[Mb-civic] NYTimes.com Article: Saving the Vote

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Saving the Vote

August 17, 2004
 By PAUL KRUGMAN 



 

Everyone knows it, but not many politicians or mainstream
journalists are willing to talk about it, for fear of
sounding conspiracy-minded: there is a substantial chance
that the result of the 2004 presidential election will be
suspect. 

When I say that the result will be suspect, I don't mean
that the election will, in fact, have been stolen. (We may
never know.) I mean that there will be sufficient
uncertainty about the honesty of the vote count that much
of the world and many Americans will have serious doubts. 

How might the election result be suspect? Well, to take
only one of several possibilities, suppose that Florida -
where recent polls give John Kerry the lead - once again
swings the election to George Bush. 

Much of Florida's vote will be counted by electronic voting
machines with no paper trails. Independent computer
scientists who have examined some of these machines'
programming code are appalled at the security flaws. So
there will be reasonable doubts about whether Florida's
votes were properly counted, and no paper ballots to
recount. The public will have to take the result on faith. 

Yet the behavior of Gov. Jeb Bush's officials with regard
to other election-related matters offers no justification
for such faith. First there was the affair of the felon
list. Florida law denies the vote to convicted felons. But
in 2000 many innocent people, a great number of them black,
couldn't vote because they were erroneously put on a list
of felons; these wrongful exclusions may have put Governor
Bush's brother in the White House. 

This year, Florida again drew up a felon list, and tried to
keep it secret. When a judge forced the list's release, it
turned out that it once again wrongly disenfranchised many
people - again, largely African-American - while including
almost no Hispanics. 

Yesterday, my colleague Bob Herbert reported on another
highly suspicious Florida initiative: state police officers
have gone into the homes of elderly African-American voters
- including participants in get-out-the-vote operations -
and interrogated them as part of what the state says is a
fraud investigation. But the state has provided little
information about the investigation, and, as Mr. Herbert
says, this looks remarkably like an attempt to intimidate
voters. 

Given this pattern, there will be skepticism if Florida's
paperless voting machines give President Bush an upset,
uncheckable victory. 

Congress should have acted long ago to place the coming
election above suspicion by requiring a paper trail for
votes. But legislation was bottled up in committee, and it
may be too late to change the hardware. Yet it is crucial
that this election be credible. What can be done? 

There is still time for officials to provide enhanced
security, assuring the public that nobody can tamper with
voting machines before or during the election; to hire
independent security consultants to perform random tests
before and during Election Day; and to provide paper
ballots to every voter who requests one. 

Voters, too, can do their bit. Recently the Florida
Republican Party sent out a brochure urging supporters to
use absentee ballots to make sure their votes are counted.
The party claims that was a mistake - but it was, in fact,
good advice. Voters should use paper ballots where they are
available, and if this means voting absentee, so be it.
(Election officials will be furious about the increased
workload, but they have brought this on themselves.) 

Finally, some voting activists have urged a last-minute
push for independent exit polling, parallel to but
independent of polling by media groups (whose combined
operation suffered a meltdown during the upset Republican
electoral triumph in 2002). This sounds like a very good
idea. 

Intensive exit polling would do triple duty. It would serve
as a deterrent to anyone contemplating election fraud. If
all went well, it would help validate the results and
silence skeptics. And it would give an early warning if
there was election tampering - perhaps early enough to seek
redress. 

It's horrifying to think that the credibility of our
democracy - a democracy bought through the courage and
sacrifice of many brave men and women - is now in danger.
It's so horrifying that many prefer not to think about it.
But closing our eyes won't make the threat go away. On the
contrary, denial will only increase the chances of a
disastrously suspect election. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/17/opinion/17krugman.html?ex=1093766515&ei=1&en=1494118a0d45f0ef


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