Count Your Own Vote

The electronic voting ma­chines that one-third of American voters will be using in November are no more reliable than your home computer. Technology has actually taken us a step backward. Paper itself was never fraudproof (remember those chads?), but a stolen, lost, or stuffed ballot box risks mere hundreds of votes while a hidden computer glitch risks millions. Transparency—not just of the software code, but of the whole voting system—has never been more important.