Postpone the Elections?

So this Princeton computer scientist shows on TV how mindlessly easy it is to subvert the Diebold voting machine, and Diebold's lame retort is "you didn't have the latest version of our software."

That's supposed to inspire confidance?

We have the talent in this country to develop a transparent open source voting system with tons of built in protections. Banks know this stuff cold. When big money is at stake, they're among the first to demand auditing.

But when it comes to voting, where's the integrity? Who really defends democracy anymore? Anyone?

Dissecting critical, core civilian infrastructure, describing how it works, is an essential function of public education in the USA. If we expect to recruit new voters into the system, we at least owe them an explanation of how it all works.

If a teacher can't describe how a vote at the polling booth makes it to some HQS for tallying, with checks against abuse, then that teacher's students have been denied access to their most fundamental rights as USA citizens.

Congress needed to play a leading role in restoring trust in voting, electronic or otherwise.

Not having a secure system in place is terrifying, destabilizing, and to even implicitly endorse this status quo is to be a kind of terrorist for sure.

I'll be scanning my sources for any sign that the American people are being given a clear story about their newfangled voting system. Unless these stories appear, I don't think USAers should be coerced into voting by any "powers that be," nor should the results be given any legitimacy.

The election should perhaps be officially postponed, and no I'm not talking about martial law.

On the contrary, we should go into a holding pattern, with politicians forced to fix what's broken, every move scrutinized, run through a gauntlet of experts, the security-minded, those with real world auditing experience.

This would be interesting reality television, instead of just the namby pamby stuff like on Survivor (talk about lame).

Until then, whatever these politicians talk about on television is really of no weight or significance to us. We might as well tune out and just listen to Muzak™.

If the real USA isn't what's on TV, why should we even care? Let's just admit that our USA has been subverted and destroyed from within, and move on, maybe start over on an island someplace.

Antarctica anyone?