Jennifer Kursman Columnist

Let the games begin! With election season in full swing, the American press can't seem to stop talking about Bush and the Democratic candidates. However, an issue more important than the race has been widely overlooked ÷ the mechanism of voting itself.

The United States became the butt of other countries' jokes after the disastrous 2000 election, with its butterfly chads and the messy court case that ensued. In response, local governments put their punch cards aside and began experimenting with new technology that promised to make results more accurate. For bonus points, the companies that manufacture electronic voting systems pitched the machines' incredible ability to make voting easier and more accessible.

With roughly half the American electorate voting in the last presidential election, who would argue against a method that encourages civic participation?

Granted, no voting system is completely perfect ÷ and electronic voting might work in the future ÷ but for now, a disturbing number of flaws makes the new voting machines vulnerable to those who would undermine the system.

There's no way to verify that people voting from their homes don't have someone looking over their shoulder.

First of all, the machines leave no paper trail. In the event of a tie, there would be no way to recount votes. On an even scarier note, many computer security experts agree that the new machines aren't hacker-proof. While doomsday types are already forecasting terrorists cracking the U.S. ballots from a foxhole, mainstream pundits are also casting a shadow of warning.

A 2001 report by the Internet Policy Institute concluded that "remote Internet voting systems pose significant risk to the integrity of the voting process." A Washington company that manufactures electronic voting technology, VoteHere Inc., has already been hacked.

Internet voting also poses some not-so-obvious risks. Traditionally, the voting experience takes place behind a dark curtain, ensuring that voters aren't being forced to vote for a particular candidate. There's no way to verify that people voting from their homes don't have someone looking over their shoulder ÷ or that the person pressing the keyboard is in fact who he or she claims to be.

Opponents argue that secure transactions take place every day online. But Avi Rubin, a security expert at Johns Hopkins University, testified that, "In a voting system, you do not keep a record of who voted for whom; whereas in an e-commerce system, you have an audit trail that you can use to settle disputes."

Additionally, Rubin pointed out that worms and viruses have power over traditional safeguards like passwords and cryptography. Even in the case of online banking, customers receive a paper receipt to verify their balance. To apply this technique with voting could mean that records are kept of who voted for whom ÷ bringing the U.S. back to the days of ballot-box stuffers at Tammany Hall.

So a Catch-22 occurs. Without verification, the integrity of the election can be questioned; to verify the vote, some kind of record must be kept, compromising the integrity of the election.

Proponents of electronic voting prophesy that the new machines will encourage more people to vote. Indeed, in Arizona's 2000 primary, Internet voting doubled the previous turnout record. But when it came to the presidential election, the percentage of Arizonans who voted ranked second lowest in the nation.

Achieving long-term voter increase, rather than short-term results, can be solved only by overcoming the hurdle of voter apathy. Perhaps a reform in the electorate system could give voter turnout a shot in the arm. Consider this ÷ the current system was created in the 1700s by elite aristocratic types who feared regular people were too stupid to think for themselves. Voters today would have a greater incentive to vote if they knew that their ballot actually counted toward the final tally ÷ remember how Gore won the 2000 popular vote? The voters of this millennium are more educated than those who our founding fathers had in mind when they created the Constitution; direct democracy might not be the bomb that was originally feared.

Every voting system, from punch cards to paper ballots to lever machines, has its flaws. Electronic voting has the potential to work someday, but for now, there are still too many bugs that need to be fixed. David Wagner, an author of the Internet Policy's report, said, "The bottom line is, we feel the solution can't be a system that introduces greater risks just to gain convenience."

Electronic voting may seem cheap and simple, but that's no reason to sacrifice quality for quantity.

Jennifer Kursman is a biochemistry freshman. She can be reached at letters@wildcat.arizona.edu.