills have been introduced into Congress that provide some solutions, including:

* Requiring a verifiable paper trail for all electronic voting;

* Requiring voting machines to be manufactured and overseen by an independent, nonpartisan government organization (similar to the GAO), with all programs and systems open to public inspection, rather than relying on private companies with secret proprietry information.

posted at # 9:47 AM