Let's face it the only way to free our voting system from vendor control and influence is to go for all paper ballots, made out by the voter himself and then counted in the precinct where the voting takes place.
Without electronic technology, the system can be 100% transparent to any human, geek or not. No high level government certification needed.
The nearly four billion dollars behind HAVA could have bought us a lot of human labor in ballot counting.
Holt will only cement the acceptability of computers in elections, and for the first time give the Feds say over how we conduct elections. It should not pass.
Tim Lee
· 2 years ago
Arlene, I agree that using paper ballots is the best policy. However, I don't think the Holt bill is necessarily going to cement the acceptability of computers in elections. Nothing in the Holt bill prevents states from ditching touch-screen voting machines entirely, which I hope that many states will choose to do. I would rather have legislation that flatly prohibits the use of touch-screen machines, but I don't see that on the horizon.
I'm also sensitive to federalism concerns, but I don't think those are a serious problem here. The bill leaves almost all of the implementation details up to states, and only requires that states certify to the federal government that their election processes meet certain requirements. I'm not wild about these provisions, but the only states that will be seriously burdened are those states that have adopted paperless touch-screen voting systems, and those states need to be burdened.
All Comments
Without electronic technology, the system can be 100% transparent to any human, geek or not. No high level government certification needed.
The nearly four billion dollars behind HAVA could have bought us a lot of human labor in ballot counting.
Holt will only cement the acceptability of computers in elections, and for the first time give the Feds say over how we conduct elections. It should not pass.
I'm also sensitive to federalism concerns, but I don't think those are a serious problem here. The bill leaves almost all of the implementation details up to states, and only requires that states certify to the federal government that their election processes meet certain requirements. I'm not wild about these provisions, but the only states that will be seriously burdened are those states that have adopted paperless touch-screen voting systems, and those states need to be burdened.