Privatize This!

“Privatization and its lesson,” located in the Austin Statesman is about the pulling of IBM election system for Texas voting. The author is defiantly gearing this piece to opponents of privatization. The author seems be a credible a source, he provides statistical data to make his claim that voting poles should not be privatized. He states that 27 agencies expressed dissatisfaction with IBM’s service. The author tells how an IBM server crashed causing a 13-day outage at the secretary of state’s business records filling statements. He expresses is views when he says, “Dillard said the election system will remain independent until at least through 2011. Good move.” The “good move” is the author saying this is what he thinks should be done. His basic argument is that if you privatize the electrical system in Texas with faulty IBM software, then the quality of the election would be altered. The people’s true vote will be lost with the software.

I very much agree with the author. I do not believe that we should privatize the electoral system with faulty software. The fact that all 27 state agencies that are using the software are dissatisfied with the products, just proves that it is not worthy of the Texas election. It is very important that all votes be accounted for, and you cannot have each vote count if the server is down. In addition, that makes for an extremely upset population, when they cannot go to the poles and cast there votes due to computer error. Just look at the 2001 presidential election when the voters in Florida were in an uproar over the format of the election equipment. Let us just make sure every vote is counted for, and that would be without the privatization of Electoral College.