‘Paper’ tigers push for safer elections - Greens say electronic voting should be scrapped

Bay News ^ | 2 March 2007 | Helen Klein

[lifelong_republican]

"Voters have no idea if their votes have miscarried,” he stressed, “At the end of the day, the problem with all electronic voting machines is there’s no way to know” if votes have been recorded accurately or if votes have been lost."

[Wonder Warthog]

"I don't buy that, nor do I see a way to guarantee the integrity of elections without SOMEBODY being able to check out how people voted in areas of question."

Sorry, but that is simply the road to totalitarianism. The Democrats are already pushing for exactly what you propose, with the elimination of the secret ballot requirement in elections to force union shops on companies. The union goons will threaten anyone who they know voted in opposition.

You are WRONG, WRONG, WRONG. Ballot secrecy is CRITICAL to maintaining democracy.

[lifelong_republican]

You make excellent points. Thank you.

While the scanners can be manipulated, the paper can be secured and audits done.

[momteacherandvp]

I live in a very rural county in Colorado. In November, I voted on a new electronic machine.

On the left side of the monitor screen there was a separate clear plastic screen that that covered a paper copy of my vote. I selected my candidates, and a list of the votes was printed on the paper. I was asked to look at the paper to confirm that it was correct. When I pressed vote, the paper scrolled up on a roll. So there was an electronic ballot and a paper ballot that could be used to audit the machine if necessary.

It seemed very secure to me.

Our county's votes have been audited by the state a couple of times in the past few elections (probably because we are a strong republican county and our state as been TAKEN OVER by democrats) and the original count was perfect each time.

If my little backward county that has no money to spend on anything can figure this out, then I'm sure the rest of them can also.

The idea that huge amounts of money would be spent on electronic machines that are not secure, and then people would insist that they go back to the old way which was not secure, and the same people want us to vote without proving who you are, or better yet, want to make it legal for illegals to vote...grr...it just proves that a fair vote is not what they are trying to accomplish

[momteacherandvp]

Champaign County in Illinois now uses a system in which the voter fills in boxes on the ballot as in grade school tests. The ballot is fed into a scanner which counts the vote. The ballot is then dumped into the sealed container underneath for possible manual recount or whatever later.

Hey! That's our OLD system. Either your county is way behind the curve, or my county is on the "cutting edge"! Maybe my county sold your county it's old machines!

[lifelong_republican]

That machine may have 'seemed' okay, but the problem is that the paper you viewed need not match the tallies and can't be independently confirmed as original.