NOW BIG BROTHER FOLLOWS YOU INTO THE VOTING BOOTH

Black Box Voting, a non-profit, non-partisan watchdog group says that the government and some vendors of voting products “…can now access your secret ballot.” There are two product lines that make up the process. On the vote tracker side, Vote Here and Populex maintain the election audit and verification technology and a digital paper ballot created on a computer-based touch screen system. For voter data retention, Diebold and Hart Intercivic provide a system of election management services to complete the loop. Each in itself is harmless, but when you mix the tracker companies with the voter retention firms, the ballots hit the fan. According to an article by Black Box Voting, the bar code on the ballot allows the vote counter to create a computer file with the voter information, storing the ballot images in directories. In other words, your voter ID is embedded with the vote you cast. Black Box thinks political appointees are the most at risk, if they should vote against the administration they work for. And all these voter ballot images can be transferred to database formats, where we begin to understand the intent of this whole private business/government collusion. The Patriot Act started the Bush/Cheney spy machine rolling, followed by the NSA prying into the lives of innocent Americans, and now this possibility. You may say I cry Big Brother too often, but these new methods by business and government to snoop into our private lives pop up too regularly to ignore.