Democracy, as we have known it, is teetering on the precipice of oblivion. This treachery has nothing to do with radical jihadists, or failing economies, or even extremist presidential politics. It has to do with simple technological development. My purpose here is to raise awareness of the dangers directly threatening our American democracy. If you care about our American freedom, please share these articles. The next three posts including this one will be about the most urgent matters at hand.
In his address to a gathering at Singularity University, Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist, explained that 100 years ago, less than 10% of human deaths were the result of poor decision making, while today over 44% of human deaths are the result of bad human decisions. He suggested that a large part of that increase is directly related to developments in technology. We've invented new ways to kill ourselves. For example, texting while driving is six times more likely to cause an accident than driving drunk.
In his talk, he goes on to expound on how we can mitigate this trend and even use our technology to make us safer. But the fact remains, that as new technologies arise, the things we value, like democracy or privacy, will be threatened at an ever increasing pace, and if we want to preserve them, we must recognize those threats, and as a society, act decisively to mitigate them.
Three areas of vulnerability stand out at the present time, however, with the rate of technological development increasing more than exponentially, these three are only the opening salvo in the destruction of a system that stands on representing the will of the people. The onslaught will continue indefinitely into the future.
In 2006, a research group from Princeton University demonstrated how easily they could hack a Diebold voting machine. They used a simple flash drive, and hacked the machine in one minute with a virus that could spread to other voting machines. You can still see the video on YouTube. If you value your vote, you should watch this video.
As a result of this whistle blowing, voting machines fell into disrepute. No doubt, since then, Diebold has beefed up their security and made it much more difficult for the machines to be tampered with. But the reality is that NO computerized system is immune to hacking. And with millions, billions, or even trillions of dollars on the line, there will always be those who are willing to leap the hurdles to make sure the "Right" person is elected, or the "Left" side of the issue prevails.
With these facts clearly known to the public at large you would think that there would be no computerized voting or counting machines left. But apparently, we are so lazy, or stupid, or both, that we haven't even made sure to kill this well known scam. Below is a current map of voting machine use by state.
Notice that more than half the states use DRE (Direct Recording Equipment) either with or without paper tracking. Now remember from the video you just watched, that paper tracking without actually counting the paper ballots, doesn't mitigate the issue. So this means that more than half the states in our country are susceptible to hacking the vote. This has got to stop. While this situation exists, we cannot have confidence that our votes are being accurately tallied.
The only way to maintain a democracy is to have hard copy ballots which are counted and tabulated by hand with oversight from all interested parties, and a feedback loop to verify that what is reported officially is also what was counted and tabulated. Certainly, this will cost more money, take longer, and require more effort! Is that so bad? Is democracy worth the effort?
What is wrong with us that we don't value our democracy enough to take the time and trouble to do this task? For the sake of convenience, we are throwing away the will of the people, and putting our rights and even our very lives in the hands of the rich, powerful, and dishonest.
