Letter: Blame the hackers!

It is a shame that the issue of ensuring that our voting machines are reliable talliers of votes seems to be shrouded in a letter that reeks of sour grapes and misdirected finger pointing. The GOP took a beating during this last election not because of so-called "ardent Democratic" election officials who turned a blind eye to "hacking," but because the voters of this state wanted adults lawmakers in Concord and Washington. This doesn't mean we should not be concerned about the reliability of increasingly high-tech voting machines. As Skitzo mentioned in his post we should be concerned about any voting machine in which the manufacturer refuses to share information about its machine with government agencies. Likewise, we should be concerned about conservative efforts to slash funding for our elections, resulting in fewer polling places, reduced voting hours, reduced and untrained staff and reduced funds to buy reliable voting machines, not about so-called "Democratic" operatives at your polling station.

Voting machine technology needs to be open to scrutiny by adversaries. The manufacturers should not be allowed to hide what they are doing by labeling it "proprietary," "competitively sensitive" "trade secrets." If a company such as Diebold wants to make voting machines and sell them to our governmental entities, then the product and its processes must be transparent and verifiable. In this age of over-lawyering, too many things are being claimed as protectible "intellectual property." If you want the government contract , then you should be willing to let the government look inside your fancy adding machines. We are essentially talking about a glorified abacus.

Voting machine technology needs to be open to scrutiny by adversaries. The manufacturers should not be allowed to hide what they are doing by labeling it "proprietary," "competitively sensitive" "trade secrets." If a company such as Diebold wants to make voting machines and sell them to our governmental entities, then the product and its processes must be transparent and verifiable. In this age of over-lawyering, too many things are being claimed as protectible "intellectual property." If you want the government contract , then you should be willing to let the government look inside your fancy adding machines. We are essentially talking about a glorified abacus.