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Computer Voting System Must Ensure Democracy and Accuracy, Not Manipulate Elections. |
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MEDIA RELEASE Computerized voting presents a choice between a repeat of the 2000 Florida debacle, in which thousands of African American and Latino votes were obstructed, and technologies that increase voter access, accuracy, and public accountability. WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Greens warn that computerized voting programs and files, if implemented without public scrutiny and auditability, may allow greater vote fraud, engineered miscounts, and disqualification of legitimate votes in elections across the country. Instead, many Greens urge technology that promotes democratic access and accuracy in voting and the maintenance of voter rolls, noting that touchscreens (Direct Recording Electronic voting) assist people with impaired vision and other disabilities and those not fluent in English. "Touchscreens, for instance, can eliminate voided ballots that now happen when citizens accidentally overvote in a race," testified Santa Monica Mayor pro tem Kevin McKeown during a California Secretary of State hearing on voting technology. "Other options available don't prevent overvoting with such simple certainty." Touchscreens also facilitate ballot counting in Proportional Representation and Instant Runoff Voting, which the Green Party strongly supports. Some Greens have called for scannable ballots, enabling quick counts while preserving a paper record of votes, and for placing election software in the public domain. Congress' "Help America Vote Act," requiring states to implement computerized voter files by the 2004 election, presents a choice between technologies that increase democratic accountability and those that allow state authorities to manipulate elections. If the latter, fraud will be difficult to detect, since bias could easily be built into computer programs that would only be accessible to state authorities. "As many states switch to computerized systems, we risk more purges of legitimate voters," said Jim Maceda, Treasurer Green Party of New York State. "The Florida experience in 2000 shows us that African Americans and other ethnic groups may be especially vulnerable." "Before the 2000 election, the Florida Secretary of State's office ordered a purge of 94,000 voters, supposedly convicted felons, though most were not guilty of any crime," said Maceda. "Over half of those purged were African American or Latino. The state's computerized files facilitated the manipulation of voter rolls." Greens insist that, in order for elections to be fair, every step must be subject to public scrutiny, and state laws must promote, not restrict, the right of people to vote. "Legislatures in many states have passed laws barring convicted felons who have served their sentences from voting as a way of silencing African Americans, Latinos, and others who are arrested and convicted in disproportionate numbers," said Badili Jones, Georgia Green and co-chair of the Green Party of the United States. "Democrats and Republicans in such states acted in concert to keep legitimate voters -- felons who served their sentences as well people with the same name as felons -- from voting, just as they passed prohibitive ballot access laws restricting third parties and independents. Al Gore and his fellow Democrats offered no public protest against these policies in the weeks following the election. Nor did any Senate Democrats stand up in support of the Black Caucus' challenge to Bush's engineered victory." Chief Justice William Rehnquist, speaking for the majority of judges in the Supreme Court decision upholding the manipulated Florida vote in 2000, declared that there exists no constitutional right to vote in a national election. "The long U.S. tradition of 'one citizen, one vote,' which generations of Americans fought and died for, is in dire jeopardy," said J. Roy Cannon, Delaware Green delegate to the party's central committee. "It'll take enormous public vigilance to ensure that the 2000 debacle isn't repeated." MORE INFORMATION search: elws, elct, rgt, prty |