Paper Ballot Has MD's and VA's vote

[MountainLaurel]

Interesting . . . I guess the oldest technology is the most reliable.

Goodbye, electronic voting. Farewell, fancy touch screen. 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 -- and will still be paying for the abandoned system until 2014. In Virginia, localities are moving to paper after the General Assembly voted last year to phase out electronic voting machines as they wear out.

It was just a few years ago that electronic voting machines were heralded as a computerized panacea to the hanging chad, a state-of-the-art system immune to the kinds of hijinks and confusion that some say make paper ballots vulnerable. But now, after concern that the electronic voting machines could crash or be hacked, the two states are swinging away from the systems, saying paper ballots filled out by hand are more reliable, especially in a recount.
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The trend reflects a national movement away from electronic voting machines. About a third of all voters will use them Tuesday, down from a peak of almost 40 percent in 2006, according to Election Data Services, a Manassas-based consulting firm specializing in election administration. Every jurisdiction that has changed election systems since 2006 has gone to paper ballots read by optical scan machines, said Kimball Brace, the firm's president. And for the first time in the country's history, fewer jurisdictions will be using electronic machines than in the previous election, he said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/29/AR2008102904105.html

[fujiyama]

1. I'd like to smash those voting machines

like the scene from Office Space.

[MountainLaurel]

4. Good idea n/t

[bdamomma]

2. maybe instead of throwing tea in the harbour

those machines should be considered.

[pleah]

3. K&R Good for them!

I have been advocating pen and paper for quite some time.