E-voting versus ATMs

James Fallows of the Atlantic has a piece in today's Times (http://nytimes.com/2004/11/28/business/yourmoney/28techno.html)
contrasting ATMs and other commercial electronic systems used -- and trusted -- by millions, with the widely (and correctly) mistrusted electronic voting.

He points to two factors. First, the extensive and prolonged testing the former, but not the latter, have gone through. Second, the paper trail (such as receipts) available, again only in the former, so banks and others know there's always the potential for malfeasance to be discovered.

I would add a third factor, which goes a long way to explaining the first two. The banks, airlines, etc., WANT to get it right technologically because it's in their social interest to do so. Just as squeezing surplus value from workers efficiently depends on following all the legal norms of capitalist property relations, so too does having access to consumers' funds for investment purposes depend on banks following carefully and scrupulously the equivalent legal norms affecting ATM transactions (which still puts them in the position of screwing us -- but still legally! -- with deep-buried credit card fees).

The point being that when the social motivation is there to get electronic voting right it'll be done right technologically.

But that won't happen until there's a workers' party big and strong enough to make sure it happens.