Manjoo's arrogant and condescending attack on Robert Kennedy Jr.'s seminal piece on Ohio's fraudulent election in 2004 is still fresh in my mind, and obviously in Manjoo's as well. His ego just won't let him be wrong even though he is. "Rational' people decided a long time ago what he still thinks is arguable: Of course the 2004 presidential election was stolen in Ohio. I was there in October two years ago, going door-to- door and talking to Kerry campaign people at all levels. It wasn't only the technology that did it, but the distribution of voter machines, and other (Democratic) voter suppression methods that the Republicans have elevated to a science.

Elections have never been honest in this country, and probably everywhere else as well. Democrats used to vote the graveyard, and Republicans scare voters away. Only in America would we take pride in 13,000 separate election systems, and letting partisians run them. But then we're the best there is. Right?

Until we get one set of rules, from sea-to-shining-sea, auditable paper trails, and a supervisory system that is non-partisian will we have an election system worthy of the name. What we have now is just another hoax perpetrated on the gullible who are led to believe their vote counts - those that still do that is - so that political elites can continue in power, whether they be Republicrats or Democans.

Lastly, if ATM machines can keep track of every dollar that goes through them, obviously with an auditable record, then a secure voting machine can certainly be designed. But then ATM machines deal with something important: money. Votes obviously don't meet that standard.

From day one, from the beginning. Believe it.

One of the problems that underlies voting reform is that we expect that technology will fix the problem. The real problem with our system is us. We are willing to do anything to see our side win. We espouse democracy as long as we can control the results by one means or another. Fixing elections is simply one of the many methods we use. Think, for a moment, about the sheer absurdity of using computers to create a tamper-proof system. This is only slightly less absurd than thinking we can create a tamper-proof system in the first place. That would require that we be able to trust one another to be honest. Why spend billions on equipment when we can get the same results with paper ballots? At least with paper ballots, the ability to fix elections would be more democractic. It encourages fixing at the local level rather than placing the power in the hands of Diebold.

Suppose you're in a county where 10,000 people vote. Of these 10,000, 1,000 elect to use paper ballots. If the official count from the electronic system has candidate 'A' winning by 2,000 votes, do you think they're really going to bother to count the paper ballots before certifying the election? Why would they bother when the 1,000 paper ballots can't change the election, even if they recounted.

I think we need to face the facts that unless we force the authorities to have a voter verified paper trail and start enforcing a strict security plan for voting machines, we will never be sure that the votes we enter are the votes that get counted.

We should make Diebold treat our votes as well as they treat the banks' money.

Thank you for keeping an open mind. You show objectivity by changing your opinion about the integrity of US elections, now that there is incontrovertible evidence of widespread ineptitude and fraud our elections system.

I have new-found respect for you and Salon.

Thank you for shining some light on the problems we face.

From the article:

"And you also have to guess that if Rove were planning on rigging the election, he would probably not be advertising his certainty now."

I don't understand this logic. If the election is rigged and there was NO POLL in existence that agreed with it, wouldn't there be more doubt than if a single poll (even secret one) did agree with it?

In fact, isn't this exactly the right thing for Karl to claim if he WAS rigging the election? At the end of the day, he can say that his polls were accurate because he knew how to do an accurate poll and nobody else did.

Canada is indeed an extraordinary example of how clean, simple and efficient all-paper elections can be. Their results are typically in in under 4 hours for the whole country!

As for handicapped voting, it can be done on paper for blind and motor-impared voters. See www,Vote-PAD,com.

Isn't this, at least, a MAD situation - they can hack us, we can hack them - so no one hacks anyone? Unless one believes that Democrats are above cheating, why should Republicans rest easy? Maybe we should get a bi-partisan group of hackers to observe electronic votes around the country - keep an eye on each other so to speak, until we can get a secure electronic voting scheme in place (if that exists). Maybe we should scrap electronic voting, but I don't understand how new technology can be less secure than old - is it not possible to rig the traditional voting machine - pull the lever for A while B gets the tally - all the while the voter walks out of the booth feeling s/he voted for A?

Can we, at this point, trust any election that ever took place?

It's downright scary!

For some reason, we Americans think it's a great idea to have all our elections at the same time, which is something most other democracies have rejected. The reason the Canadian model one letter-writer commented on works is that elections for Canadian federal parliaments occur separately from all other elections. A voter is given a single sheet of paper on which he or she marks exactly one box, to indicate a choice for the federal parliament, and nothing more. It's pretty hard to make a mistake when you have nothing more to do than that.

In our country, we make sure that we're voting on everything from Congress to the state legislature to ballot initiatives to dogcatcher at the same time. This not only greatly complicates the process of the election, it also complicates the process of designing the ballot (think Palm Beach County butterfly ballot) and the counting of the ballots. It probably also greatly lessens the care with which the bottom of the ballot is filled out.

In the name of democracy, we essentially take away our technical ability to control our government.