more on our crooked electronic elections

Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who wrote about irregularities in the 2004 election in Ohio, returns to Rolling Stone with a long piece about other problems with American elections using computer voting. Votes counted six times, or not counted at all. Companies being given carte blanche to run the election AND to supervise themselves by corrupt, incurious, and/or overworked local election officials. The midnight installation by Diebold of "patches" on voting machines in heavily Democratic districts in Georgia -- but not in other areas of the state. Now maybe I'm paranoid, but in Georgia in 2004 the Democratic candidate for governor and Democratic Senator had comfortable leads in polls six days before the election (Roy Barnes led the governor's race by 11 percent), and both went down to defeat.

I'm for capitalism and making a profit as much as the next guy, but let me suggest that maybe organizing and running elections shouldn't be a for-profit activity. And we shouldn't rely on computers to count our votes when they are so unreliable and prone to crashes and interference.