Hand Counted Paper Ballots NOW! Nothing more and Nothing less! nt

[In Truth We Trust]

[Breeze54]

1. Yup!

You use paper ballots, don't you?

I do.

The machines have to go!

[Double T]

2. If 'WE' have to dump computer technology to insure fair and accurate elections......

then I am ALL for it. The USA is going backwards in EVERYTHING else, why NOT election methods TOO!!!

[Vincardog]

3. Getting rid of crooked Black Box vote stealing machines is not a step Backward.

We do need to advance to the past of open transparent elections.

[ClassWarrior]

4. Paper and pen, Truth.

Nothing more, nothing less.

:yourock:

NGU.

[flamin lib]

5. There is nothing wrong with optical scanners to count paper

ballots. A proper scanner is just that, a scanner, not a calculating device. There should not be any way to program an optical counter to change or flip votes properly marked on a paper ballot. Should there be challenge the paper ballots can be hand counted.

Ballot=Vote, scanner=counter.

The mechanics of hand counting ballots with 20 or more offices on them is far too cumbersome and unreliable unless there is a challenge on one particular race.

[MonkeyFunk]

7. I agree

I'm all for paper ballots, but not hand-counting. Tallying large numbers of things is exactly what computers do best.

[elocs]

8. This is what I use here in Wisconsin.

I get a paper ballot and connect the line by the candidate of my choice, or write a name in, then I place the ballot in an optical scanner. A paper ballot is available for recounts. Simple and effective.

[kath]

10. cheating can be done with the optical scanners - especially if a

central tabulator is involved.

Count 'em by hand, with plenty of observers, like they do in Canada.

[Stevepol]

11. The scanner is better but still can be hacked and maliciously programmed.

Scanners, IMO, have been used in many races already to tilt the vote and steal elections. The problem is that only a few places REQUIRE AUDITS. If fair and robust audits are used along with the scanners, I would have no objection to using them. As you say, the paper is still there and can be recounted and reflects the will of the voter.

I think (could be wrong) that Hari Hursti's hack in Talahassee precinct, Ion Sancho's bailiwick, was done on optiscans. And if you checked the results after the 04 election in FL, the anomalies were a lot more suspicious in the places where the scanners were used than where the touchscreens were used.

[Retrograde]

6. How about less complicated elections?

Where I live, an single ballot can include
-National races (President)
-Statewide races (Senate, Governor, statewide bonds and propositions, etc.)
-Congressional district races
-State senate and assembly races
-County races
-city races

Note that city, county, state assembly, and congressional districts are all drawn differently, so putting all the ballots for Candidate X in one pile and Y in another isn't as easy as it would be if the ballot only had one issue on it.

No method is without the danger of fraud, but unless we have one-topic elections, or want to wait a couple of weeks for the results we are going to have to use some sort of non-human counting.

[patrice]

9. Bill Richardson spoke strongly in favor of paper ballots in

in MoveOn's recent townhall and, I think, also in a video for DFA.

That MoveOn video is in the DU political video forum.