Now. Seriously, what is wrong with paper ballots?

[fshrink]

- Too many to count? If there's a limit, what is it and why is it a limit?.
- Takes too long? And so? Where's the hurry? This a democratic celebration! We should be dancing around the polling stations.
- Inaccurate? Don't think so. There's double or triple checks in most democracies. Plus it's public and counted aloud.
- Propositions put to the vote make it impossible? Just takes a little longer. And again, where's the hurry?

I'm asking: what is the problem with paper ballots? I know that you tendencious crowd will say: well, the problem is it's too accurate! But do you see any reasonable explanation aside from this one?

[phantom power]

1. I can think of some objections, but none of them really stand up

to scrutiny.

It would take longer, but then again it's also possible to use more people to count them. If it were me, I would make election services something like jury duty. If you are picked by lottery, then you work at the ballot boxes, and/or counting votes that year.

In theory, a machine *could* count the votes more accurately, and without bias, but that rests on the obviously shaky assumption that the machine isn't tampered with.

On another topic: is there some reason you are posting this in the Atheists and Agnostics forum, as opposed to the "election results" forum?

[fshrink]

2. Yes, there is a reason.

Anywhere else I have to put up with religious pollution. It's like star-gazing in August from Dallas. And I am still interested in seeing how no-belief influences political thinking and discourse.
And for the topic: then what's not wrong with the electronic ballot?

[phantom power]

3. In principle, there's nothing wrong with the *concept* of electronic

ballots. It's the particular implementations we're using that are terrible.

With modern cryptographic signatures, and checksums, there's no reason that we can't design a very secure, verifyable, and tamper-proof electronic voting system. Do it right, and we could conduct the entire thing over the internet, and it would still be secure.

But all code should be open source, and the machines should be public domain, and regulated.

In other words, everything that the current Diebold machines (and others) aren't.

[Kolesar]

4. the election workers just want to get home earlier

Punch cards and EVMs are just a panacea to make things go faster and seem more high tech.

[franmarz]

5. If you find nothing wrong with paper ballots--

Come live in Florida, where you can have your fill of politics and paper ballots.