Why did we do away with paper ballots?

[Binders Keepers]

The story about vote flipping in the primaries to steal the nomination for Romney has me wondering: who was the knucklehead who thought it would be a good idea to store all the tallies inside a machine, instead of on durable paper?

[LuckyStrykes]

1. We still have them

...in Alabama, y'all.

[charlyvi]

7. Yep.

The first time I voted here, they gave me this big paper ballot and I thought WTF? But now I kind of like them. It's like back in FDR's day,

[LuckyStrykes]

10. Threw me for a loop, too.

But, yeah. I like them.

[Skidmore]

40. And in Iowa. We have paper ballots.

[msongs]

2. dems and repubs selling out to corporations in return for "donations"? nt

[DCBob]

3. Why did we do away with punch cards?

[PeaceNikki]

4. Paper ballots are the law here in Wisconsin.

[Scuba]

23. Then sadly fed into a scanner that records your vote exactly as the manufacturer instructed.

Which may or may not be the same as you marked. No one knows.

[stlsaxman]

26. but at least you have the ability to do an actual recount.

[justiceischeap]

5. Cause progress is better, don'tcha know?

I think they were looking for a system that allowed them to tally the votes more quickly. My cynical self thinks it's so it's easier to steal elections.

[milestogo]

6. Hanging chads.

[PoliticAverse]

8. The people who make machines that tally votes of course... n/t

[Gidney N Cloyd]

9. I think the best thing is a scanable paper ballot.

You scan it on election day then follow that with a mandatory official hand count. The news crews get their story fast and the hand count largely keeps things honest.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

11. And by the way, I DO mean mandatory hand count.

Right now we have scan-able ballots but no one hand counts them unless there's a challenge and the challenge needs some reason to do it, like the scan count was within some close margin.

[Scuba]

24. There is no reason for a scanner. Just count them. Fast is mainingless, accurate is mandatory.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

27. There's no reason NOT to scan them, though, if there's a mandatory handcount immediately after.

The newsies want their news so give it to them but call it the unofficial preliminary count. If the official handcount is right on the scanned count's tail, I don't think anyone is going to fuck with the scanners and try to steal many races.

[Scuba]

33. Disagree. Announcing a "winner" before any official result (handcount) just sets us up for trouble.

Again, there is no good reason for anything but a handcount. It's not like districts are so large that ballots can't be counted in a day.

[marions ghost]

28. Double checking

Scanner + mandatory hand count = works well, if the central tabulator processing is transparent.

[upi402]

12. a must read; The Best Democracy Money Can Buy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Best_Democracy_Money_Can_Buy
$4 at Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0452285674/ref=sr_1_1_np_1_main_olp?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1351127523&sr=1-1&condition=new

[CitizenLeft]

13. Ohioan here - voted on a paper ballot last week.

It surprised me, actually - voted absentee in the mid-term, but in 2008, it was a Diebold machine. Now it's the old paper/pen/fill in the oval.

[PeaceNikki]

14. 31 states have Legislation / Regulation Requiring Paper Ballots

http://www.verifiedvoting.org/article.php?id=5022

[Iwasthere]

15. I just voted on paper

And then sent it in... I love our system in Oregon. The entire country should vote by mail. So convienient, no lines and I can take my time.

[napi21]

16. One way they sold this to the public was "speed in reporting results".

You know, if ther could be a LIVE, ON AIR running total nationwide, at the very least, mthe media would CHEER! It also was a solution to the hanging chad problem.

[geckosfeet]

17. We still have them - they are cardboard really. Optical scanner reads them.

[Piedras]

18. Calif. absentee voter, partially because then you vote on a paper ballot, not on a black box

I'm a California permanent absentee voter, otherwise known as a vote by mail voter. It's easier. More accurate. There's more time to fill out the ballot. I can research candidates or issues I may be unsure about. Can vote early by mail, or turn in my ballot on election day at a local polling place. I have more trust in a paper ballot than than I do in an unverifiable "black box."

