Four years ago, America was introduced to the idea that using punchcards to vote might not be the very best way. It turns out that the information about the vote is not stored in the card itself, but rather in the very delicate little pre-scored edges around the "chad". The problem is that with handling the "chad" can come loose, damaging the information stored on the card. Another problem is that hypothetically a very weak person might not be able to produce the couple of grams of pressure required to actually tear out these pre-scored little bits of cardstock, giving rise to the idea of a "dimpled" or "pregnant" chad.
A lot of uproar came about because the voters were not able to adequately verify that their vote was cast as they intended.
In a piece of paper.
Now, there are groups of politically charged activists out and about complaining about computerized voting systems. The issue is that the voters are not able to adequately verify that their vote was cast as intended. On this score they are right. Sadly, they think that there is an easy solution. They want to have the machine print out the voter's choices.
On a piece of paper.
Gives them something to recount, they say. A manual recount is the only way to be sure that the election was done right, they say. What? I have to wonder, do they really think that people are better able to add up numbers than a computer is? Was Herman Hollerith really wrong 123 years ago? And it took us this long to figure it out?
Something seems wrong here to me.
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