It's Primary Election Day where I live, and I've just returned from my first experience with a touch-screen electronic voting machine.
My initial impression was, if you know the slightest bit about computers, this would be the easiest way in the world to fix an election, short of assassinating your candidate's opponent. My second impression was, if the powers that be want to take this route, why not make it possible to vote over the Internet from the comfort of your own home and in your jammies?
My third impression was, we're screwed. There's no way crooked people with a crooked mind can resist tampering with this system. Wrong-headed people with their corrupt point of view already go out of their way to change, alter, and fix things much less important. With the stakes so high, and so much money at risk, the same people who have been picking our pockets for years won't be able to resist altering, changing, and fixing elections. It will happen somewhere, I promise, and we'll be hearing about it through the media one day soon.
My only question is, with every possible poll showing such a high level of disapproval for the people running things now, if the next several elections reflect something other than the way we know most of us feel, what will be the result? Who can we complain to, and what would be the outcome? Short of anarchy and a complete revolt, all that's left to us is something like, The Fall of the Roman Empire.
