Now, before you tell me that you believe no such ulterior motive need be involved, let me just say: It's not acceptable for national leaders to pretend that a counting process which is concealed from the public should be trusted. They should know better. What I am suggesting is that some of them DO know better.
E-VOTING IN ESTABLISHED AND DEVELOPING WORLD DEMOCRACIES
Germany has banned its e-voting system, deeming it unconstitutional because it conceals essential election processes from the public. E-voting systems have also been banned in Ireland and the Netherlands.
The Philippines are currently experiencing a meltdown in their own Smartmatic e-voting system, with a last-minute recall of 76,000 memory cards. The Philippine election organization, called COMELEC, should perhaps change its name to COMEDIC, except that the impact on democracy in the Philippines is anything but a comedy.
After Philippine memory cards were found to be miscounting votes, unable to get enough more in time, the Philippines then decided to obtain some 40,000 potentially election-controlling memory cards from foreign countries (primarily Taiwan and Hong Kong). Then -- pretending all was well, nothing to worry about -- they had them couriered all over the country in helicopters provided by private businessmen.[3]
According to University of Michigan research Alex Halderman, "... Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Mauritius, Malaysia, Singapore, Namibia, South Africa and Sri Lanka are using or considering adopting systems like India's."
Rejected e-voting systems from Allen County Indiana were scheduled to be shipped to Africa for deployment.
CITIZENS SPEAKING OUT
The anti e-voting activism movement is rapidly expanding internationally, with concerned citizens from India, buttressed by experienced democracy advocates from Germany and the USA now communicating daily on an excellent listserve called Election Transparency Worldwide. (GoogleGroups).
Yet while citizens easily grasp the idea that you don't have a democracy without public elections -- the key word being PUBLIC -- and that you don't have public elections when government insiders control essential processes in concealment, many national leaders pretend not to understand these fundamental concepts. They continue to claim that the machines are "tamperproof", "safe", and deserving of "confidence."
True democratic systems, of course, are not built on trusting government insiders, but on DISTRUST, with the delineating factor between a true democratic system and a false one being public controls.
As the German high court decision stated, every essential step of public elections must be something the public can see and authenticate, without need for special expertise.
It remains to be seen whether key US leaders wish to export real democracy, or a pseudo-democratic system which can be controlled "if needed."
Some may say they have a point. But WE have a right to trot that out in public for an open debate.
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