Reputedly, former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said, in a speech that NPR's Supreme Court reporter, Nina Totenberg, heard, "It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings.”

Early this afternoon the NH Ballot Law Commission was faced with a decision about whether to approve a software upgrade for electronic voting machines. Unfortunately, they made a decision to support the Diebold upgrade, despite strong and undisputed evidence that the technology in question is inadequate. We may not be able to define adequacy in education in New Hampshire, but machines that can be hacked into and where the code has enough bugs to keep Tom Delay in business (he was an exterminator before he was a US Representative) are certainly not adequate to protect the fundamental right upon which America is built: voting.

Though today's hearing was primarily framed by both supporters and opponents of the software upgrade as being about orange numbered seals, memory cards, firmware, software code and programming, this was really about public perception of the election process and maintaining NH's exemplary standards.

I care less about the actual susceptibility of the machines, which might allow some tricksters to gain a few votes here and there, than I do about the thousands of voters whose confidence in the integrity of our voting systems will be shaken by this terrible decision. People, even Justice O'Connor, are discouraged about our democratic processes. Now is the exact wrong moment for this decision.

I am just "some man down the street" not the California Secretary of State's Office or the New Hampshire Secretary of State's Office so my opinion will means little. The vendor, Mr. Sylvestri, had the unmitigated gall to insult the thirty or so citizens who had dedicated a day to attend the hearing by saying that the opinions of the high and mighty matter more to somebody with a business degree than the opinions of the humble. "I am not a very learned man," said one from the audience...and so his opinion does not count as much?

Aside from the vendor, only a couple city clerks and deputy clerks testified in favor of the software upgrade. Their reason: laziness. Now, granted, that is a bit unfair. Requiring people to stay up past their bedtime every two years or so and do hand counts is a bit of a Luddite proposition, but I hang out my laundry and have never valued convenience above truth. Sometimes democracy takes some hard work. To say, as the city and county clerks association did, that election officials will abandon their posts in droves is mere scaremongering, though. I say, let them quit. They will be replaced by dozens of citizens who value and honor our democracy, who are willing to take the time required to avoid the slide into dictatorship.