I Hate Progress!

But you already know that. For example, I love the old-fashioned voting machines that we have here in Connecticut. Apparently they go back to the Roosevelt (Franklin, not Theodore) era. Push the lever down to vote for your candidate. When you're done, pull the lever back, and you've voted. Elegant in its simplicity.

What I don't trust is these here new-fangled eelectronic votin' machines. What's so bad about 'em? Why, I'll tell ya. Any seventh grader worth his salt will be able to steal an election, that's what.

The latest dispute occurred several weeks ago after it was discovered at a test in Utah that someone with a reasonable knowledge of computer code could gain access to and tamper with the system software on a popular brand of voting machine manufactured by Diebold Election Systems.

Oh? you say? That's right, oh!

In California, David Jefferson, a computer scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who consults with the state on its elections, said he was "stunned when he found out" about the vulnerability identified in the Utah test and agreed with the "frequently expressed opinion that this is the worst vulnerability that we have ever seen."

But surely nobody would want to interfere with an honest election, is that what you're thinking? Well, maybe a terrorist might. Or. . .

The 2002 Election NH "phone jamming" case revolves around the hiring by the New Hampshire Republican Party of the Virginia-based telemarketing firm GOP Marketplace. Republican operative Allen Raymond, who was president of the firm at the time, then "subcontracted the deed" to Mylo Enterprises Inc., a Pocatello, Idaho, phone bank shop.

Prosecutors allege that 'GOP Marketplace' "was paid to make repeated hang-up phone calls to overwhelm the phone banks in New Hampshire and prevent them from getting Democratic voters to the polls" on Election Day, November 5, 2002. Six phone lines that were being run by Democratic "coordinated campaign offices," as well as phones in the offices of the Manchester firefighters union -- which was also doing a get-out-the-vote campaign that morning -- were jammed by 800 computer-generated hang up calls that tied up the lines for 1 1/2 hours.

Voters' rights were violated as the "computer-generated calls went to lines set up for voters who needed rides to the polls in Manchester, Nashua, Rochester and Claremont." The calls were "stopped after then-Republican State Committee Chairman John Dowd ordered a halt because of concerns about their legality."