Entries from November 2008 ↓

Since the passage of proposition 8 in California last week, the LGBT community has suddenly started protesting. In mostly peaceful protests, thousands of LGBT supporters around the country have held rallies protesting the mormon church and the laws against marriage.

I am gay, opposed proposition 8, and support these protesters; however, I have one question. Where were these protests 4 years ago, where were they 2 weeks ago?

Why did the LGBT community wait until after they lost the election to get angry? Why are we as a community so apathetic? We have terrible leadership within the LGBT community. Our leaders do not listen to our community, they do not listen to our priorities, and they do not know how to get the word out.

For most of the LGBT community marriage is fourth or fifth on our priorities. Right after employment discrimination, hate crimes, HIV, and police profiling. Why are we trying to fight the hard fight before winning the small victories and gaining momentum? Why are we unable to accept civil unions for the time being while we work on the bigger issues than marriage?

Also, why are we protesting the church. We are not going to change the opinion of the church, it is not worth our time, and it may even hurt our cause. Instead, let us focus on the lawmakers and civic centers whose mind we might actually change and allow us to win some of these small victories. We need to change the target of our anger and we need to change our focus. And we need to protest when we are trying to win, not after we have already lost.

Join the protests at your city hall this Saturday at 1:30 Eastern this Saturday 11/15. www.jointheimpact.com.

Much has been made about electronic voting machines and their reliability. Election officials and the makers of these machines claim they are completely reliable, yet security and computer experts insist that problems exist.

The security and computer experts are right. Think about Windows and how Microsoft releases several patches and security fixes every month. This means Windows which has been out and in development for years still has security problems. Why would anyone believe that a voting machine which has been in development for a lot less time does not have security problems?

I work in the computer industry and I can guarantee that security holes or bugs exist in Windows, in the computer that runs your car, in this website, in your DVR, at your credit card company, and in voting machines. With complex software there are always bugs and security issues.

So if e-voting machines have problems how should we count our votes? Well, there is no 100% accurate way to count votes. People will make mistakes hand counting, scanning machines may misread or have a bug, mechanical counters may break, and e-voting machines may have bugs. The most accurate of these four is the mechanical machine; however, this is hard for the voter to use because once they press a lever they cannot change the vote. Hand counting would be the next best, but is very slow and requires a lot of people. Scanning machines and e-voting both have the same security and bug issues.

The right solution in my opinion is to use the e-voting machines with a paper trail that is also audited. This does not mean every paper ballot should be hand counted, but 10% of the votes cast on the machine should be hand counted and a statistical analysis done to ensure that the voting machine most likely reported correctly. If this shows potential issues, then a full hand count for the voting machine should occur.

The problem is most states do not require a paper trail, so if the voting machine reports incorrectly, too bad the results are still treated as gold because there is no proof or possible indication of a problem. Encourage your legislators to require a paper trail for all voting so the machines can be audited and the general public have confidence in the results.