The Vanishing Ballot
Updated Below–
Two years ago Pocahontas county auditor Margene Bunda vowed to buy a new voting system that had a paper trail when she spent her HAVA money. And she did, sort of.
We wound up with paper ballots AND vapor ballots (with no voter-verified paper trail) in every precinct. Hmmm.
Then we had our first election on the new gadgetry in June. The pollworkers were pretty obviously steering the voters to the paperless vote manipulating device called a touchscreen. When it was over, Pocahontas county had a high rate of paperless voting.
Today in our uncontested school board race the only paper ballot in sight hung on the front door. It was the sample ballot. Inside the poll only the touchscreen was available. A $4,000 computer to tally one uncontested race.
Meanwhile in Maryland, where they also use only paperless touchsreens, no polls were able to open in the whole of Montgomery county. Someone forgot to send all the pieces out to the polls, so the gadgets were unuseable until mid-morning. Here’s an eyewitness account.
Maryland could be our future, too.
Update: Here is another eyewitness report from a different Maryland county with different problems. It is by a computer scientist who is a poll worker.