Originally Posted By Darkbeer In very GOOD news... <a href="http://www.sptimes.com/2007/01/31/State/Crist_wants_touch_scr.shtml" target="_blank">http://www.sptimes.com/2007/01 /31/State/Crist_wants_touch_scr.shtml</a> >>Eager to end six troublesome years of touch screen voting in Florida, Gov. Charlie Crist wants every county to switch to paper ballots by 2008. Crist will ask the Legislature to spend more than $30-million to replace touch screens with an optical scan system that allows a voter to mark an oval next to a candidate’s name before slipping a ballot into an electronic reader — the same way absentee ballots are cast. The change would affect a majority of the state’s voters living in 15 mostly urban counties, including Pinellas, Hillsborough and Pasco. Crist will travel today to Palm Beach County, home of the disgraced “butterfly ballot†that in 2000 became a symbol of electoral ineptitude. Accompanied by Secretary of State Kurt Browning and U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, a Democrat and a vocal critic of touch screen voting, Crist will endorse the change in voting systems while offering the money to pay for it. “I think it’s important to make sure people have confidence in our voting system,†Crist said Wednesday. “If there’s a need for a recount, I think it’s important that we have something to recount.†Supporters of optical scan voting say it is more certain to reflect a voter’s intent because it creates a paper record of every ballot. In a touch screen system, a voter receives a card and inserts it into an ATM-like machine and touches the screen to record choices. The card is sent to the supervisor of elections, where the choices are downloaded and counted. No tangible record exists.<< As I have said before many times, still have an Electronic Computer like device that can help someone with disabilities to fill out a Paper Ballot, so those with visual or other issues can vote without assistance. (Basically a printer prints out a paper ballot when the voter has approved the ballot). This will only require a small percentage of voters to NEED to use the electronic machine, which should help prevent backups, especially at the last hour or so of the election. If folks want to vote in a different language, provide a second piece of paper that helps translate the ballot, but the actual ballot should be in ENGLISH, as almost every citizen should know the language....
Originally Posted By wahooskipper Charlie Crist has come shooting out of the gate when many people thought the shadow of Jeb Bush would loom over him. He is dumping a lot of the dead weight that exists in the Florida bureaucracy and he recently called a special session of the legislature and pushed them to pass Property Insurance reform which comes to the relief of millions of us homeowners. If his personal life stays doesn't trip him up I think this guy is a force to be reckoned with.
Originally Posted By SuperDry There is a red herring built into the original post: the notion that electronic voting does not provide a tangible record of the vote. There's nothing at all wrong with electronic voting, as long as it includes what's referred to as a "voter-verified paper audit trail." That is, you cast your ballot on a touchscreen device just like with any other electronic voting system, but the final step is that your vote is printed out on a paper register that you can visually see through a window and confirm that it matches your intent before your ballot is finalized. And most importantly, this provides a hard-copy original record of your vote so that if a recount is necessary, it can be done such that there's confidence that the count accurately reflects the voters' intent. I know why many voter registrars are against this, as this means that there's still paper that's the authortitative record of the vote, which means that it must be guarded at the polling place, transported and stored in a secure manner, rather than just having entries on a hard drive somewhere. What's fascinating about this issue is that it's somehow been turned into a partisan issue. If you research the issue, you'll find that the majority of interests that are for electronic voting but against a paper audit trail are Republican. I don't understand why this should be, as I would think that having a fair vote whose results is beyond question would be a very non-partisan issue. What I find even more fascinating that I did not know before this thread is that even though "electronic voting but with no paper audit trail" tends to be supported by Republican interests, that there's a small contingent of people from the right that are against electronic voting because it might make it easier for non-English speakers to cast ballots. I would have never even considered this issue, but when it was brought up in #1 above and I did a brief search, I found other references to it. I continue to be amazed.
Originally Posted By cmpaley >>Christ is a Republican.<< No, He's not. His theology is more akin to the Pharisees but not in whole (really! check it out!) and his economic ideology is more akin to what Democrats espouse and His morality is what Republicans CLAIM to espouse (but don't really live). >>Crist is a Republican.<< Then if he's trying to ensure that votes are going to be properly made and tabulated, he's going to be in BIG-TIME trouble with the party leadership apparatus.
Originally Posted By DAR I never really understood the problems people have filling out a ballot. You connect an arrrow. Or punch a hole. Or mark an X in a box. Or you press a name on a computer screen. Sometimes they make it sound like you're splitting an atom.
Originally Posted By wahooskipper DAR...we (Americans0 are a bunch of idiots. Keep It Simple Stupid should be our national motto. And paley...I've given up on you. Must every little thing be a reason to jump on the other guys? You should have gone into political punditry and be wasting airtime on MSNBC..CNN..Fox..etc.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan >>Keep It Simple Stupid should be our national motto.<< That motto's too long. I could never commit that to memory.
