[LINK] Tech Industry Lobbies for e-voting

[Chirgwin, Richard]

It starts...

http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/160131.html
>Tech Group Pushes For Election Modernization Bill 
>
>By David McGuire, Newsbytes
>WASHINGTON, D.C., U.S.A.,
>05 Jan 2001, 4:01 PM CST

>An influential high-tech lobbying group is urging Congress
>to approve federal voting modernization legislation, arguing
>that if modern voting machines had been in place in Florida
>last November, there never would have been an election controversy. 

>"There is no way with the modern technology that is out there that you
>would have had the kind of ambiguity that resulted in the (presidential
>election) going to the Supreme Court," Information Technology
>Association of America (ITAA) President Harris Miller told Newsbytes
>today. 

>In a letter Thursday, Miller urged the original sponsors of the Election
>Reform Act - a bill introduced in the last Congress in the midst of the
>Florida election debacle - to again take up the cause in the new
>congressional session. 

>Miller said that the Florida debacle should fuel support for the
legislation,
>which would establish a bipartisan commission to study voting procedures,
>and more importantly set aside $100 million in federal matching funds for
>local election officials to use in updating their voting machinery. 

>"Clearly local governments officials (face) lots of demands (and) buying
>voting machines is not at the top of their priorities lists," Miller said.
The
>legislation would "help overcome some of the financial resistance there
>has been" to buying new machines, Miller said. 

>David Marin, a staffer for Rep Tom Davis, R-Va., who helped develop the
>legislation, said that the original sponsors of the bill hope to
re-introduce
>the election modernization measure sometime next week. 

>Miller said both Democrats and Republicans should have cause to support
>the bill. 

>"Whether you were a supporter of Bush or Gore, you had to be
>disappointed that the whole process came down to (relying on)
>technology that was available in the 19th century." 

>And regardless of what Congress does, Miller said that the election
>debacle puts local officials on official notice about the dangers of using
>archaic technology. "If, two years from now some governor's race is
>undecided because of some hanging chads, how can any local official say
>with a straight face, 'We didn't know that this was a problem,'" Miller
said.

<rc>
No matter what the problem, the industry's always got a silver bullet. Done
to death on Link, so I'll restrict my rant to observing that the US
high-tech lobby anticipates no recount requirement. That's obvious: why
allow for a "paper trail" when we can use the same technology as produces
such accurate Website logfiles?

BTW, noticed during the holidays an unforseen outcome of computers in
schools - that the NSW state government is looking at hardware tracking
devices and screwing machines to desks to try and combat the problem of
theft of PCs... of course, nobody (myself included) predicted what's
retrospectively obvious, that an expensive and saleable product in an
insecure location would be irresistable. 

Betcha that over the next couple of years, the phrase "protect our valuable
investment in our children's future" will be used repeatedly to explain why
schools get turned into fortresses...

Richard Chirgwin