Diebold could be big loser in today's elections

I still would consider it an

I still would consider it an extremely high priority to abolish touchscreen voting altogether before 2008, because they are tools too susceptible to fraud. If we all just followed Oregon's lead and went with an all mail-in system it would:

* Increase voter turnout

* Prevent voter intimidation/harassment at the polls

* Prevent last-minute threatening and voter-confusing calls

* Take the wind out of the last few days of ultra-negative campaign ads

* Allow people to sit in their own homes, with their voter's guides and family or friends, and discuss the issues while they're voting on them. Don't we want educated voters? [rhetorical question, tongue in cheek only because of the sad answer that educated voters are clearly anathema to too many politicians]

* Remove all the uncertainty about purged voters. If you get a ballot in the mail, you're allowed to vote. If you didn't, you'd have plenty of time to rectify the error

* It's cheap! No more paying for voting machines, polling places, etc.

* It's convenient for voters, nobody has to take time off from work, no standing in lines in the rain

Last minute desperation tactics that depend on leaving insufficient time to be exposed and rebutted wouldn't have a chance anymore. It would do so much to clean up the last week of campaigning, since many people would have already voted by then.

There are so many positives to such a system and virtually no negatives. How on earth are we stuck in a situation where we're even debating the utility of touchscreens? Why are such obvious and simple solutions completely ignored (except in Oregon, and no, I'm not from there)?

Someone once said: "For every complicated problem there's a simple solution· and it's wrong." Okay, I'll buy that. But this isn't a complicated problem. And the simple solution? It's right!

Why not just open it up?

Why not just open it up? Make a "X" prize for the best, most rock solid voting machine based upon open source? Let all of the little guys in the world take a hack at it. The idea seems ot have worked well for the orginial "X" prize. Getting into space is much more difficult that a hack proof voting machine.

Actually, there are many

Actually, there are many people willing to take up the task, one of them being the Open Voting Consortium - http://www.openvotingconsortium.org/ - which already has an implementation with electronic counting, paper trails, and voter verifiability. All the equipment required is a bog-standard PC, a laser printer, and suitable supplies of toner. (The implementation is completely open to inspection as well.) If equipment fails, the paper ballots are scanned in for rapid tallying. You have the machines doing electronic counting, providing barcodes for rapid tallying, and providing human-readable text for manual hand recounts.

No, the Democrats did not

No, the Democrats did not force Diebold voting machines on anybody. That is like saying that Ford Pintos were forced upon us by the people who wanted better fuel economy.

I believe that the voting machine internal printer prints a paper tape that is kept as a journal. The voter should be able to view the paper tape through a window to verify that his vote was cast as he had intended. It would be a very bad thing to allow a voter to keep a "receipt" showing how they voted. I would hope that it would be possible to use the internal printer tapes in a recount if it were necessary. It would also be interesting to know if the tapes are randomly audited to verify that the machines' electronic reports agreed with the paper journal.

And then what happened with

And then what happened with your 'printout'? A personal printout that you keep =/= a paper trail. There's lots of ways for your vote to be erased/changed/whatever after you 'verify' it. Now if for example your electronic voting machine had an internal printer (inaccessible to the public) where you could watch it print your selections, and then store it inside with the printout of everyone else's prints, that would be a paper trail.

Gee, didn't all of these

Gee, didn't all of these Diebold electronic voting machines get FORCED on us by DEMOCRATS complaining about the paper ballot systems used in 2000.

Our Diebold machines worked

Our Diebold machines worked well. They produced a paper printout. I was able to verify my printout. Only after I verified my print did I press "Cast Ballot".