Electronic Voting

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Electronic Voting

Gunmen on the grassy knoll, AIDS, landing on the moon, chemtrails, UFO’s, CIA mind control and Waco are some of the well-known conspiracies. But what about George W. Bush’s re-election? This cynicism goes beyond political rhetoric and focuses on our ability to participate in a representative democracy. Developed by the ancient Greeks, one of the first voting systems involved dropping bronze disks into barrels. As technology progressed, the advancements in voting systems surrendered an unacceptable system that lacks accuracy despite public outcry for a paper-verified trail.

A voting system has four characteristics: accuracy, anonymity, scalability, and speed. Current electronic voting machines claim to posses these qualities, but to whose standards? Perfection is not reality and human errors are inevitable. Therefore, elimination of controllable errors becomes top priority. Each state must burden this task without national standards resulting in computer technology as a quick fix to a problem.

Maryland primarily uses Diebold Direct Electronic Votin...

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