"Diebold" is not reason enough

Posted 27 weeks 1 day ago by Ben

My old newspaper, The Press-Enterprise in Riverside, California, published a perfectly sensible editorial the other day on the recall mania in New Hampshire primary election surrounding Diebold optical scanners. Dennis Kucinich, you may recall, asked for a recount of the New Hampshire primary election's results based on, well, rumor and innuendo. Kucinich is entitled to his recount, of course. But this notion that exit polls are somehow decisive is pernicious stuff. Same with the idea that electronic voting machines are inherently more hackable than any other voting method.

Bottom-line:

While electronic voting systems don't provide perfect results 100 percent of the time, neither does any other system. Partisans can stuff ballot boxes, poll workers can lose votes and careless voters can mark the wrong box on paper.

Kucinich will get his recount -- and at least he'll have to pay for it. But the congressman should not risk undermining public faith in U.S. elections on the basis of rumor. "Diebold made the scanners" should not be an adequate excuse to question the results.