More on Election and a general editorial comment

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Ian Stoba <ian () babcockbrown com>
Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2003 10:07:49 -0700
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] More on Election and a general editorial comment

I'm not one to make fun of others' typos (I make more than enough of
them myself, thank you), but I had to tell you that reading about Nixon
and the "limits of poower" made my morning.

Regarding the article, I thought that the breathless, near-hysterical
tone detracted from the serious point: large, complex rollouts of
critical systems (including voting machines) must be done carefully, or
the results are invariably disastrous. This is as true for Hershey's
famous SAP debacle as it is for Diebold's voting systems.

While I am by no means convinced that the 2000 election involved
tampered voting machines, such an attack would not have required the
massive conspiracy some have suggested. A small change in the count for
a few Florida counties, perhaps involving only one or two elections
officials,  could have made the difference.

Perhaps the best that can come out of Harris' rantings is that more
attention will be paid to the serious work that is going on at Stanford
and elsewhere studying the risks of voting machines that do not leave
an auditable paper trail.

--Ian

------ End of Forwarded Message

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