William Rivers Pitt: Electronic Voting: What You Need To Know

[Doug Grinbergs <saule@xxxxxxxxx>]

At 08:21 -0700 11/07/03, Mcgrath, Bob wrote:
>I arranged for an interview with Dill, Mercuri, and Barbara Simons by William
>Rivers Pitt... appeared as his headline article on October 20th of this year.

Thanks for mentioning this. I remember reading this excellent piece. Since this was ten days before the BCV meeting at the library, when more people joined the list, here's the URL and the author's note; it's a long but important interview.

---
<http://truthout.org/docs_03/102003A.shtml>
Electronic Voting: What You Need To Know
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Interview

Monday 20 October 2003

Author's Note | In July of 2003, I sat down for an extended, free-wheeling interview in Denver with three of the smartest people I have ever met. Rebecca Mercuri, Barbara Simons, and David Dill have been at the forefront of the debate surrounding the rise of electronic touch-screen voting machines in our national elections. Sufficed to say, they are three computer scientists/engineers who are as well versed on these matters as anyone you will ever meet.

If you are completely new to this, the issue in brief: In the aftermath of the 2000 election, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act. After much wrangling, it appears the powers that be have settled upon electronic touch-screen voting machines as the solution. There are, however, a number of serious concerns about the viability of these machines that have been raised. The matter strikes to the heart of our democracy. If the votes are not counted properly, our democracy is broken forever.
...
---