Long lines can be less likely with paper ballots. Why?

[grahamhgreen]

If you are using electronic voting machines and want to have 1000 people vote at the same time, you need to buy 1,000 machines ($3,000 ea., or so).

On the other hand, if you want to have 1,000 people vote on paper ballots, all you need to do is hand them the ballot, a pen, and give them a table to write on.

The pinch point in the process is the machines themselves, most polling places can only afford to buy a limited number of these expensive, corruptible, untraceable, and unreliable electronic voting machines.

My conclusion:

By going back to paper ballots, we can reduce the lines and thus increase our effectiveness at the polls, since the more people that vote, the better Democrats do.

[yardwork]

1. True. My county uses paper ballots and voting goes very quickly.

Dozens of people can vote at the same time at my polling place, because we are given paper ballots.

[mindem]

4. Same for our county.

We have a limited number of the little booths but there are plenty of tables and chairs for people to use. I always just grab a chair and vote out in the open. I live in a very red county and I figure if someone peeks at my ballot and sees that I vote dem and it ruins their day -- good--. I don't know if I could trust anything other than paper ballots.

[WhollyHeretic]

2. We have paper bubble sheets in Connecticut that we then feed into a tabulating machine

More people can vote at once so it is much faster

[all american girl]

3. I did the paper ballot and I think it was faster than the 3 machines the had there

They had 6 of us sitting there. Here there were only 6 questions plus the people you had to vote for (3). I, personally, like the old school way of doing things....paper all the way

[sarah FAILIN]

5. Best part- paper trail

We have paper ballots where you draw a line to connect something that looks like a broken arrow back together with their special pen. Feed it through the little scanner and you're done. No hanging chads, no punching anything, no hitting the wrong part of the touch screen. People need to remember that sometimes the old ways are best. Paper ballots may be more bulky to deal with than a digital record, but paper ballots won't get "accidentally" erased.

[loyalsister]

8. Our machines produce a paper trail

Have people actually voted on them and explored them? I watched it print as I voted.

[loyalsister]

6. The voting machines have been very liberating for people who have disabilities

I know many who are very happy to finally be able to cast private votes.

[grahamhgreen]

7. That's a good point. We can retain a few machines for

accessibility

[marions ghost]

9. Been trying to tell people this

paper ballots are SO much cheaper!

[grahamhgreen]

11. And it's easy to have 100 or more people voting at exactly the same time,

which is almost impossible if you have to buy 100 or more voting machines.

[marions ghost]

12. right

a no brainer if you want the lines to move more quickly...

[Nikia]

10. I voted before work

There were two voting machines and 9 booths for paper. They directed me to the line for the machines where a dozen people were standing in line. I told them that I wanted paper because I needed to get to work. I got the paper ballot and was out of there in a few minutes.

[Thrill]

13. Time to Legislate voting from the Federal level

Universal voting machines. Everyone and Everywhere vote the same way. Early voting allowed EVERYWHERE. And Election Day is a National Holiday. Not sure why this can't be done and quickly

[grahamhgreen]

14. I don't think we need electronic machines, except for optical scan readers, perhaps,

and machines for those who need added accessibility.