I don’t really know how seriously to take the risk that electronic voting systems are subject to undetectable rigging at the software level, but I know that it’s a risk I’d rather not have to think about at all. Rep. Rush Holt of New Jersey (who used to be Assistant Director of the Plasma Physics Lab at Princeton) has proposed a law that would make me sleep easier: it would require, among other things, a paper record of every vote and random audits. South Knox Bubba has the details. The fact that such simple safeguards didn’t make it into the “election reform” bill might hint, to someone more conspiratorially minded than I, that the Republican leadership doesn’t really mind a little bit of voter fraud, as long as their friends get to do it.
Write your Congressman.
Author: Mark Kleiman
Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out.
Books:
Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken)
When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist
Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993)
Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989)
UCLA Homepage
Curriculum Vitae
Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com
View all posts by Mark Kleiman
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