Athan Gibbs was a brother who had seen enough. He saw what happened in Florida in 2000, with a lot of folks being disenfranchised. If you remember, this is what really spurned the electronic voting push. To remedy this, Mr. Gibbs came up with the TruVote electronic voting system. Unlike the voting machines that were being created by much larger companies, Athan Gibbs’ machine offered something decidedly different — a secure, verifiable system with a paper trail. On the verge of introducing this system to the public, Gibbs died in a mysterious car accident in March 2004.

Here’s an excerpt of an article that appeared in the Summer 2004 edition of Global Outlook Magazine:

Athan Gibbs devoted his life “to making sure voters in future elections would know their votes mattered”. He died in a mysterious car crash on Interstate highway 65 in Tennessee in March 2004

Athan Gibbs’ TruVote system was described as ”one of the most promising technologies in the world for fixing democracies”. In the wake of the 2000 presidential elections, where than 1 million votes went uncounted for Athan Gibbs invented the TruVote vote-casting system:

“TruVote allows voters to touch their candidates’ names on a computer screen and receive receipts of their vote at the end of the process. They can then go to a Web site, punch in their voter validation number and make sure their vote was recorded.” (The Tennessean.com, 14 March 2004).

Bob Fitrakis writing in the Global Free Press (17 March 2004), describes Gibb’s TruVote as a Marvel:

“After voters touch the screen, a paper ballot prints out under plexiglass and once the voter compares it to his actual vote and approves it, the ballot drops into a lockbox and is issued a numbered receipt. The voter’s receipt allows the track his particular vote to make sure that it was transferred from the polling place to the election tabulation center.”

Police reports state that “Mr. Gibbs lost control of his Chevy Blazer after he cut in front of an 18-wheeler and the two vehicles collided.” Fitrakis seriously doubts that Gibbs’ untimely death was an accident:

“Coincidence theorists will simply dismiss the death of Gibbs as a tragic accident – the same conclusion these coincidence theorists came to when anti-nuclear activist Karen Silkwood died in November 1974 when her car struck a concrete embankment en route to a meeting with New York Times reporter David Burnham. Prominent independent investigators concluded that Silkwood’s car was hit from behind and forced off the road… Gibbs’ death bears heightened scrutiny because of the way he lived his life after the 2000 Florida election debacle”

Who knows…if Brother Gibbs had lived, we may not be worrying about electronic voting today. This is something to truly ponder. When I think about people who died trying to secure my right to vote, I’ll have to add Athan Gibbs to that list.

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