The Risks of Electronic Voting

The presentation on The Risks of Electronic Voting at Democratic Party Headquarters is a useful and timely exercise in analytical engineering. As a Rice alumnus, I am particularly proud of Professor WALLACH's work in this field. Hopefully, Rice's new lawyer-President will not fire him.

Engineering should inform most of our political discourse at this level of government. In fact, city and county government are mostly about civil engineering and preventive medicine, not about theology or law.

So, what of the fundamental challenge of "black-box" voting and our actual response to it? In particular, what is this party going to do about the risks of electronic voting?

The answer, so far, is nothing:

To be sure, some Democrats have taken this matter seriously:

The ROADwomen and Harris County Democrats have done an outstanding job giving Professor WALLACH a platform in this party he never got from the party elite.

The Progressive Populist Caucus is pushing a well-drafted resolution through the party's conventions on this matter.

So, this party is still twitching, if not exactly rising to this challenge.

But, too many people we have put and kept in public and party office are complicity in perpetuating the Jim Crow Texas Election Code for 130 years now. This latest wrinkle on that system should not be too surprising:

Our Democratic legislative leaders selected the technologies deployed in Texas. The Republicans knew what they were doing, the Enron and Vichy Democrats did not have a clue. They still don't.

The previous County Chair was an integral part of promoting the eSlate.

The present County Chair lamely suffers the Republican County Clerk to control our election officials and to conduct our Primary Election using the eSlate, and ...

Democratic Party executives cannot imagine doing anything other than exactly what Republican officials they report to tell him to do. So, today, more than ever, our party is run as an instrumentality of the state and county governments, not as an arm of the people.

Inherent powers this party has (a) to authenticate voters with strong, trusted, and durable credentials, (b) to nominate for public office by convention and (c) to conduct our primary elections entirely by paper ballot go unexamined, undeveloped, and unused. In fact, they could be used to deploy a credible and effective alternative to "black-box" voting.

You can rage against the Republicans, but the eSlate makes sense to them and for them:

So does the County Tax Assessor-Collector's new computerized and "credit-scored" Voter Roll that you have barely heard anything about, nothing, of course, from your own County Chair.

And, then, there is computerized, "slice, dice, and pack", gerrymandering down to the Census Block Group in urban counties -- a practice we started and could not stop.

These are complementary applications of computer technology powerful enough to undermine the "demography" that our party-tenders expect to deliver state and county government back to them. But, Republicans read the same polls and studies we do. They know that "Black-box" voting, a "credit-scored" voter roll, and high-resolution gerrymandering can damn and channel the tide of minority voters that our washed-up party leaders think will re-float them.

So, we have to select new party leaders, starting with the SDEC to be seated after the State Democratic Convention here in Houston this June. And, we will need to replace county and district executives, who just cannot seem to get the donkey in front of the cart on this and other issues of party finance, operation, and basic orientation.

The "Hold Harmless" Enron Democrats and "Follow the Law" Vichy Democrats are oblivious to technology and, duh, accounting. They have undermined this party and, indeed, this republic though their incessant deal-making and a professionally narrow view of government and politics that regular and progressive Democrats urgently need to change.

Our first chance to overthrow a decrepit party leadership will be selection of SDEC members at the State Convention here in Houston on 18 June. In fact, not just rejection of "black-box" voting but support for practical alternatives to it and the rest of the other party's technology agenda should be the acid test of new leadership.
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