Posted by David Sherman on Tuesday, November 02, 2004 at 11:09PM :
In Reply to: Who the hell invented the punch card voting system?... posted by Nickathome on Tuesday, November 02, 2004 at 9:09PM :
Voters use pens to mark paper ballots. Poll workers tally up the totals and report them on up the chain of command. It doesn't take any longer than our various high-tech methods. Party people can watch the counting if they want to make sure it's honest. In case a recount is needed, all the votes are there on paper, easy to re-count. Taxpayers don't have to buy the latest and greatest high-tech voting machines every 5 or 10 years when the old ones become obsolete. There is never an issue with long lines at the polls while people wait to use a limited number of machines, since all you need to vote with a paper ballot is a pen and a flat place. Lastly, there's no way for any buggy software or hacker to corrupt the vote.
High-tech voting machines, be they the mechanical ones with levers, punch cards, optical scan, or the latest software-controlled computer terminals are an expensive, unreliable, and inconvenient solution to a non-existent problem. With all the arguments about computer voting vs punch cards and such, I've yet to hear anybody explain why we need anything more elaborate than paper, pens, and ballot boxes.
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