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That is the second mention I’ve seen about touch screen machines. OK, I get the calibration issue with that. Why do we need such expensive technology for voting machines? Sounds like a waste of taxpayer dollars to me.

When I was a kid, my parent used paper ballots. Some of the voting places were actually little sheds set up in parks. They had coal stoves in them! The ballots were called bedsheets since everything was on one big sheet. They had a table for you to mark them.

First machines I saw were the size of a refrigerator but not as thick.

Then we had punch cards.

Then came the touch screens.

Quickly replaced by sheet where you fill in the bubbles and run them through their scanner. This one seems easy, fast, and probably fairly cheap.

But the computers the votes go into scare me. Anything can happen after that. Of course, we need a system that's fairly quick and is VERY difficult to cheat on by local politicians. There are a lot of sharp people who could design this. We also need a way to prevent the voters from cheating, too.

A LOT of money must have changed hands with all those systems that were frequently replaced.

I'm sure Diebold lobbied hard.