KEY POINTS:
Campaigning has been intense across the US today as Super Tuesday nears.
A new poll put Hillary Clinton in front nationwide for the Democrats, and John McCain ahead in the Republican race. Fox News also matched up Clinton vs McCain in a poll to see who would win the Presidency out of those two, and it was extremely close. When asked who was likely to be able to best lead on day one, Clinton was miles ahead on the Democrats side and McCain similarly streets ahead among Republicans.
While McCain is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, he has yet to win over the conservative wing of the party. The problem is that McCain has voted against President Bush on a few things over the past few years, and he has been seen as something of a maverick. He has the pro-life, pro-gun views that the hard-core conservatives like, but he is closer to Democrat views on several other issues and that makes certain Republicans uncomfortable. They would probably rather have Mitt Romney running for the White House, but the problem is that as long as Mike Huckabee stays in the race - he has been described as the only true conservative left standing - he is likely to take votes away from Huckabee which ultimately helps McCain. The Republicans are facing a huge day on Tuesday when many will have to decide whether to swallow their misgivings and swing in behind McCain because he appears to have the best shot at the White House. The alternative is that they back another man and hope for the best.
Today we had a really interesting chat with the California Secretary of State, Debra Bowen. She oversees the election in this state and among other things she talked about the difficulties of electronic methods of voting. There may well be a few interesting lessons for New Zealand in the California experience as we look forward to how we can use technology to help our own voting system.
Bowen said California used touchscreen technology in a handful of counties last elections, but has abandoned it. Basically she said electronic systems were fraught with danger. Bowen invited a team of hackers, known as a "Red Team" to come in and try to hack into voting systems. In short, they could penetrate every single voting system that California used. Worse still, they could interfere with the results and not leave a trail behind - meaning nobody knew anything was wrong. Bowen said there had also been instances where electronic systems didn't record thousands of votes and nobody had any way of knowing. Memory cards in the machines voters were using in some instances were removeable, and she said in one election in the US some of the cards went walkabout. The fact that the software in many of the machines was privately owned also meant the number of people who actually knew what was in it was strictly limited. "Sometimes it's best to stick with a good old fashioned way, like a paper ballot", she said. California will use electronic scanning to count its votes Tuesday, but the original marked ballot papers will be there if they need to be checked or recounted.
Bowen is a Democrat, which raised a number of questions among our group of journalists about how an affiliated person can oversee an election. She was elected to the position she is in, rather than appointed. Bowen argued that it was best that people knew which way she leaned and then they could judge her on her performance. That was better than not knowing at all. Imagine the hornet's nest that would be stirred up if we knew the leanings of all of our electoral officials!
I'm flying to New York in a few hours so I'll be out of action for a little while. In New York I'll be at rallies and at the polls talking to voters on Super Tuesday. See y'all soon.
