Although the 2008 JFK Profile in Courage Award recipients were announced in March, they made news again this week when the award was presented Monday.

“As we prepare to cast our ballots for the next President of the United States, our confidence in the integrity and reliability of the voting process has never been more important,” said Caroline Kennedy, President of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation. “Secretaries of State Debra Bowen and Jennifer Brunner have each demonstrated exceptional leadership in working to ensure that voting systems provide a full and accurate count of the vote. Our democracy depends on voter trust. Debra Bowen and Jennifer Brunner’s efforts to earn that trust have made them true profiles in courage.

Along with voter identification, electronic voting is an issue that, while not as ratings friendly as the inconsequential fluff and horse race minutia the media prefers to cover, has important consequences for our ability to exercise our right to vote and therefore effect democracy.

In the last three election cycles, touch-screen machines have become one of the most mysterious and divisive elements in modern electoral politics. Introduced after the 2000 hanging-chad debacle, the machines were originally intended to add clarity to election results. But in hundreds of instances, the result has been precisely the opposite: they fail unpredictably, and in extremely strange ways; voters report that their choices “flip” from one candidate to another before their eyes; machines crash or begin to count backward; votes simply vanish. (In the 80-person town of Waldenburg, Ark., touch-screen machines tallied zero votes for one mayoral candidate in 2006 — even though he’s pretty sure he voted for himself.) Most famously, in the November 2006 Congressional election in Sarasota, Fla., touch-screen machines recorded an 18,000-person “undervote” for a race decided by fewer than 400 votes.

The earliest critiques of digital voting booths came from the fringe — disgruntled citizens and scared-senseless computer geeks — but the fears have now risen to the highest levels of government. One by one, states are renouncing the use of touch-screen voting machines. California and Florida decided to get rid of their electronic voting machines last spring, and last month, Colorado decertified about half of its touch-screen devices. Also last month, Jennifer Brunner, the Ohio secretary of state, released a report in the wake of the Cuyahoga crashes arguing that touch-screens “may jeopardize the integrity of the voting process.” She was so worried she is now forcing Cuyahoga to scrap its touch-screen machines and go back to paper-based voting — before the Ohio primary, scheduled for March 4. Senator Bill Nelson, a Democrat of Florida, and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, have even sponsored a bill that would ban the use of touch-screen machines across the country by 2012. Read the entire article here:

Several bloggers hailed the award and Brunner's and Bowen's courage in tackling this issue:

Bettina Duval, writing at the Huffington Post cheers:

Last year as I watched Debra Bowen being sworn in as Secretary of State I couldn't help but feel this was a momentous achievement in history. As Secretary of State, Debra Bowen would be heading the governmental body in California responsible for overseeing voter rights and the accountability of the State's electoral process. How delightfully appropriate because women represent the largest group of disenfranchised voters in history and now a woman was going to be the chief elections officer for the state with the highest number of registered voters in the nation. Score one for the women's movement and suffragettes everywhere.

Irony aside, Debra Bowen has proved to be the right woman for the job. Debra realizes that the electoral process is fundamental to democracy not only as a constitutional right, but as a personal privilege. Since taking office last January, Debra Bowen has worked to restore confidence and reliability in the voting process here in California. So it should come as no surprise that Debra has been selected to receive the prestigious John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award along with Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner.

Brunner changed Jill Miller Zimon's (of Writes Like She Talks) life:

Jennifer Brunner was the first person to whom I ever gave a dime to for a political race. And for whom I threw an absolutely poorly attended house party (but we had great food and really good looking plates). And that donation (along with two others) forced me to resign from the Wide Open experiment with Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer. ...

Congratulations to Jennifer for winning the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award and if I have the chance, I promise to try to give you a much, much better house party in 2010.

Kim Alexander, writing at The California Voter Foundation hails Bowen's win:

California's Secretary of State, Debra Bowen has won this year's John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award! Kudos to Secretary Bowen, who has indeed shown enormous political courage and leadership in her efforts to improve voting equipment security in California.

Not all bloggers are as enthusiastic about the wins. The Ohio Republican Party blog quotes from The Lima News:

Brunner sought to curb a series of voting irregularities by ordering that a paper ballot be provided to any voter who requested one during this year’s presidential primary, The Associated Press reports. She also ordered the replacement of all of the state’s electronic voting systems — used in 53 of Ohio’s 88 counties — with paper ballots and optical scan technology before the November 2008 presidential election.

And, sure enough, her last-minute push to have the system replaced by the March primary backfired. Not many people opted for a paper ballot where one was available. At least one of the counties she ordered to change its system was late in reporting results, in part because of the paper ballots. But it sure sounded like a good idea — to Brunner, anyway. ...

So, good job, Secretary of State Brunner. Nothing’s better, but you have an award for your effort.

The final quote illustrates the partisan lines along which, much like with voter identification, perceptions of this issue fall. Though it is a bit tedious, I hope all voters (and especially women, as Bettina Duval notes is important) will take the time to educate themselves on the specifics and form their own opinion regardless of party affiliation.

BlogHer CE Maria Niles gets her policy wonk on at PopConsumer