C. Roy ReynoldsI HAVE just concluded reading of the book: Down and Dirty, written by journalist Jake Tapper about the "plot to steal the Presidency" in the last US elections. The book is not so much an analysis of the process as it is a chronological record of the skulduggery that went on in Florida following the elections and the usurpation of the electoral process by a highly partisan Supreme Court.
It seems clear to me that what happened in Florida, and quite possibly in other states as well, was something on a scale that makes our traditional attempts at bogus voting seem trivial. For nowhere in our history has there ever been a time when the highest elective post, or even any elective post at all has resulted in the wrong person being elected by bogus voting.
That is the reason why the present lunacy about electronic voting is so bizarre. If we assume method in madness as Shakespeare asserts exists, then we are at liberty to speculate if the determination to install a system that has not been perfected is not motivated by a perceived opportunity to hijack an entire election instead of depending on a so far ineffective attempt to steal it one vote at a time.
Maybe the present seemingly everlasting round of power cuts is a cogent reminder of the chaos that can be created by the super expensive adventure we seem hell-bent on embarking upon.
Have we ever contemplated what would happen if electricity supply went on Election Day? And obviously it could easily be engineered! Or if machines fail. Will the failure of a relatively few machines compromise the whole process, leading to the necessity to redo the whole process?
And who gets to make the decision in such an eventuality? Is it the Electoral Office, the relevant Minister, or the courts? Are there laws and regulations that make the process clear, that establish thresholds that trigger whole or partial reruns?
Are our lawmakers even technically qualified to create sensible rules and regulations? And how much do we know about the companies that bid to produce something that has never been done before? I am not talking about what they might print in their self-promoting manuals but what they might have a stake in keeping from public scrutiny. One thing you can depend on: whenever the emperor gets a fancy for new clothes there is always someone ready to provide it. Emperors are reputed to pay well and every hustler is eager to become their tailor.
It is interesting to note that one of the reasons advanced for not upgrading the voting system in places like Florida is cost, and they are not talking about something as expensive as what we aspire to, but about systems that have been developed long ago. I daresay anybody that would advocate the employment of some experimental technology in any voting district in America would be regarded as a crackpot.
Yet this nonsense continues to dominate in certain circles here. Sensible persons who should know better continue to support the idea, being naive where common sense is called for; hell-bent on leading the nation down a super-expensive path that is almost guaranteed to produce more chaos than we have ever dreamt of.
Common sense indicates clearly that along with the technology for which we thirst must inevitably be the counter-technology that can thwart its intent; a mere variant of the law of physics which recognises that to every action there's a separate and opposite reaction. So it is almost axiomatic that we will find that having paid a king's ransom for some system there will be those who "for a few dollars more" will be willing and capable of subverting it.
It is mind-numbing to contemplate that this could be a country of numskulls who would be taken in by something so tenuous, something so obviously open to failure and mischief.
Old Abraham Lincoln has long been revered for his contention that you can fool all the people some of the time, some of the people all the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time. I find nothing profound and practically relevant in this. There is no need to fool all the people at any time and you only need a few well placed fools to bamboozle enough people at any time for you to succeed in whatever your own sinister intent happens to be.
Alas, today it seems that they are within a hair's breadth of convincing enough people arsenic is the medicine to cure all their ills. There seems to be no shortage of dupes and dupers. Of fools and damn fools!
C. Roy Reynolds is a freelance journalist.
