On Friday, USA TODAY’s Richard Wolfe ran a not terrible article about the growing nationwide trend to move away from electronic voting machines to more transparent and secure paper ballot based systems. His otherwise decent article included this curious graf [emphasis added]…
From Florida to California, the nation’s flirtation with electronic voting is on the rocks. More and more states and counties are reverting to paper ballots fed through optical scanners because of problems — some real, some perceived — with machines that didn’t offer the level of security and transparency voters demand.
So I’m just curious. Which of the myriad, scientifically demonstrated problems with the security and transparency of electronic voting are the “perceived” ones, versus the “real” ones? Or are there some other “perceived” problems which have prompted the trend?
If your own personal house has never been robbed, yet you turn on an alarm system and/or lock the doors when you leave it, is that due to a perceived concern or a real one?
I’d really love to know Wolfe’s answer.
Re “problems “” some real, some perceived”
I’m going to offer the explanation that this may have been nothing more than poor word choice. He could have used “problems – some having already occurred, some having not occurred yet but potential and easily predictable.” But then, USA Today readers tend to go for simple writing, lots of colored pictures, simple and noncontroversial subject matter, kind of like what you might find in a child’s coloring book.
I’m always amazed, whenever I travel by air, the number of passengers who are actually reading USA Today, some of them seeming to just pour over it, reading articles in their entirety. USA Today is one of those rags you can glance at for a minute or two and be just as informed as those who actually read its articles.
Nonetheless, I consider it as being progress that this topic is actually being covered by them.
Brad and Linda
Well, real includes everything real, leaving only unreal = perceived IMO.
That means, in kosspeak terms, “nutters”.
Sounds like an article trying to please everyone.
We know that the real electronic election machine world is composed of dark matter, anti-matter, and all things sewer.
And we know that even going to paper ballots in every precinct is not the end of all things sewer. Stalin used paper ballots.
There will still be Butch Custody and the Hoppy Kid, “B.” Esser, the San Diego clown brothers, and similar scenarios to deal with everywhere in Amurka.
But once we get paper ballots in place, then we move on to remove the rest of all things sewer.
thanks Brad, i read that article also. it was a fluff and incomplete article. it didn’t mention the main reasons electronic voting machines are a disaster, that they have been proven unreliable and easily hacked.
I doubt we will be hearing Steven Hertzberg’s opinions on these matters. In fact, the Election Science Institute’s domain has been scrubbed. Those curious about Hertzberg’s recent work can try to locate him at his ronpaulonline domain.
“Fintan,” Hertzberg, Kos, DU, Brad, Bev, and the Raw Story
I like USA today … in my bird cages cuz it absorbs the urine so well . . .
Is the radical economic downturn because of a real Iraq influence or a perceived Iraq influence?
I guess it depends on whether Americans needed the $3.3 trillion used to kill, maim, and destroy Iraq more than BIG BROTHER did? Some perceive we did not need that American treasure.
The perceived problem in elections is voter fraud, and the real problem in elections is electronic voting machines, lame election officials, and the fact that electioneering is a faith based pseudo-religion.
Is the increased violence in Iraq real or perceived?
Is the Bush/Cheney’s insistence that the surge is working real or perceived? I don’t have a link to their insistence, because I tend to not read the propaganda (unsubstantiated press releases) coming out of the WH.
But the bigger questions are which is real, and which is perceived: the increased violence in Iraq or the Bush/Cheney WH press releases? Unless their goal in Iraq is to increase violence and mayhem (hmmm), they can’t both be right.
Why do reporters keep thinking that opscan voting systems are NOT ‘electronic’?
Why do reporters keep positing ‘populist’ as ‘socialist’? See here:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journ...anscript2.html
The corporate media are always going to minimize peoples’ concerns about stolen elections, as long as the corporations’ candidates “win.”
perceived (adj.)1. detected by instinct or inference rather than by recognized perceptual cues; “the felt presence of an intruder”; “a sensed presence in the room raised goosebumps on her arms”; “a perceived threat” [syn: sensed]
2. detected by means of the senses; “a perceived difference in temperature
In other words, the perceived problems are the ones that have already been detected. Perceived does not mean unreal. But, as noted in the USA Today article, there are likely a lot of additional real problems that have not necessarily been perceived yet.