Does the United States Supreme Court decision require Iowa to adopt a uniform statewide voting system?
I am no lawyer; I cannot therefore speak with any authority on what the decision requires. However, I have strong opinions on what ought to be required. I believe, strongly, that the Supreme Court was correct to identify non-uniformity in the counting of votes as a civil rights issue, and I believe that we are obligated to assure that every voter’s ballot is counted. At the same time, while I agree that use of identical voting technology across the state trivially assures this, I believe that we must resist this easy path for several reasons: • A uniform system at the state level invariable grants one vendor a monopoly at the state level. If that vendor is honest, we are guaranteed honest machines, but the profit to be made by fixing an election grows proportionally with the size of the election district that can be controlled by a fixed election. Iowa is small change, but I would hate to see California, Texas or New York forced, by the national government, into a position where a sing
