Honest Voting

Dorothy Fadiman’s new documentary, Stealing America: Vote By Vote, is another in a line of documentaries about the problems with America’s election process. Fadiman, an Emmy-award winning filmmaker, decided to make the movie after she worked as a volunteer at the polls in 2004, when she heard repeated complaints from voters that their votes for Kerry were switched to votes for Bush.

Michael Ordoña, writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, asked a couple of electronic voting machine manufacturers what they thought about the issues raised by this and similar movies.

Chris Riggall, a spokesperson for Premier Election Solutions (the rebranded Diebold) said this: “Sometimes the criticisms [of machines’ security vulnerabilities] are not factual because they are based on incorrect assumptions (such as networking or the presence of wireless ports on machines). On other occasions, the studies have recommended valuable improvements. … There’s no question that the emphasis on system security by voters, election officials and the industry is much greater now than it was, say, five years ago.”

Peter Lichtenheld of Hart InterCivic said, “I think the key issue right now is voter confidence.” Lichtenheld blamed controversial elections in 2000 and 2004 and the perceived misconduct of certain officials such as Katherine Harris in Florida, not faulty electronic voting systems, for generating distrust. (I have to admire Lichtenheld’s ability to glide over the role that electronic voting systems played in those controversial elections.) Lichtenheld reportedly pointed out that his company’s systems were the only ones for which California Secretary of State Debra Bowen did not require changes for use in 2007.

Oh, other people will fill that gap, Mr. Lichtenheld.