Jennifer Watson: Machines are too untrustworthy to handle counting our ballots

To The Daily Sun,

There's a party game played with a regular deck of cards called "I Doubt It." It involves bluffing. The deck is divided up among the players, and everyone has to lay a card face down consecutively. If you don't have the right number, you bluff. If you are supposed to lay down a five but you don't have one, you might lay down a seven but say "five." Since the card is face down, you might get away with it, if no one calls you on it.

With the advent of machine voting, it feels as if our elections have become a similar gamble. We are supposed to believe that everything is above board and no cheating is going on, while at the same time any proof of election results is hidden from us. We’re asked to trust machines with their secret, proprietary computer code without widespread verification.

Over the past 20 years or so, computer experts have demonstrated how to cheat using voting machines. Given this distinct possibility, it is understandable why more and more people question election results and think we should ditch the machines.

While eliminating machines in our voting process wouldn't deal with all of the concerns surrounding the security of our elections here in New Hampshire and throughout the US, it does remove one major way cheating might occur. Let's get rid of all voting machines. It may be fun to bluff our way through a card game, but it’s no way to run an election.

Jennifer Watson

Laconia