Paper Ballots Will Return In MD and VA

cheezitmike writes "According to a story in the Washington Post, 'Maryland and Virginia are going old school after Tuesday's election. Maryland will scrap its $65 million electronic system and go back to paper ballots in time for the 2010 midterm elections. In Virginia, localities are moving to paper after the General Assembly voted last year to phase out electronic voting machines as they wear out. "The battle for the hearts and minds of voters on whether electronic systems are good or bad has been lost," Brace said. The academics and computer scientists who said they were unreliable "have won that battle."'"

Comments

No Barr in CT

[Rinisari]

Too bad CT won't do it in time to put Bob Barr on the ballot, since the state and court claimed that it would take too long to reprint paper ballots and reprogram electronic voting machines with his name, even though he met all requirements on time.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[fiannaFailMan]

How can ACORN steal an election? By getting low income people to fill voter registration forms? By handing them in (as required to do by law) and find that some people decided to write 'Mickey Mouse' on the form? And then have the form rejected or the voter turned away at the polls for failing to produce the mouse's ID? Not much of a thievery plan, is it?

Re:Makes it sound bad?

[theaveng]

I used to live in Maryland. The paper ballots are anything but 1800s. They are an extremely-simple system where the voter draws a line next to this candidate. An electronic machine then reads that line and automatically tallies the vote. Later those same paper ballots can be reused for hand-counting if someone challenges the result.

We Republicans protested for a long-time that the double-verification of both paper & electronic counts was superior to the e-voting machines, but the Democrats rammed through the machines anyway. I'm glad to see that we were proven correct, and now they're going back to the paper/electronic system.

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is the motto that applies here. There was nothing wrong with the old system; it was proven and worked.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[El Royo]

I find your claim that Sarah Palin might become President is a sign of idiocy laughable on its face. Aren't the dems the ones who keep saying that no experience can prepare you for president (since Obama has no experience)? And yet, they keep saying that Palin is inexperienced? Pot? Kettle?

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Misch]

Actually, not "sadly" really. In Indiana, the state with the most stringent ID requirements, only 85.9% of 2006 voters had an ID that exactly matched their voter registration.

When broken down by categories, the percentages were disproportionate for minority (84.2% for white 78.2% for black voters), low income (78.9% income under $40K vs. 89.3% for income from $40K to $80K), very young/very old (78.0% 18-34 years old 80.6% for 70 years and up, 83.8 35-54 years and 85.9 55-69 years old), and lower education (HS grad 79% vs 88.9% for college grads), and by political party (86.2% for Republicans, 81.7% for Democrats.)

The study concludes:

While the ability of rigid voting requirements to achieve the goal of reducing voter fraud is debatable at best, our results from four separate locations clearly indicate that these requirements have significant electoral implications. Not only does the Indiana law disproportionately impact the communities most vulnerable to changes in the electoral process, there is also a clear partisan bias associated with these laws as well.

Our data suggests that a greater number of Democrats than Republicans or Independents are excluded from voting under Indianaâ(TM)s voter identification laws. This is particularly concerning given the very narrow vote margins associated with several federal, state, and local races in recent memory. While the state interest of preventing voting fraud is an important one, our results here question whether this interest should be advanced despite apparent evidence that this ostensible method of fraud prevention disproportionately impacts specific segments of the electorate.

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Moving to paper is a GOOD MOVE

[dwheeler]

We still use the wheel, and that's a pretty old invention. "Old" is not necessarily "bad", or "good". The question is, "is this the most appropriate way to solve the problem"?

The DRE equipment was NEVER appropriate for voting. Those kinds of things are just a magician's prop, and completely untrustworthy for voting purposes. If you want to make it easy for ONE person to steal an entire election, they're perfect. If your purpose is an honestly-counted election, such machines cannot be trusted. "There's nothing up this sleeve... nothing up the other sleeve... oh look, here's a fixed election!! Betcha can't tell how I did it!"

They're not IGNORING computer technology; they'll use computers to tally up the votes. The difference is, the information will be on a permanent record (paper) so that recounts and cross-checks can be done easily. You can use a computer well, or foolishly. The old systems used computers in a foolish way; now they're trying to fix that.

I think that the states should get their money back for many of the voting machines. Practically ALL computer-knowledgeable people understand that computers are easily rigged, and thus many of the existing systems are fundamentally untrustworthy. Quoting John Willis is unconvincing; he may say he's an "elections expert", but it's clear that he does not understand the fundamentals of these new voting systems.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Misch]

You get married. You update your drivers license with a new last name. You move. Your address is now different. You go by Larry, but your drivers license says Lawrence. A board of elections data entry clerk enters "Larwence"

All of these things qualified as "not matching" in the Indiana study.