Suppose that after the votes are counted in the next election, candidate X, who received the most votes, is not declared the winner? Suppose candidate Z, with fewer votes, ends up in office? You say that's already happened? Well, yes. (And it's been pretty disastrous, hasn't it?) But that's not what we're talking about. The present threat is the possibility of major electoral theft, high-tech style, which could deprive us of the ability to elect not only a president, but also members of Congress with values more aligned with our own. We Americans treasure the right to vote for the men and women who lead us, but this most basic of our freedoms is at risk of sliding into an electronic black hole called paperless touchscreen voting.

To date, voters have not been asked whether they would rather be given a print version of the ballots they cast, which they could then check for accuracy and deposit in a locked ballot box, or whether they want to just trust a paperless Digital Recording Electronic voting machine to register their choices correctly. When paperless DREs are used, election officials, county and state legislators have made that decision for us. These deciders tell us the DREs are foolproof and have been thoroughly tested by the National Association of State Election Directors. What they don't tell us is that the source of this assurance is the very corporations which produce and sell both the machines and the software to run them.

What do we know about this testing agency, the NASED? It turns out that all touch-screen testing under the NASED program is paid for by the makers of the DREs and performed in secrecy. Detailed reports of testing results are not released for public scrutiny, nor is there any way for a voter or a candidate to compel its being made public. Judges have ruled that the vendors have proprietary rights to deny access to both the voting machines and the software to operate them in order to protect their trade secrets. Detailed reports from certification authorities are also protected by trade-secrecy. So, the companies which produce and sell both machines and software simply say, in effect, "trust us!" Should we?

Computer professionals tell us that a programmer can write code which displays votes one way on a screen, records them another way, and tallies them a third way. (Does this sound a little like Enron's accounting system?) Even a moderately skilled programmer can change the outcome of an election in ways impossible for voters to detect.

There are advantages to employing touch-screen systems, of course, which is why counties are buying or have already bought them. They offer greater efficiency in elections with multiple races and in locations where instant run-off voting is the law. (San Francisco, pay attention!) They can help voters with visual and other disabilities. They can offer ballots in different languages. They can help prevent over-voting and under-voting. They allow for obtaining fast election results.

But these advantages will mean nothing if we do not ensure that every voter's ballot is recorded correctly and that the voter can see that it has been. The way to do that is for counties to insist that every electronic voting machine used in a California election produces a voter-verifiable paper trail. The companies which build DREs can engineer them to print each ballot as soon as it is cast. (After all, we can get a receipt from the ATM after a transaction, can't we? It isn't that difficult. As Dr. David Dill, professor of computer science at Stanford, put it, "It's not exactly a moon shot.") The voter can then verify that the machine has gotten it right and see it put into a locked ballot box, where it will be available to be re-counted if the need arises.

And what if we lobby our county legislators (we should and we should start immediately) and what if our petitions for a voter-verified paper trail to go with those touch-screen voting machines are denied? Hard to say. We could all just vote absentee. We know those low-tech paper ballots won't disappear into some cyber-never-never-land. But, organizing enough people to do anything, even vote, much less vote absentee, is about as doable as teaching a herd of cats to waltz. Perhaps we had all just better hope that if our leaders don't adopt a voter-verified paper trail, the dictatorship that will ride in on all those electronically rigged ballots won't be as murderous as we fear.