I have just run across your article entitled "Death of a patriot: No more" from March 17, 2004.  As a professional in the computer industry for twenty years, I must take exception to some of the claims made by ignorant people in the Democratic and Republican camps who know little, if anything, about computers.

You quote Gibbs as saying "Inevitably, computers mess up".  That is an interesting statement and is clearly used to stir up sentiment without offering any context for the statement whatsoever.

Let's look at that a moment.  If computers "mess up", then it is safe to say that, as one can simply observe from life around them in general, people mess up more than computers.  The facts show that computers only do what people tell them to do, and they do it exactly many millions of times per second.  Computers simply are not known to make any mistakes, while people do all the time.

If one is concerned with the accuracy of the machines, the facts simply lay that worry to rest.  If one is concerned about the accuracy, or even trustworthiness, of people, as well they should be, then it is certainly obvious to place our faith in that which does not fail and remove it from people as much as possible.

For some reason, many people simply don't take the time to understand the issues of computer hardware and software.  Failures in the hardware of computers simply means the computer is no longer working, and that becomes evident immediately.  In fact, we can protect against hardware failure by providing simple redundancy.  If a computer's hardware works for the first couple days, it is likely to continue working indefinitely when protected properly.

The quality of software is the one issue which people should be the most concerned about, and that worry is laid to rest by making sure that a committee of recognized experts double-check the code before it is put into place.  Once activated, that code will simply continue to do its work over and over indefinitely, and without any variation at all.

Thinking people simply do not trust the thousands of partisan polling officials and voting registrars in thousands of municipalities.  People having a bad day, or perhaps overworked, or plying their trade in a partisan manner or out to cause chaos for whatever reason, all of these are very real concerns which can not be completely controlled.

Failures in the paper system abound.  Consider what happened with all of the paper ballots in the last election.  Further, it is apparent that one never knows what happens to the ballots after they are out of sight.  Even in the case of some silly receipt system, I could take everyone's receipt number and apply it to new votes and the recipient would never know the difference.  Why this isn't obvious to some is probably why they don't understand the problem in the first place.

While it is true that the more complex a program is, the more likely that there will be a flaw found in it and that it will take more time to find the flaw, it is also true that one should understand that simply counting a relatively very small number of binary states, then accumulating, storing and reporting that information is the most simple of tasks which can be considered for a computer to perform.  A computer isn't even breaking a sweat if asked to do a billion things like that a day.  Currently, there is life-threatening research done on computers which is so complex as to boggle the most trained mind, and yet we all accept that, as well as the proof given by experts.  In fact, computers perform more advance work on one's bank account, but that too is blindly accepted.

But when it comes to something as simple as voting, most people lose the ability to think properly and turn into drooling imbeciles.  This is one of the most amazing things of our day.  And couple that with the fact that most US citizens don't even care to vote in the first place!

I am sorry that Mr. Gibbs died, but that doesn't change the fact that I would never buy or endorse a product from someone so ignorant of the facts.

Thank you.

Regards,
Mr. Michael Kitchen