Duh... I Mark Paper

Wired has an interesting article on possible solutions for the currently paperless voting machines often used in the US:

Efforts to secure the integrity of electronic-voting machines seemed to get a boost this week, but the debate over the best way to guard against election tampering remained at a fever pitch.

After five months of hearings and deliberations, a high-level election-reform commission led by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker recommended that Congress require electronic-voting machines to produce a voter-verifiable paper audit trail by 2008.

But this sentence shows that the author has never used a modern cash register:

Critics also say the printers will jam, break down or run out of paper, creating more labor for poll workers. And they argue that an election involving numerous races and candidates would produce an unwieldy paper trail that would be time-consuming for voters to review and difficult for election officials to recount -- especially if the thermal paper used in the printers is tightly curled.

Anyone who's worked a till in the last five years should know this: You fold the ballots lengthwise. That's the high-tech solution to curled thermal paper. Morons.

Oh, and by the way - it's difficult to see why these elections would be more difficult and time consuming then Canada's, where all ballots are paper and counted by machine, and hand counted in the event of a recount. I haven't heard a single decent reason - not one - for why we should prefer paperless voting. I can only assume that for some people, accuracy in democracy doesn't matter much.

Speaking of which, I had a recent conversation in class in which somebody brought up (yet again) the idea that we should be able to vote over the internet, because "it would be so much easier, and it would increase turnout." To which my eternal response is: Easier than what? I've voted every time I was eligible in Canada, and I've usually done it by showing up with nothing but a pulse. They ask for some ID, I vote, and I go home. Need to get time off from work? Your boss has to give it to you. Period. It doesn't get easier than that - and if you need it to be easier than that before you'll vote, then please, stay home.

One measure which would achieve most of the aims of the "easy" camp would be to simply make election day a statutory holiday. This would be slightly more complicated in a parliamentary democracy, as elections can occasionally be unpredictable. But in no case would businesses have less than four weeks' notice. It would also give people a specific occasion for voting associated with that most precious of commodities - time off. This could do much more for voting then internet democracy.

Meanwhile, allowing people to vote over the internet poses so many huge security and privacy issues that I don't want to have anything to do with it. I mean, if Stephen Harper is elected Prime Minister, then fine. But if he gets elected by the same bots that fill my comments with spam...