Helpless, Helpless, Helpless

     This scenario is worse than precinct-based tabulation, he said. With 90 percent of votes in Pennsylvania now paperless, there is no way to know if any of them is worth a scratch on a pebble, and this plight in a swing state could rock the nation, as did Florida and Ohio most famously.

     In a Lincoln-esque mood, Mary Ann called this situation “faith-based elections.”

     The power is with the programmers, not with the people, continued Clint. The commissioners really have nothing to worry about broken voting-machine seals, he said. First you perform an accuracy test and run the tapes and then seal the whole thing up. Magnets and power surgers . . . anything can affect the touchscreens.

     Remember the machines in North Carolina that reached a certain total and then began counting backwards? The fault was in the program—the wrong one was used. The backward-counted votes could be interpreted as undervotes also, Clint answered to Lori Rosolowsky’s question.

     And, back to Bucks County, where the two Republican commissioners argue that a paper trail resides inside their Danahers, Clint explained that a computer won’t generate a log—people do. The programmer owns every component of the voting system.

     An internal hack is worse than an external one, continued Clint. On a Danaher, the virus will attack the server. External hacks are performed with the network card, the famous black-box skullduggery.

       Helpless, helpless, helpless—remember that old sixties song? We must show up at the polls in stampeding proportions—united we stampede?

     Is the conclusion of the evening that the fate of the nation lurks within the brains and preferences of computer programmers?

     Not exactly. The power is still, somewhere, with the people, dormant and quiet as Mary Ann calls her home state. The truth will need some buckshot to emerge from this ethical swamp in the Buckeye State.

     This is the time, then, not to mourn for HR 5036, but to get everyone to vote absentee, I say. If the ballots get hacked, the hackers will have a hard time of it with all the election protection united against them. There will be mountains of paper ballots. We can distribute stamps. We can go door to door. We can fight racism and discrimination, as usual.

     But there’s no time to waste on tears right now, but think of the paper mountains and what a boost not only USPS will receive, but all of us, back to paper at last. Helpless, helpless, helpless let the opposition be, for a change, and stay that way.

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