General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Some things that should NEVER be "PRIVATIZED" in a Democracy: [View all]ahlnord
(91 posts)The conducting of our elections must be restored to public hands. Currently, for-profit corporations provide the computers (at great cost to the public) and keep their software codes secret. We the public do not have the information or ability to assure that our votes are properly recorded and counted. As an election judge who used to count the paper ballots and certify the results, I now have to read the ticker tape printed out by the ballot counting machine and "certify" those results! The only way to actually certify those results is to take the ballots (yes, we do at least have paper ballots) and count them by hand to see if the machine-printed results are correct. Of course we only do that when there is a challenge, resulting in a statewide recount (a huge undertaking as opposed to counting the ballots at the precincts in the first place). I believe it is our civic duty to count the ballots cast. Otherwise we will lose faith in our democracy, unable to have confidence in the results spewed out by computers and machines. Bradblog.com is a great blog for election reform. Hands-on voting = paper ballots hand-counted! Take back our elections!