Can Americans trust vote results?

Accuracy and fairness problems are not limited to the states that determined who would be president in 2000 and 2004. Many states are expected to be in close presidential and congressional races this year. That offers plenty of possibilities for results that do not reflect the votes actually cast.

It is time that we got over denial of the problems. Elections are worth stealing and people will try. Scientific studies of voting machines across the U.S. point out that in fourteen states it is impossible to verify the results of all or most of the electronic voting machines. Independent investigators estimate that at least 138 of the 270 electoral college delegates needed to win the presidency will be determined in states whose machines are glitch prone, security lax, or simply unreliable.

Efforts are being made to improve both accuracy and fairness, but the task is monumental, because elections are run at the state and local level in the U.S. America claims to be the beacon of Democracy, but if we cannot run elections fairly and have voting procedures which produce accurate results that we can trust, we will descend from the light of our ideals into the heart of darkness.

Election tallies will never be perfect, but our voting officials must do better, and they must do better now.

Goldsmith is a former director of the American Institute in Taiwan’s Kaohsiung Office, and author of “Jade Phoenix,” a prize-winning novel of 1970s Taiwan that is offered in a Far East edition by Bookman Books Ltd. in Taipei.

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