No middle ground on e-voting

Brian Mooney writes a front-page story in the Boston Globe on the increasing demand that e-voting machines leave a voter-verifiable paper trail. In the course of providing Balanced & Professional Coverage, Brian writes:

''There are valid concerns on all sides," said Dan Seligson, editor of electionline.org, a nonpartisan, nonadvocacy group that tracks election reform efforts. ''Whether democracy is truly threatened by paperless voting machines, I'm not sure that's the case. Nor am I sure it's the case that these are 100 percent reliable. I think the truth is somewhere in the middle."

I wish the truth were in some middle ground, but in this case, we are going to have people who are psychologically and politically motivated to find fault with the system, so having technology that is not 100% trustworthy and verifiable is 100% guaranteed to erode our trust in the leaders who emerge from the process. Any unverifiable election that is at all close will be suspect. Any election that surprises us will be claimed to have been rigged. The frayed fabric of good will will rip. And we will lose the joy of upsets.