Your editorial “Fail-Safe Voting?”, September 20, 2007, could be titled “Myth-Based Voting?”.
Last week the Hartford Courant had a fact lite
editorial, “Fail-Safe Voting”. I sent a letter to the editor to provide an accurate view. It took almost 250 words, however, I wanted to provide facts and the Courant has often run letters longer than their 200 word ‘limit’.
It does not bother me that my letter was not published. However, it is a problem when there is no responsible alternate opinion printed. In the past week there were several letters addressing the renaming of Bradley Airport, but none addressing the voting machine editorial. Here is the letter:
Your editorial “Fail-Safe Voting?”, September 20, 2007, could be titled “Myth-Based Voting?”.
It is inaccurate to state that”So far, no one appears to have figured out how to tamper with the machines” Dr. Alex Shvartsman, UConn, consultant to Secretary Bysicwicz, independently confirmed specific vulnerabilities and recently said “The concerns are very valid and very real.” The Brennan Center for Justice, frequently referenced by the legislature and Secretary Bysiewicz, says “One of the primary conclusions of this report is…using Trojan horses or other Software Attack Programs provide the least difficult means to affect the outcome of a statewide election using as few informed participants as possible”.
It is precisely because “It would take a conspiracy by a lot of people to stuff a ballot box.” that Brennan concluded that a software attack would be most attractive.
It is true that “The 10 percent threshold [of districts audited] is highest among states”. What is seldom noted is that only three or 20% of races are audited, or that loopholes in the law reduce the odds of detecting fraud in most local elections and all State Representative races to about 2%-4%.
Yes,”It would be a shame if, after spending hundreds of millions of dollars to correct the mistakes of 2000, it were still possible to alter the results.” Let us invest the $0.25-$0.50 per voter it would take to provide a truly sufficient audit and assurance of the correct results.
