Remember the Age of Paper Ballots? It's Back

[question everything]

In an era rife with concerns about cybersecurity, election officials are increasingly turning to a decidedly low-tech solution: paper.

While security advocates have long considered use of paper a best practice for election integrity, the pace of its adoption has accelerated in the wake of Russian meddling in the U.S. election in 2016. City and county governments around the country and a handful of states, so far, have moved to replace electronic voting methods with paper ballots or to adopt electronic-voting machines that generate paper receipts.

Virginia last year, just two months before its state election, phased out all its old electronic touch-screen machines after a demonstration at a hacking conference spotlighted vulnerabilities in its electronic voting system. Voters across the state cast paper ballots on election day. In Kentucky and Pennsylvania, meanwhile, state officials have ordered that all new voting equipment have a paper trail. Georgia, New Jersey, Delaware, Louisiana, Ohio and several other states, meanwhile, are considering requiring a paper trail or running postelection audits to ensure there was no tampering with results.

It’s part of a nationwide push to ensure that the U.S. election infrastructure is secure from any interference, and that voters have confidence in the integrity of the results. Though all elections in the U.S. are run locally, Congress has made $380 million available to states to help upgrade and secure their voting systems, in a bipartisan bill passed in March. Much of that money is expected to be spent on machine upgrades and audits. That’s the first significant national investment in voting technology since 2002. The funds will also help support greater use of machines with paper backups or paper ballots.

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Many of the voting machines Americans use are more than a decade old, purchased with federal funds made available for electronic-voting-machine upgrades after the contested 2000 presidential election. That money—$3.5 billion allocated by Congress under the Help America Vote Act of 2002—mostly went for state-of-the-art touch-screen machines to replace the old punch-card machines at the heart of the 2000 controversy in Florida.

But what was state-of-the-art technology in 2002 or 2004 has rapidly become outdated. Many machines haven't seen a security update in years. Some use software so dated that security patches are no longer being written, and hardware so old that local election officials need to scour eBay for parts just to keep their systems running, according to a 2015 report on the state of election technology by the New York-based nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice.

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https://www.wsj.com/articles/remember-the-age-of-paper-ballots-its-back-1527172511 (paid subscription)




19 states and the District of Columbia (cream colored on the map) will use only paper ballots at polling places in elections this year

The squares off the East Coast are:

R.I.

Conn.

N.J.

Del.

Md.

D.C

[TimeSnowDemos]

1. They never went away

In Europe.

No reason for anything but paper ballots.

And don't get me started on how the US still hasn't figured out how to vote in less than an hour in many cities. Here in Ireland it takes about 3 mins.

[question everything]

2. And in many countries election say is a holiday - from work

Though knowing my fellow voters, they will just go camping, or ball playing and won't bother to vote..

And welcome to DU

[TimeSnowDemos]

3. Thanks! And..

In Ireland a 'polling card' - think of it as a personalized ticket to vote - is sent to every eligible voter in the country. It has details about polling location, hours, etc.

Then voters simply walk or drive to their local polling station, hand in their 'ticket' and vote.

Never spent more than 5 mins in the polling place.

No ID needed, even with my American accent.

Ballots are then countered publicly, in front of the media.

[question everything]

4. kick