Observations by a Citizen: Deus ex Machina

By: Hal Rounds

“Deus ex Machina” is the term describing the plot technique in the ancient Greek dramatic plays for giving sudden solutions to dodge otherwise inevitable outcomes. For example, in “Medea,” the story basically tells of Medea, a woman who loves her husband, Jason, and their children. But she is a commoner, and Jason strays off to wed King Creon’s daughter Creusa. Shocked, shamed, and infuriated, Medea poisons Creusa and Creon, then, regretfully, but insane in her sorrows, she stabs their children. Jason is about to kill her in tragic revenge; but Helios the sun god – who is also her grandfather -sends a chariot drawn by dragons, and spirits poor Medea away.

Helios and the chariot had no prior appearance in the play, but a Greek god can appear at any time to change what is otherwise inevitable. This plot device is called a “god machine,” or “Deus ex Machina.”

Across America, on November 8, uncounted millions of Americans touched today’s equivalent to a “Deus ex Machina.” We are more familiar with the term “voting machine,” but they seem to me to be closely related concepts. I’m not saying that all election officials who decided to purchase and use digital voting devices intended to produce an unbelievable outcome; but I’m pretty sure that some did. The rest, just like the Greek theater audiences who accepted the divine intervention that saved Medea, simply and innocently trusted what they were told.

Those who administer elections have been seduced into trusting the techies who provide them with the magic of electronic digital processing as a supposedly easy and trustworthy way to help voters exercise their American right to self-govern by choosing who will exercise the powers we are entrusting them with.

Election officials are rarely computer experts.  They are generally chosen by a political process, and try to provide the voters with simple and reliable elections.  The machines give them a sense of sophisticated vote recording and counting that will raise their status in the eyes of their voters.  

But EVERY Information Technology (“IT”) person I have discussed the issue of voting machine security with has emphatically denied that hacking can be prevented. As long as electrons are surging through microcircuits, and radio waves are passing through the air, hacking is unstoppable. Even in the 1980’s, the British Broadcasting Company (their state television monopoly), is reputed to have sent monitoring vehicles through neighborhoods to detect what shows each home was watching, and compare that to whether the home had paid its subscription. This was from the radiation characteristics of simple, pre-“smart” televisions.

Adding to the simple vulnerability of data processing, part of the sales appeal of IT is all the ways computers can manipulate, analyze and communicate.  Reports, analysis by classes of voters etc., etc.  But that is exactly the kind of processing that makes hacking easier.  And there’s a whole lot of money in persuading election officials that they can really look good by providing all those processing services.

The sense that sudden, unexpected things have begun to appear in election counts cannot be good for our confidence in our system of government. What voters need is a system that enables them to see their actual marked ballot go into a box that has no “black boxes,” or electrical connections, and that it will only be opened when the day is done, by real humans reading real votes, when the votes will be simply counted and written down in ink on paper. So that each ballot can be retrieved and compared with the specific line where it was reported by real people as part of that precinct’s real election results.

It’s not really a good idea to trust a digital “Deus ex Machina” to rescue doomed candidates.

Click here to read the unofficial Hardeman County election results.

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