At 09:18 AM 8/25/2004, R. A. Hettinga wrote:
<http://www.business2.com/b2/web/articles/print/0,17925,683182,00.html>
Business 2.0 - Magazine Article - Printable Version -
Tilting at the Ballot Box Entrepreneur David Chaum's e-money venture flopped. Now he wants to fix electronic voting. For once, is the brilliant inventor right on time? By John Heilemann, September 2004 Issue
Like a shoemaker who only has hammers in his toolkit, Chaum is trying to fix the wrong problem. The problems with voting in the U.S. aren't current or even potential fraud at the ballot box its a complete lack of proportional representation. Hey Dude, Where's My Rep? The rallying cry of American Colonists was "No Taxation Without Representation". Although U.S politicians frequently present their political system as some paragon of representative democracy, I am unaware of any country since the Civil War adopting this winner-take-all, gerrymandered, model. Almost all opted for a parliamentary system with proportional representation. Today, unless you vote either Republican or Democrat you are effectively denied representation. Almost no independent candidates are ever elected to U.S. state, not alone federal office, even though in other democracies some would surely have gotten members of their party seated. If one accepts that the American Colonists were right to refuse to pay taxes to the British Crown until they received representation then why should today's independent voters pay state and federal taxes? steve