Can we go back to paper ballots?
There's concern that not all polling places will have power by election day.
The RNC has formally complained that they've received repeated reports of touchscreens registering votes for Romney as votes for Obama. (These in states where you click to confirm.)
I recall concern that Bush partisans would change voting machines totals in 2004.
It would avoid a lot of problems in 2016 if we went back to paper ballots. If we want them machine-readable, we're all trained in the use of bubbles and #2 pencils. Voting machines can be for the disabled and fill out the bubbles for you. Or if people insist, voting machines can be for everyone, as long as they fill out paper ballots which can be filled out manually if the voting machines are unusable. I'd prefer skipping the machines entirely except for people who need them to vote privately, but just having the ballots usable by humans in an emergency is a step forward. Redundancy is good.
(Yes, I remember butterfly ballots, too. That was a problem with specific ballot design, and a touchscreen interface could be just as bad, whereas I see several technical reasons why bubbles and a #2 pencil dark pen [ed: thanks, agrumer; of course a pen is better] are practically superior to voting machines.)
The RNC has formally complained that they've received repeated reports of touchscreens registering votes for Romney as votes for Obama. (These in states where you click to confirm.)
I recall concern that Bush partisans would change voting machines totals in 2004.
It would avoid a lot of problems in 2016 if we went back to paper ballots. If we want them machine-readable, we're all trained in the use of bubbles and #2 pencils. Voting machines can be for the disabled and fill out the bubbles for you. Or if people insist, voting machines can be for everyone, as long as they fill out paper ballots which can be filled out manually if the voting machines are unusable. I'd prefer skipping the machines entirely except for people who need them to vote privately, but just having the ballots usable by humans in an emergency is a step forward. Redundancy is good.
(Yes, I remember butterfly ballots, too. That was a problem with specific ballot design, and a touchscreen interface could be just as bad, whereas I see several technical reasons why bubbles and a #2 pencil dark pen [ed: thanks, agrumer; of course a pen is better] are practically superior to voting machines.)