Pennsylvania’s ‘Faith-Based’ Primary

Posted on Apr 21, 2008

All eyes will be on Pennsylvania Tuesday, but citizen journalist Brad Friedman wonders if all votes will be counted, especially considering that the vast majority of Pennsylvanians will be casting electronic ballots. Election integrity is one of those issues that get a lot of lip service but no real action, which is probably why we’re still talking about it in 2008.

Brad Blog:

On Tuesday night, you will be told who the winner of the Pennsylvania Primary is. You will accept it. You will have no choice. No matter who the winner really is. Or isn’t.

This Tuesday’s crucial contest will be primarily run on 100% faith-based, Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, usually touch-screen or push-button) e-voting machines across the state. There will be no way to determine after the election whether the computers have accurately recorded, or not, the intent of those voters who voted on them. As VerifiedVoting.org summarizes the crucial contest, it “will be essentially unrecountable, unverifiable, and unauditable.”

Most of the votes, more than 85%, will be cast on such DRE systems which do not provide so-called “Voter Verified Paper Audit Trails” (VVPATs), as their use has been found unconstitutional in the state, since its been determined, accurately, that ballot secrecy cannot be guaranteed when using such paper trail systems. Not that it matters.

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