In response to the potential for election rigging that could be enabled by the Help America Vote Act, Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) has introduced a bill in Congress requiring a voter-verifiable paper trail, The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003.
“We cannot afford nor can we permit another major assault on the integrity of the American electoral process,” says Holt. “Imagine it’s Election Day 2004. You enter your local polling place and go to cast your vote on a brand new ‘touch screen’ voting machine. The screen says your vote has been counted. As you exit the voting booth, however, you begin to wonder. How do I know if the machine actually recorded my vote? The fact is, you don’t.”
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Joel Bleifuss, a former director of the Peace Studies Program at the University of Missouri-Columbia, is the editor & publisher of In These Times, where he has worked since October 1986.
