The Machinery of Democracy: Protecting Elections in an Electronic World

Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0897335538, Paperback)

The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University convened a high-level task force of voting experts from government, academia and the private sector to systematically analyze vulnerabilities in electronic voting systems used across the country. In this ground-breaking book, a crack team of technical experts concentrates on three main types of electronic voting systems: Direct Recording Electronic (DRE), Direct Recording Electronic with Voter Verified Paper Trail (DRE w/VVPT), and Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS). All three voting systems are shown to have significant security and reliability risks.

This book not only systematically identifies 120 potential threats to voting technology, but it offers specific remedies and countermeasures that election officials can employ to make these attacks more difficult to perform.

This is an eye-opening account not only of the hazards of electronic voting in the 21st century, but a level-headed approach for dealing with real and potential threats to democratic elections.

A second part of this crucial report, entitled "Cast Out," deals with voter repression. It enumerates the many ways voters are deprived of their electoral rights by those who are determined to use the reforms of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) as "an opportunity to restrict rather than enhance the franchise." An examination of these techniques reveals how manipulation of our electoral system can actually disenfranchise more Americans than any of the mechanical voting machine failures we see on Election Day.