[StarryNite]

19. Arizona...we have them.

We use a special marker to connect the two ends of an arrow. Read by an optical scanner. They are not fail proof though. A few years ago I went to vote with my two adult kids. My son said it's pointless to vote because your vote doesn't count. But he did vote. He put his ballot into the scanner and the scanner promptly kicked it back out indicating he had done something invalid. The scanner attendant, my son, my daughter, and myself all looked at the place on the ballot where it showed something was wrong. But it wasn't wrong. You could pick up to three candidates for a certain position and that's exactly what my son did. The attendant told my son his vote would not count for that particular item. I guess my son could have demanded to fill out another ballot although the attendant never offered him that option. Everything else on the ballot supposedly was counted so we walked out and to this day we talk about how my son's vote did not count.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

20. Too much "democracy" is a trick for killing true democracy

Ballots have been loaded up with propositions, elections for judgeships and other offices that should be appointive, phony referenda on issues that do not matter, etc. Some voters are faced with a total number of ballot decisions approaching triple digits. In the confusion and time pressure this excess "democracy" generates, top-of-the-ticket offices are stolen more easily. Counting paper ballots accurately by hand is not feasible when there are 100 or more lines of choices.

[Mr.Bill]

21. I work at my local polls here in California

We still use paper ballots here in my county, but the law requires us to have an electronic machine available at every precinct. Last election not one person used it. In the election before that, two people used it.

[condoleeza]

22. Still have em in Oregon,

the voting machines should be outlawed, IMO, there has to be a paper trail.

[Junkdrawer]

25. Too hard to rig....

How the hell do you run a pseudo-democracy with paper ballots?

[Bluenorthwest]

29. I don't know, why did you do away with your paper ballots? We use them in Oregon

not one 'voting machine' in the State. Our neighbor up north, Washington, same thing. CA people have the option of voting by mail as well. That's the entire West Coast. Election laws are made at the State level.
What are you doing to get your ballot back?

[lunatica]

30. Remember the hanging chads?

The electronic voting machines were born a little after that. Congress passed a federal law that gave states funding to replace their punch card and lever voting systems with electronic voting machines. But computer scientists have repeatedly demonstrated that a variety of electronic voting machines can be hacked -- often quite easily. The voting machines are privately owned.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/22/electronic-voting-machines-2012_n_1992992.html?utm_campaign=102212&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Alert-technology&utm_content=FullStory

[Bluenorthwest]

42. Not really accurate. E voting machines started coming in before 2000, and the first

video voter machine (that's what they called it) was around 1976. Used in an election at that time. Riverside County CA was the first county wide use of DRE machines and that was done for the 2000 election. So they were not only born before 2000, their use was being implimented prior to 2000 and in 2000, hundreds of thousands of Americans voted on those machines.....
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18672642

[oldhippie]

31. Cost

nt

[WinkyDink]

32. Because protests would be met with, "You're old, and change is scary."

[mucifer]

34. Actually, cheating with paper ballots is just as possible.

Lots of paper ballots have disappeared throughout the years.

[Bluenorthwest]

43. Any system can be cheated, but 'just as possible' is simply not the case.

A study led by UC Berkeley computer scientist David Wagner revealed that e-voting is not as secure and reliable as it should be. As a result, electronic voting machines were decertified across California.
"We found the voting systems — all three of them we looked at — were susceptible to computer viruses," Wagner says.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18672642

What support do you have for the idea that paper ballots carry an equal possibility of being cheated or rigged?

[mnhtnbb]

35. We have paper ballots in NC.

[MineralMan]

36. Minnesota still uses paper ballots,

which are optically scanned. In 2008 and 2010, manual recounts were done statewide. The results did not differ much at all. Our state's system works just fine.

[FSogol]

37. I started voting in the late 70s and we always had mechanical voting machines.

You'd click levers for each person you were voting for and pull a lever to register all the votes. That system worked great.

[CTyankee]

38. Here in CT we have them. They are large cards that are put through a scanner but they have

your vote clearly marked and could be retrieved if a recount by hand has to take place.

[treestar]

39. Everything had to be computerized

It was the latest rage. Even if not useful for a particular thing, everyone was on the bandwagon about everything.

That was in the 90s. There was some noise about saving paper/trees, but in practice, I haven't seen that to be so.

[hobbit709]

41. "Knucklehead"-I don't think so. It was done to make it easier to steal an election.

[ThomThom]

44. could be ballet box stuffing?

or maybe easier/faster to count?
or maybe easier to steal?
or maybe contracts to friends to provide the machines?