So That's Why We're in Iraq

To protect Americans' right to vote! Geez, that clears up alot.

In Missouri, candidates for secretary of state are lauding e-voting for soldiers in Iraq:

"The principle's kind of simple for me. If men and women are over there defending our right to vote with their very lives, the least we can do is use technology to protect their right to vote."

Besides the utter stupidity of that statement, check this out. Here's how they propose to protect soldiers' right to vote:

"The servicemen and women in combat zones will still be mailed their absentee ballots. This just provides them the opportunity, if it's too late to mail those ballots back, to e-mail them back," she said. "They're actually e-mailed to a contractor who faxes them back. So the e-mails never leave the military system, they never come across the Atlantic. It's just really a way for those within the military to get those votes back here on time to be counted." ...

Hanaway said that a good thing to know about it being a picture of a ballot is that it isn't like another kind of computer e-mail where you could starting writing other things on it.

"It's an actual image of that ballot, so you can't really tamper with it," she said.

No possible room for tampering there! Everyone just relax! I'm sure those "contractors" (like Halliburton, for example) have no vested interest in tampering with the results! And I'm sure no soldier could, you know, cut and paste a ballot and vote twice. Or use PhotoShop. Or that anything might get "lost in the system." Or blocked by a spam filter. Or something.

Phew. Such a relief.

Comments

[Brave and True]

I'm afraid that the more I read about your way of running elections in the US the more it seems to me that there should be supervision by neutral outsiders or the UN or something. We see Jimmy Carter looking over the running of an election somewhere or other and then there all these stories about the inadequacies of your system(s). If it wasn't so serious it would be funny.
The US says it is bringing democracy to other countries. Excuse me while I laugh hysterically.