Do voters have any say on how they want to vote?

[Clete]

Can we get a grass roots movement to demand no electronic or punchcard voting in the next election? I mean can we demand paper ballots that are filled in by hand and counted by hand?

It seems that we shouldn't have to vote the way "they" tell us to. If such a demand can be made by the electorate I think we should do it.

[stopthegop]

1. sure...it's determined by local elected officials...n/t

.

[Mairead]

2. Get a judge to order it. And do it early, so that the appeals process

can run to completion before polling day. It should be an open-and-shut equal protection case.

[Silverhair]

3. Here is what would happen.

Lets say that you got to write in a name for the person you wanted. Each vote counter could enter the name in a computer. Of course you would need to further identify your candidate. (Which Joe Williams do you mean for governor? A populous state may have a thousand Joe Williams.) so you need an addition identifier. Now everybody does this and you gets lots of different names. Simply taking the most popular won't work as the rest will be unhappy. So you now have to have a runoff election and guess what? You are back to picking out from a list of provided names again.

That's what primaries are for. You get to pick from among the ones that want the job, and files the forms. In some states you have a 2nd primary, called the runoff primary, where the party choses between the two highest candidates.

[Clete]

4. I just want to know that my vote counts.

I'm not so sure anymore. Paper ballots where we X'd in our choices, with a low tech ball point pen worked fine for years. Why not now?