I’ve not done a bit of googling and fact-checking here, it’s too late, but Kathleen’s got links you can follow. In brief, from her post:
the main venture capitalist backing both Diebold and ES&S, the two primary manufacturers of computerized voting machines, is Howard Ahmanson, a Christian Reconstructionist who has said openly that he has the goal of imposing Biblical law on the US.
Yee-ha!
Eirik
Scary stuff, this – Salon had a story on this a while ago, as well. I don’t know if you’ve heard this before, but actually there’s a brilliant Australian alternative to the American system. Wired covered it in depth in november last year – http://www.wired.com/news/ebiz/0,1272,61045,00.html . What makes eVACS (Electronic Voting and Counting System) a vast improvement on the commercial US systems, is the fact that it’s based on Open Source software. Anyone can download the voting machine source code (from http://www.elections.act.gov.au/Elecvote.html ) and check it for bugs and possible back doors. According to Wired, one Aussie academic did actually spot a serious bug, which goes to show that the system works.
Sooner or later we will have to run large-scale electronic voting trials here in Norway as well. Perhaps we should make a case for using a translated/localized version of eVACS? 🙂
Jill
Oh yes! No, I didnn’t know that, Eirik, thanks! Now that’s a really important point: democracy should be transparent, and open source voting software’s a very sensible idea.
Insane, the money made on elections some places.