In the wake of the voting catastrophes in Maryland during the September 12th primaries, Governor Ehrlich is now calling for a return to paper ballots for the November 7th General Election. This is a bold and applaudable move. The Diebold solution that the State of Maryland paid over 100 mil for failed not only the laugh test, but the personnel failure test, and the hardware test as well. With machines rebooting during voting, registering a vote when none was cast, and leaving no verifiable paper trail behind, this is a system that can’t stand for trustable elections.
What I propose is this: Scantron. Everyone remembers these machines, albeit with a bit of horror, from testing in High School, but they provide everything that a ballot needs: Machine Readability, Paper Backup, Hand-countability, easy manufacture, easy reading. This is the perfect ballot and we’re ignoring it for a touch screen system because it looks flashy?
We have abandoned the paper ballot to our own peril, Governor Ehrlich knows it, you know it, let’s do something about it.
This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs
I live and work in the District of Columbia. I write at We Love DC, a blog I helped start, I work at Technolutionary, a company I helped start, and I’m happy doing both. I enjoy watching baseball, cooking, and gardening. I grow a mean pepper, keep a clean scorebook, and wash the dishes when I’m done. Read Why I Love DC.
