Yesterday, Michael Moore met with Occupy Wall Street protestors and helped to draft a vision statement and a list of 10 goals & objectives – you can read them all on his website.
I won’t get political, but one thing did stick out in point 10:
a) A constitutional amendment that fixes our broken electoral system by 1) completely removing campaign contributions from the political process; 2) requiring all elections to be publicly financed; 3) moving election day to the weekend to increase voter turnout; 4) making all Americans registered voters at the moment of their birth; 5) banning computerized voting and requiring that all elections take place on paper ballots.
This appeal reminded me of the electronic records class I took, where we wrestled with the ideas of trust and authenticity in electronic record making and keeping.
This 2006 info graphic was used to highlight some of the complications. Things can change and improve and, of course, are different in each township/city/jurisdiction, but I don’t think the OWS trepidation of computerized voting is completely unfounded.
You can check out all of the content from the electronic records class, including the syllabus and lecture slides, at Open.Michigan. [HUGE props to David Wallace & Margaret Hedstrom for graciously allowing their work to be shared via a Creative Commons license.]
