SocraticGadfly: Paper ballots, not a Democrat-tweaked high tech, is the answer to potential voting fraud

September 20, 2005

Paper ballots, not a Democrat-tweaked high tech, is the answer to potential voting fraud

A national commission’s ideas on reforming the election process to remove fraud has many Democrats thinking it sounds like a modern-day poll tax.

People such as John Conyers are concerned that the cost of a national ID card is a poll tax of sorts. Well, if a state already requires a photo ID of some sort, isn’t there already a poll tax of sorts?

Besides, all of this is really a red herring to real electoral reform.

And that is, in two words: paper ballots.

If they are good enough for most of Western Europe, why aren’t they good enough for the “birthplace of democracy”?

Shorter answer: We’re too fricking lazy and too fricking cheap, from the level of your local city council all the way through your statehouse and on to the President and Congress of the United States, to do this.

We’re too cheap to adequate compensate poll workers and election judges, let alone pay for good training. We’re too cheap to pay for enough workers that would be needed with a paper ballot system. And we’re too lazy to look for anything beyond an ever-higher-and-higher-tech solution.

Allegedly liberal bloggers who follow this red herring while still looking for a tech-based solution simply don’t get it. And, as long as high-tech elections companies are donors in the political process, whether to Democrats or Republicans, they’re part of the problem not the solution.

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