Like other voting integrity advocates, we often quote President Ronald Reagan, “Trust but Verify”. We have come to realize that we were wrong, so we are flip flopping from that to “Verify to Trust”. Going forward we will refrain from quoting the 40th President.
There is absolutely no need to “trust” anyone if there is sufficient verification. There is also little evidence to trust our democracy to anyone. As they say power corrupts.
Sadly there is no reason to trust our elections, simply because we do not verify them.
Bad enough that our 2004 election was in the hands of a person who promised to deliver Ohio to George Bush– maybe that person was as honest as the day is long, but he lost all trust because the election was not verified.
Now we learn that many of our votes are being counted by machines under the influence of one of the candidates and his family: Does the Romney Family Now Own Your e-Vote? <read> Once again, we have no reason to question Mitt’s integrity, but if he should win, there will always be a question, since we do not, and in some cases cannot verify our elections.
Maybe some things are too important, too valuable to leave to the hands of business. We have reported on this before: <The Outsourced State> <Vendors are Undermining the Structure of U.S. Elections>
As we have said before we favor flip flopping in some cases. We spend much of our time lobbying politicians to change their positions. Former Secretary of the State, Susan Bysiewicz’s finest hour was in late 2005 when she scrapped her selection of a touch screen voting machine and began the process anew to select an optical scan system.
