Ed Burns's Blog

My Fellow Americans: Check that you can still vote

If you’re reading my blog, it’s likely you are a computer professional, so you know how error-prone large scale software systems can be. (You also know they are less-error prone if they are built with JSF. :^)) There have been many stories in reputable news sources regarding apparently error-prone purges of voter registration roles in the U.S.. Some of the errors may be due to IT problems, including data-entry. If you’re a registered voter in the U.S., I strongly encourage you to verify that you are still registered to vote, and to vote early. An excellent and accurate state-by-state listing of official phone numbers you can call to perform verification and discover early voting procedures may be found at <http://www.voterparticipationcenter.org/voting.html>. I called the one in Florida, where I live, and they were very competent and helpful. Remember, every vote counts if the vote is counted.

Finally, every computer professional needs to be concerned about net neutrality. Consider your favored candidates stance on net neutrality when deciding for whom to cast your (verified) vote.

Technorati Tags: edburns

Comments

• That's good information. I appreciate the link - I've used it already to get the answer to my question on being purged. I had no idea the different states have such a variance on the registration deadlines. That was an eye opener in itself.

  Posted by: adambryson on October 12, 2008 at 11:56 AM

• Ed,

  As programmers I think that we're all well aware of just how hard it is to prevent fraud in any system where software plays a role in collecting and tabulating votes.

  Have you come across any good proposals for increasing the likelihood that vote counts will accurately reflect the votes that are cast?

  John

  Posted by: johnreynolds on October 12, 2008 at 12:14 PM

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.