Well, sort of. Thereโs the usual partisan muttering in todayโs NYT column on electronic voting, as well as some predictably one-sided conspiracy-mongering, but his key point rings true:
โYou donโt have to believe in a central conspiracy to worry that partisans will take advantage of an insecure, unverifiable voting system to manipulate election results. Why expose them to temptation?โ
And even if โpartisansโ can (as one hopes) resist that temptation, the mere fact that the votes tallied by such systems are unverifiable is bound to raise suspicions that the count was indeed rigged. When Krugman claims that this issue is โabout the credibility of US democracy,โ heโs dead right. Interestingly, Krugman writes that Representative Rush Holt of New Jersey has introduced a bill requiring that digital voting machines leave a paper trail and that their software be available for public inspection. That sounds like a good idea, but Iโd still prefer a simple pen and paper ballot.






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