Even "cell phones are better protected against manipulation," said Ulrich Wiesner in an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE. The Wiesners were making the case that the security concerns surrounding electronic voting machines are so great that they run afoul of the German constitution, which mandates that elections be open and transparent.
Nonetheless, German politicians were still skeptical that the court would rule against the machines. In an interview with German radio, Max Stadler, a member of parliament with the German liberal Free Demoocrat Party (FDP), said "it was very unlikely the court would rule in the Wiesners' favor, a move which might force the court to invalidate parts of the 2005 election. Stadler said he personally favors paper ballots because they inspire confidence in the electorate and possess a "certain charm." Ultimately, though, he argued that the issue was a policy question, not a constitutional one. To our good fortune, the Court did not agree with Stadler's position.
So, after jumping through various hoops and several e-mails later, Dr. Wiesner finally received my request for him to please contact me and he did. In our first conversation, we talked about the security issues surrounding electronic voting, which continues to be the core issue election reform advocates have been tangling with in the U.S., and he told me, "We should not waste our time arguing about machine security because citizens would never win that argument with the experts." "Besides", he said, "the Court's decision was not based on voting machine security anyway."
Dr. Wiesner kindly agreed to be interviewed on Deadline Live, a nationally syndicated radio show in Austin , Texas, hosted by Jack Blood, who generously agreed to play the interview live in a "Special Edition" 2-hour show, which aired on October 7, 2009. I then promptly invited Bev to join us to offer her comments and questions in this much-anticipated conversation. Following is the YouTube link to that entire interview.
[Note: The two-hour interview is broken down into 12 parts. The first half hour is with Jack Blood, Bev and I setting the stage for the interview with Dr. Wiesner, followed by the hour-long interview with Dr. Wiesner. The final half-hour is a recap and commentary of the interview by Jack, Bev and me]:
I hope that after listening to the interview, you will ask yourselves "how is the German Court 's ruling of the unconstitutionality of electronic voting under the Germany Constitution any different from it also being considered unconstitutional by an American court under our own constitution?"
As Paul Lehto noted in his article, German Court Honors U.S. Democratic Principles (http://www.democracyfornewhampshire.com/node/view/6516):
The March 3, 2009 ruling interprets the German Constitution, which became effective right after the December 10, 1948 passage date of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations. Soon thereafter, Germany 's new Constitution "came into effect May 23, 1949, with the signature of the Allies," specifically including the United States . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grundgesetz (paragraph one)
Approval of the German Constitution by the United States and occupying powers was conditional on two non-negotiable terms: (1) Complete rejection of master race theory and with it the treatment of other groups with barbarism or worse, and (2) an unequivocal commitment to the inviolability and inalienability of human rights.
The last time I looked, both Germany AND the U.S. are still considered to be democratic republics, with similar constitutions, when it comes to protecting a citizen's human rights, governed by the rule of law, with a representative government duly elected by the people. In light of the German Court 's ground-breaking decision, it is very disturbing that our mainstream media has been virtually silent in reporting this very important decision, particularly, in how it correlates to the elections process in the U.S. Why?
More importantly, neither the U.S. courts nor our legislative branch of government have acknowledged that, with this decision, the German Court put forth thehuman rights argumentthat meantprotecting a German citizen's right to see their votes counted, without specialized technical knowledge beingrequired as a priority over everything else; a decision,I believe,should also be appliedby our courts on behalf of American citizens.
Of course, we can expect to hear from voting machine vendors, members of Congress and many election officials their usual response to a request by citizens for any kind of change from the status quo -- "We've already spent billions of taxpayer dollars implementing these voting systems throughout the country and it would simply be too costly and impractical to get rid of them." I say,preserving and protecting a citizen's human rights inthe elections process --PRICELESS.
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