It’s Not the Paper Ballots – it’s the HAND COUNTING that’s Important.

[Junkdrawer]

In this election, almost exclusively, machines counted the vote. Now the dangers of the touchscreen machines have been analyzed ad nauseum. But optical scan and punchcard ballots are still the predominant way of voting in this country. And both are counted on election night by machines, machines that are run by custom, proprietary (read secret) software provided by private companies. Private companies whose owners donate almost exclusively to the Republican Party.

Well, you might say, at least optical scan and punchcard ballots provide a paper trail. But ask yourself: “When are these paper trails used?” 99.9% of the time, they are only used if the election is within 0.5% - the equivalent of a coin falling upright on its edge. So if the machines were rigged, and rigged to give the desired candidate a decisive edge, the riggers would almost never get caught.

The Ohio recount was one of the first opportunities to check the honesty of these machines. But 34 days passed between the election and the certification of the election. And the recount didn’t start until eight days after that. And during this time, ballots were stored in various insecure locations – store rooms, closets, sometimes locked, sometimes unlocked, in buildings that were sometimes locked and sometimes unlocked. Now in this country, we have a secret ballot and that’s a good thing. Only you and your conscience, assuming you still have one, should be in that voting booth. But a secret ballot has an inherent danger – ballots are ridiculously easy to counterfeit. And the various goings on in Ohio, especially in Greene County, have many of us suspecting that is indeed what has happened.

No, if you want an honest count, an honest hand count, your only shot is election night. And that is why democracies all over the world still use paper ballots, hand counted in front of witnesses on election night. It can be done. Canada recently had an election and most results were reported within a few hours of the close of polls. And they use paper ballots hand counted in front of "scrutineers" from each party. And you know what? I've never heard of a peep of "fraud" coming out of that election.