[libstripper]

"Unlike with punch cards or paper ballots, there's no paper record with electronic voting that might offer a clue to the voter's intent."

Thank God. This means there are actually objective standards the vote counters and courts will have a very hard time circumventing, and they'll be less likely to engage in the witchcraft of gtrying to determine unidentified persons' "intent.".

For somebody to vote, he or she actually needs to complete the voting, just like punching the "enter" button on a computer.

If the DemonRats dont figure a way to rig the machines through bogus programming, this could cut out at least some of their fraudulent voting. John Lott studied the Florida hanging chad situation and concluded that many of them were probably caused by deliberate punching of stacks of ballots. As I remember, he reached this conclusion by starting with the extreme statistical disproportion in how the hanging chads favored Gore instead of Bush.

On the computer rigging issue, I live in east Tennessee, we have used the computerized system for the last several elections, and I do not remember any credible challenge to it.

[longtermmemmory]

This was supposed to be fool proof.

well a 134 fools have been able to goof it up.

[george wythe]

Last year, during the California recall election, the Democrats asked the courts to delay the election because LA county did not have the touch-screen voting machines in place. They argued that "minority" voters were being disenfranchized by being forced to use the traditional punch-card system.

Eventually, the Democrats lost in court; nevertheless, the Florida mess in the 2000 election was revisited by the media. We were told about the "unfairness" of having some counties voting touch-screen and others voting punch-card.

Obviously, the Democratic voters can screw up with touch-screen machines as much as they can with punch-card machines.

Sometimes I wonder, why did we allow ourselves to be intimidated into spending billions of dollars to buy these new touch-screen machines? Was it worth it?

[Kozak]

Thank God. This means there are actually objective standards the vote counters and courts will have a very hard time circumventing, and they'll be less likely to engage in the witchcraft of gtrying to determine unidentified persons' "intent.".

Until someone hacks the software and steals votes imperceptively, or a power outage or surge wipes out the days voting in a crucial district, etc etc. It would be nice to have a "plan b" or backup system in place. I do not trust these touchscreen systems.