Who knows where the chads are buried?

Ken McLoed isn't impressed with electronic voting in the US, a subject Jeanne D'Arc also tackles in Inside the black box. Ken has this to say:

I find the whole thing almost literally unbelievable. How the hell can a great nation hand over control of its voting, for crying out loud, to corporations? Corporations who are deeply partisan? And deeply interested in the outcome of the elections? Hello? Some of them run by people who believe in theocracy? WTF?

Touchscreen voting with no verifiable paper trail is to real voting what McJobs are to real jobs. You don't have votes, you have McVotes.

This is something that you wouldn't put in a science fiction novel, unless it was a blatant knock-about satire - you know, some squib about a world where Mickey Mouse runs for Governor of Florida, or Arnold Schwartznegger for Governor of California. It's too unbelievable. A good editor would call it a plot hole.

There's nothing quite as foolproof as the good old British paper ballots that you mark with a pencil. OK, so it's a lot of work counting them all up, and they have to hire vast armies of experienced bank clerks to do it come election time, but surely that's a price worth paying to have clean elections.

Of course, it may be that the rumours of rigged elections are groundless. But with these electronic machines with no paper trail, the software in then being proprietry code which won't be revealed, and the company that makes them having close links with one party, it requires a degree of trust I simply don't have in order to believe that elections aren't being rigged.

I'm sure the truth will eventually come out. If there have been fraudulent elections, let's pray that the truth comes out while those fraudulently elected are still in office.

Not that I'm saying British elections are totally free from fraud, or British politicans are uncorruptable and totally trustworthy, of course. But these dodgy touch screen systems in America are two dangerous to trust any politicians with.