Verified voting: Who in their right mind would support a voting system in this day and age that cannot create a paper record of how the person voted?

We absolutely MUST be able to perform recounts.

I recall a few years ago being present in Kansas City for an election day. The machines scanned a fill-in-the-blank ballot sheet, and then printed a receipt of some sort confirming that the ballot had been scanned.

Upon recount, there existed the paper ballots that had been scanned - no sweat. Wonderful system.

Over at DailyKOS some people are trying to generate some enthusiasm to make the verifiable ballot a major political issue. See below for an excerpt.

The major players in computerized voting seem to be pushing non-verifiable (read “fraud friendly”) voting machines. These players are well know Republican companies, which Democrats find highly suspicious.

I can’t imagine why anyone would back unverifiable voting. Maybe your preferred political party is in power today, and so you don’t fear the risks from unverifiable voting, but the pendulum will swing the other way eventually, and you will cry out for verifiable voting in the future.

So let’s just make the voting verifiable today, please, and help ensure that our elections are unassailably fair.

Right now.

UPDATE: And after you see the excerpt in the Box below, you can see another KOS thread. Optical Scanners WERE Hacked? Proof? You decide!.

And so, if optical scanners are hackable, it reamin critical to have a verifiable vote, a paper trail, a hand-marked and countable ballot to double check the hackable machines.

Daily Kos :: If you are against Verified Voting you are against Democracy: a dkos call for action!
We don’t have fair elections.

This is a diary about Verified Voting, and you had better damn well pay attention to it.
Some Kos folks, Democrats and regular Americans, think that there is a problem, and that yes, some things may have been fishy in the last election, but it is not as important as: The Nucleur option, Social Security, John Bolton, etc. whatever the dancing demon of the week is.

To those people, let me tell you, you are dead wrong

here’s why:

Diaries :: Neutron’s diary :: :: Trackback ::

Let’s say you think the vote should be verified, that there should be verifiable paper trails so that we can do recounts and all of that good stuff that makes democracy, democracy. Let’s say you believe all of that, but think that it’s not as important as taking back the Senate, House, state Houses, City Council, etc.

Realize then, that there are a lot of people, who have been called “fraudsters” “black helicopter folks” and any number of other horribly derogatory terms on this board, who believe that none of this matters because we don’t have free elections right now and won’t until it’s done.

Also realize that we, as a thinktank, as a party, as a movement, are operating somewhere close to… let’s be generous and say 70%. Because people like myself can’t really ever get behind ANYTHING that is happening all the time because of fear that the vote is fixed.