What's more basic to democracy than trustworthy voting mechanisms? In this election, 4 out of 5 Americans will be voting electronically. And 15 states have no paper trail.

Consider this: In every national election, many ballots cast are simply dumped in the garbage. Most are called "spoiled" - supposedly unreadable, damaged, invalid. They just don't get counted. Vote "spoilage" has always occurred, but it reached unprecedented heights in the last two presidential elections. In the 2004 election, for example, more than three million ballots were never counted.

In Ohio, during the 2004 Presidential election, 153,237 ballots were simply thrown away - more than the Bush "victory" margin. In New Mexico the uncounted vote was 5 times the Bush alleged victory margin. In Iowa, Bush's triumph of 13,498 was overwhelmed by 36,811 rejected votes. In addition, several cities and entire states did not report the votes that were not counted, because it was embarrassing.

Does the government report this? Yes - a US Census Bureau announcement released seven months AFTER the election had a footnote. The Census tabulation of voters voting in the 2004 presidential race differs from ballots tallied by the Clerk of the House of Representatives by 3.4 million votes. With the exception of this footnote, this error has not been reported. And the media ignores it.

Our discussion brought an interesting response from Gary Smith, an election official from Georgia - published as eFeedback (see below). He thinks that e-voting is safer than portrayed, but still predicts disaster:

"We election officials work very hard to provide the environment of safe, secure and honest elections - doing this with minimal support, less than exciting budgets and under the continual scrutiny of legal ramifications. I have worked for the past 5 years since I retired from ABB as the Elections Director in my county of Georgia and have found solace that the election officials in Georgia and across the country are some of the most honest individuals working under the harshest conditions for pathetic salaries. We have our most experienced election officials leaving the field and they will not be replaced by anyone approaching the same level of dedication.

"As you many times predict the future, I will do so as well: There will be a meltdown in the elections in the future and it will not be because of the technology problems alone, but because of the inordinate number of unfunded and misdirected mandates that have come from the Federal and State level."