That said, we must remember the "chads" and Florida, 2000. Paper is hardly infallible, and it's fallibility is hardly restricted to hanging chads. I side with those who Lynn has mentioned who want machine produced paper ballots that then become the actual vote itself. This would remove entirely the need for an audit of any voting machines that were actually used by voters. If an error occurred on that paper ballot, it could simply be torn up, and the voter could vote again. If a similar problem occurred on that same voting machine, local offficials would be immediately aware of it, and could simply disable that machine. All of this would be fully observable by poll watches from any party that chose to have one present.
But on to my objections.
Objection #1: The is nothing inherently wrong with Internet voting that is not shared by every other method voting, including paper. The Internet is what you make it, and quite secure technologies exist for relatively safe voting via the Internet. Certainly no worse than other technologies. I don't particuarly agree with this Internet voting proposal (see "Objection #2 below"), not because it cannot be made fairly secure, but rather because they simply do not have time to implement it in that fashion. Above all, computer systems cannot be rushed, and this is exactly what the Michigan Democrats seem to be trying to do.
Objection #2: Primaries do not elect people. They are simply one technique that political parties use to select the candidate that they will put forward on the general election ballot. Given that all parties are essentially private organizations, each of those organizations should be fully free to select whatever method of selection they wish to determine their candidate. While I may not agree with a party's chosen method of selection, it is really none of my business unless I am a member of that party. If the method is agreeable to the members of that party, that is their business. If their method of selecting their candidate is not effective, then they will fail to put forth electable candidates until they change their method. But that is strictly their business, even if Michigan democrats want Internet voting.
Objection #3: Landes starts this article by taking a swipe at George Soros that simply is not justified:
Let's start with billionaire George Soros, the Democrats anointed billionaire savior. They should get to know him better. According to voting rights activists, Soros is a proponent of Internet voting, the most insecure voting technology on face of the planet. He's also a disciple for Direct Democracy (i.e., the initiative process). Think about that. For anyone who wants to control a government, the combination of the Internet voting and Direct Democracy is a fascist's dream-team. Through control of vote-counting technology, not only could "someone" pick our legislators, they could also pass their own legislation. They could be a true Wizard of Oz.Aside from the condescending tone ("anointed billionaire savior"), the fact that Soros is in no way involved in the Michigan voting decision and therefore irrelevent to this article. Landes is simply wrong in her insinuation that Soros might have some fascist leanings. In fact, I might suggest that it is Landes herself that needs to get to know Soros better. A good way to do this would be to read the speech delivered by Soros (Jan. 12, 2004) at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C., an event that served as the official release of his book, "The Bubble of American Supremacy."
In this speech, Soros skewers the Bush administration for its decision to invade Iraq, and indeed, it may be almost solely for this action that he wishes to see Bush defeated in the coming election:
Underlying the Bush doctrine is the belief that international relations are relations of power not law, and that international law merely serves to ratify what the use of power has wrought.Powerful words, but perhaps one could have opposed the invasion of Iraq in this fashion and still have anti-democratic leanings. Perhaps one can even oppose the Bush doctrine of power by force in a similar fashion. But Soros goes on to explain why he feels this way:This dogma can be very appealing especially when you are powerful, but it contradicts the values that have made America great. And the rest of the world cannot possibly accept it.
and The invasion of Iraq was the first practical application of the Bush doctrine and the rest of the world had an allergic reaction to it. Nobody had a good word to say about Saddam Hussein yet the overwhelming majority of the people and governments of the world opposed the invasion because we did it unilaterally, indulging in pre-emptive military action.and If we reelect Bush in 2004 we endorse the Bush doctrine and we will have to live with the consequences. We shall be regarded with widespread hostility and terrorists will be able to count on many sympathizers around the world. We are liable to be trapped in a vicious circle of violence, ... 2004 is not an ordinary election; it is a referendum on the Bush doctrine. The future of the world hangs in the balance.
Perhaps I am more sensitive to the dangers than most Americans because of my background. I was born in Hungary and I am Jewish. The Nazis occupied Hungary and the Jews were deported. I would have perished if my father had not had the foresight to procure false identities for his family. Then Hungary was occupied by the Soviet Union and my life could have been wasted if I had not emigrated. So I learnt at a very early age how important it is what kind of social system prevails. I chose freedom, first in England and then in America.But it is even more telling that at this point, Soros invokes the name Karl Popper:
As a student I was greatly influenced by Karl Popper, the philosopher. He showed that there was something common to both the Nazis and the Communists. They believed they had the final answers. But the ultimate truth is not within our reach. So the final answers can be imposed only by force or repression. He advocated a different approach: A social system based on the recognition that nobody is in possession of the ultimate truth and might is not necessarily right.This is critical to understanding George Soros. The fact of the matter is that one cannot be an admirer of Karl Popper without the complete belief that the democratic voting process is not only the best form of government, but indeed the only form of government that actually works.
Few outside of those who have studied philosophy have heard of Karl Popper, but that is also true of most philosophers. Great philosophical works are hardly bedtime reading. One must "eat" these works with intensity, much as one approaches a Thanksgiving feast. Popper has written two such works, both direct descendents of Immanuel Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" (1781), in which Kant demonstrated that for human beings, captive to their own limited senses, absolute knowledge is impossible.
If this was so, thought Popper, what to make of science? Could it be that science does not prove anything, and if this is the case, what good is science? Popper's answer comes in "The Logic of Scientific Discovery" (1935), in which he argued that it is not the role of science to prove anything, but rather to establish theories in such a manner that they can be proven false ("falsifiablity"). When a scientific theory is established in this manner (and all real scientific theories are; "creation science" is a theory, but it is not a scientific theory because it is not stated in a falsifiable manner), they are either proven false or become accepted as "the current state of science". This acceptance is not proof that the theory is correct; merely that no one has yet proven it false. But it remains as "science" until someone can.
In fact, argued Popper, this explains exactly how scientific discoveries gradually replace each other, earlier ones being approximations, and later ones being simply refinements of those approximations. Just as Newtonian physics was "the answer" for hundreds of years until being superceded by the physics of Einstein, so also with all of science. Of course, this was not the work of Popper's to which Soros was referring, but it important to understand, as it is at the core of what becomes Popper's later masterpiece (and the one to which Soros referred), "The Open Society and Its Enemies" (1945).
At the time "The Open Society" was written, many were arguing that democracy was "inefficient"; that the overhead of educating voters created a drag on changes to government (i.e., law) that might be necessary. The American system was successful merely because of the great natural resources they possessed, but, all other things being equal, an aristocratic form of government could certainly implement needed reforms far more quickly and therefore more efficiently. (This coincides with the Platonic philosphy (embraced by Strauss and his heirs, the Neocons) that a "gifted elite" was the best form of government.)
No, argued Popper, in perhaps the most brilliant re-write of a philosophical work ever. Whatever the current form of government, that is merely today's approximation of the best government. But since human beings can never have absolute knowledge of anything, that government must also be falsifiable. It must be open to examination to anyone who can prove it to be "wrong". And the only system of governing that Popper saw that allowed for this is democracy. Popper had simply looked at the "efficiency" of "scientific discovery", and he applied it to governments. The "open society" of science, in which anyone can prove a theory to be wrong, was identical to governments. They are merely a "best approximation" of what a government should be, and only democracy allowed for the successive refinements needed to advance it in the exact same manner in which scientific discovery advances.
And this is what George Soros believes. It is also why Lynn Landes is way of base in this criticism. One cannot be merely "influenced" by Popper. One either "gets it", or one does not. George Soros gets it.
This article previously appeared on Black Box Notes.
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