Junk the machines; return to paper ballots

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Recent election flops in Salina and Saline County are reason

to wonder why we continue to fiddle with electronic voting.

In November, a so-called “malfunction” left voting machines

spluttering away, spewing more than 5,200 votes into the van-
ishing mists of cyberworld.

This “malfunction” was discovered nearly a week after

the polls closed. Officials dismissed the error as “harmless”

because no races had been affected. What rot. They were

affected; we just don’t know how badly.

On April 7, the race for one seat on the Salina City

Commission was apparently decided by two votes, with

Randall Hardy the winner over Joe Hay, 2,135-2,133; the offi-
cial canvass six days later resulted in a tie, 2,141 votes for each.

The tie was decided with a coin toss, Hay the winner. Another

recount turned up another winner, this time Hardy, by three

votes 2,151-2,148.

Notice how the total vote kept changing with each count –

along with the results?

A machine that scans paper ballots was blamed. Human

error was blamed. Cyber voting has been blamed.

Paper is never blamed. A paper ballot is real. It can be held.

It can be counted time and again. A paper trail is crucial to the

election process. Electronic voting is not.

With electronic ballots, and their digital chads dangling

out on some script code, a voter cannot possibly be sure that

what is on a computer screen is recorded accurately. There is

no paper trail in electronic voting in Kansas. When a voter

hits a “send” button, there is no way to show that the vote was

recorded, and that it was recorded accurately.

Electronic “sign-ins” at the polls only perpetuate the poten-
tial (if not actual) fraud; unlike signing registration books and

casting paper ballots, there is no comparing electronic votes

with electronic signatures at a polling place. Here the voter

is asked to trust the myth, the hype that electronic voting is

speedier, more accurate, more efficient.

Sure it is. That’s why we have all those missing votes, van-
ished ballots and record-setting recounts.

Paper ballots are solid, reliable, easily counted. And they

leave a paper trail, the best guarantee for that constitutional

right to a free and fair election.

We have junked paper – and trustworthy elections – in

far too many places. After the November foul-up in Saline

County, the County Commission Chairman at the time, Randy

Duncan, said the episode was “scary. That makes me wonder

about voting machines,” he told The Salina Journal. “Should

we go back to paper ballots?”

We shouldn’t need to wonder. We should feel secure in vot-
ing. We would, with paper ballots – everywhere.

groups. We’re not so fearful that they will succeed, but they

are bound to mess up the proceedings and cause new divisions

among the citizenry.

We should junk the constitutional convention before too

many people take the idea seriously. We don’t need it.

Budgetary goals can be reached by more orderly proceedings,

if legislators or the Congress can muster the will. The threat of

tampering with our basic law is real, and a convention costs

more money than we need spend.

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– JOHN MARSHALL

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