Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Polling Machine Problems

Fox News is reporting on the air about problems in Ohio and Tennessee with Diebold electronic voting machines. Harold Ford, Jr. was complaining of problems with the Diebold machines in the Memphis area (his home territory), giving the impression that it is because of the machines and Diebold looking to give the election to the GOP.

However, so far the problems reported in Ohio have happened to Republicans. Apparently the machine Rep. Jean Schmidt used failed. Rep. Steve Chabot came to the polling place with the wrong I.D. and had to go back home to get proper id.

Fun stuff.

I think that in the end most of the problems with voting machines will probably turn on human error. Human remain the weak link in any electoral system because they are human, meaning the may make mistakes.

However, Diebold's CEO is a big Republican and that will alway fuel the conspiracy theorists on the left. But when only one or two companies make voting machines, the market participants are too few not to generate suspicion. Perhaps we need more companies to make voting machines and perhaps we need to believe that a man's political outlook may not affect his ability to build or provide a good product.

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