Of elections, voting machines and credibility

A while back, Black Box Voting publicized what it described as yet another flaw in Diebold voting machines. Details here; typical Slashdot discussion here.

I mentioned this to S., who has a certain degree of knowledge about accounting practices, and she expressed some skepticism about both sides of the squabble.

This comment, by an "Anonymous Coward" on Slashdot, raises quite another issue. Even if the election is NOT tampered with or plagued by obvious electronic FUBARs, the results will lack ironclad credibility if there is no recountable paper trail. The transparency of vote-counting, and the existence of a verifiable hard-copy record of the vote totals, and the consequent willingness of the loser to concede the election, are just as vital to a working democracy as the counting of the votes. But what if there is no transparency, no recountable paper trail, no credibility other than Diebold saying that they really, really promise, cross their hearts, that you lost fair and square, and that you should trust them? I really can't put it any better than the A.C., and so I shamelessly cut and paste:

As a country that has such a long history of voting for our representatives, we have taken for granted the single most important aspect of democratic governance: Transparency. No democracy since the invention of clay voting markers has survived without this fundamental facet of the process. It does not matter if it is a pure democracy or a representative government. It does not matter if we use electoral colleges or parliamentary votes. It does not matter if we use clay tablets, punched cards or write-once CDs. What every election-monitoring group is designed to enforce is transparency.

Why? Because the loser has to concede to the fact that he has lost. We do not force the loser to lose, the loser allows the winner to win. "I lost in a fair fight. Better luck next time." The concession speech is just as important to democracy as the acceptance speech.

If a loser of an election disputes the results and the winner cannot defend the vote count, then the loser has every right to appeal to other means--in most countries, violence.

In the last American election, the loser disputed the vote count. The winner could not defend the results, so the loser appealed to other means--the Supreme Court.

The fact that there was no outbreak of violence (at least of any significance) was not due to the voters' acceptance of the count. It was due to the voter's acceptance of the Supreme Court as the final word in American government. The loser accepted the Supreme Court decision and allowed the winner to win. The voters (some begrudgingly) accepted the decision.

But please note: the last disputed election had something that the next one will not: chads--a paper trail--transparency. Win or lose, everyone had the hope that eventually, the truth would be known. It may take days, weeks or months to determine, but the truth would be known. The system would work.

Ignore conspiracy theories. Ignore corporate donors. Ignore programming loopholes. The threat of the next disputed election is the notion that even if the election is honest, even if every vote is counted, even if the outcome truly matches the intent of the voters, the loser will be able to dispute the outcome and the winner will not be able to defend it.

Imagine the turmoil if after the last election, over a million of the punch ballots had gone missing. That is what these systems offer. It does not matter who wins this fall. The loser will dispute the result and the winner will not be able to defend it....