Articles by Levick Experts

These days, the term political machinery has little to do with party power brokers.  It signifies something much more vital to American democracy –voting machinery, the high-tech voting tool that literally bring the vote to polling stations and efficiently delivers results.  When voting machines it delivers them accurately, democracy wins big, no matter which party gets out the most votes.

With voting machines, we’ve entered a new age in voting. One that could spell an end to vote tampering and vote “interpretation” – haggling over hanging chads and court-decided elections based on paper votes.

But controversy abounds.  With news of software glitches, security flaws well known to hackers, unexpected frozen screens, undercounts, and uncalibrated touch screens that could actually register votes for unintended candidates, communications experts must overcome a wave of bad publicity accompanying election news.

Effective communicators must reach the body politic before, during and after Election Day, convincing voters that while the kinks are still being worked out, voting technology has moved beyond the butterfly ballot.

Public doubt is the real issue here.  Doubts about accurate vote counting and the ability of electronic voting machines to help voters exercise their democratic right.  Doubts impact Election Day results and can even discourage voters from going to the polls.

Communicators need to know all the technical issues at hand, communicate strategies to address the problems, and understand the public’s lack of tolerance for error when it comes to vote counting.

They also must effectively communicate that voting machines are taking democracy out of the dark ages and into the 21st century. While some voting precincts may be reluctant to move toward voting machines, election officials should be made aware that voting machines and new voting technologies  are capable of delivering accurate voting results. New generations of voting machines might just help us to achieve a more perfect democracy, one that would make the Founding Fathers proud.