It Would Be Nice To Know Democracy Is Still Important

Last night/ this morning I was catching up on my news and saw a report on CNN Headline News concerning the upcoming elections and the methods used to vote. As most are familiar, the electronic voting machines are hotly debated mostly for not providing a paper trail. What makes this scarier is that the majority of the companies that provide the service or manufacture these machines are large contributors to the Republican party. I do not think an explanation of why these voting machines are so important to our democracy is needed here, especially in light of the past two presidential elections. While most of this is widely known (I would like to hope so), the kicker of this news piece came near the end. A security analyst of technology reported that the new game consoles from Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3 will have more safeguards and security than these voting machines currently have. Why? Because Microsoft and Sony want to gurantee the player's safety online and mainly to make sure the real (i.e. bought and not pirated versions of their games) versions of these games are being played. It seems a bit mind boggling that two entertainment giants would put more safeguards into their computers than say somoething that is supposed to support the essence of any democracy, being voting. I am glad we have so much faith in our government that this does not seem to a problem. I am also glad I have dual citizenship, because it might time to study abroad soon.