Election Forum
By Joan Brunwasser
The resistance I have found to hand counted paper ballots has been from:
>>>
>>> 1) my own colleagues in the voters' rights movement who considered it "asking for too much too soon";
>>> 2) computer experts who find it a challenge to find a way to use electronics in elections, and
>>> 3) county officials who consider the task of finding more pollworkers and ballot counters daunting,
>>> 4) corrupt officials who know it would be more difficult to hack the vote.
>>>
>>> I believe it is a mistake to settle for optical scans that preserve the paper ballot. I honestly don't believe that we can overcome most of the ways that this system can be corrupted. To me, it's merely a bandaid on an infected wound. We need to clean out the wound (ditch the current electronic systems), stitch it up (put in place standards for hand counted paper ballots) and apply antibiotics (have safeguards in place even for the hand counted paper ballot system).
>>> With electronic scans:
>>>
>>> 1. Some of the machines will fail on election day, causing voters to leave without voting; with hand-counted paper ballots, you just have to have a sufficient number of ballots (hey, if you run out, run to Staples and make some extra copies!).
>>> 2. The machines are relatively expensive to purchase; in addition, they must be kept in a secure location, handled carefully, and and protected from heat, cold, humidity, dirt, etc.; We know that this isn't happening - these machines are handled roughly, banged and dropped; we know that they are stored in places accessible to would-be bad guys; we know that some pollworkers even take these machines home with them;
>>> With hand-counted paper ballots, no special storage is needed; the expense is really the cost of printing the ballots; and security is limited to the paper ballots themselves;
>>>
>>> 3. Maintenance of the machines, upgrades and "patches" are a continuing expense; no such expense occurs with hand-counted paper ballots;
>>>
>>> 4. We know that "audits" of electronically counted ballots don't work; First, what triggers the audit? In most states, an audit requirement is triggered when the difference in the vote totals is less than one half of one percent. A good hacker will keep the discrepancy within the margin so that no state law is triggered. Even when you have such a law, most states do not automatically assume that the hand count will replace the machine count. Seems stupid, but there it is.
More:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_joan_bru_061118_election_forum.htm