Why You Should Be Scared to Death of Electronic Voting

Robert E. Mutch
The History News Network
June 21, 2004

Imagine what opportunities nineteenth-century politicos like Matt Quay would see in the recent trend toward paying private companies to count the votes in our elections. It might take the old Pennsylvania Republican boss a while to understand innovations like electronic voting and computerized voter lists. But he’d soon see how the new trends could give him high-tech versions of the low-tech practices he knew so well.

[...] The machine pols of yesteryear would see at once how much easier it would be to dissociate themselves from software than from a gang of hooligans or “a trusted man with the necessary funds.” If they are gazing down at us now from their final reward, they must be wide-eyed with wonder at the possibility of giving their cronies fat contracts to count the votes that kept them in power. You can almost hear the laughter coming out of that big smoke-filled room in the sky.

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