Voter ID isn't the issue

Once again this election season we're hearing about the need for voter ID - fixing a problem that doesn't really exist, while completely ignoring all of the ways our elections can really be compromised on a large scale. Certainly voter suppression is one of these, and is a real issue, but we're also continuing to ignore the technological weaknesses of our voting infrastructure. The passing of the HAVA act after the Bush/Gore election fiasco was intended to make it easier to vote and to make our system more secure, but it in fact had exactly the opposite effect.  Our new higher-tech voting infrastructure is in many ways designed as if it was still the 1980's and we were under the illusion that the Internet was a secure thing.  

Certainly recent events, including last week's internet meltdown, and the multiple hacking attempts against voting infrastructure in the US should make this clear. 

Much of our vote collecting structure in the US is considerably less secure than it should be, and in many cases depends on the good will and behavior of voting officials. For more details on the technical infrastructure issues, take a look at this short .article at The Register