Collegiate Times

From presidential polling in Ohio to voting for school board officials in Northern Virginia, electronic voting machines have proven controversial across party lines, adding 4,000 votes for George Bush in one Ohio district in 2004 and swinging North Carolina state senator Lewis Pate (R-Wayne) from a 1-percent loss to a 1-percent victory in 2002.

For Alex Blakemore, one of the co-founders of Virginia Verified Voting who spoke at the request of the College Libertarians last night in Squires, said instances such as these serve as painful illustrations both of the mis-votes that may have gone undetected as well as the need to ensure voter-verified paper audit trails.

?The advantages to these machines are that they are lightweight and portable ? some of the future ones might even come with video games and designer colors ? but that?s not why we have them. We have them to ensure the accuracy of elections, and at that they do a poor job,? Blakemore said.

Virginia Verified Voting is a grassroots organization comprised of community activists and computer programmers. It is squaring off at county meetings across the state principally with election officials who, in Blakemore?s mind, want the machines simply for diverse reasons.

?The more valid arguments used against us are complexity and cost ?  Election officials are afraid of work,? Blakemore said.

While governor-elect Tim Kaine has come out in favor of voter-verified paper audit trails, Blakemore was hoping to enlist those in the audience to join the Virginia Verified Voting database to provide crucial, immediate pressure on elected officials when legislation currently under consideration by the Hugo Commission in the Virginia General Assembly may be altered in committee.

?In North Carolina, in the dark of night, parts of the legislation would be altered and because groups were watching they could send out an e-mail and supporters could call and e-mail their representatives the next day to get the language changed back,? Blakemore said.

One thrust of the drive behind the legislation is to protect the integrity of the vote from technology that, in theory, could be tampered with as easily as by a savvy computer hacker with a laptop computer in the parking lot outside a polling place. While accessible to outside agents, the software is also vulnerable to tampering from the inside.

?The opposition likes to call us ?conspiracy theorists? ? you have things called ?Easter Eggs? ? hiding code, leaving it dormant until it gets the right signal, that then activates ? this can get around testing,? said Blakemore, who posited recent issues with the Grand Theft Auto videogame as ways that nested code could lead to surprising results.

As strong as the technological arguments are, Blakemore said that the ethical issues are more difficult to detect and potentially more destructive.

He offered that the general manager of Diebold, one of the largest producers of electronic voting machines achieved Pioneer status for donating over $100,000 to President Bush?s campaign in 2000, writing a letter that promised to deliver Ohio to the president.

?You have no idea of knowing a ?trusted agent,? and if you trust (your current agent), will you trust the next person that has this job? And even if you trust your officials, you are affected by other counties as well. Sticking your head in the sand and just trusting and hoping is wrong,? Blakemore said.