Ballot or bust

Eschew Obfuscation

In Georgia there is a well funded effort to return to hand marked, paper ballots to determine voter’s choices for elections.

Some of us are chronologically gifted and can remember what counting votes by hand was like.  It was extremely worker intensive.  It was slow and the results were delayed until every vote was counted and results reported.  It was ballot manipulation intensive because each ballot went through several sets of hands in the tally process.  It was susceptible to outside manipulation as well as internal miss-counts

These were some of the stated reasons for moving to automated ballot counting.  

Initially ballots were punch cards where voters punched holes in the ballot cards, then came ballots where voters fill in little ovals or circles on a paper ballot. This fill-in-the-circle ballot is still in use in Georgia absentee voting.  After the voter made their choices, these ballots were run through a mechanical reader connected to a computer that tabulated the votes.

If the problem with the existing system is that, in addition to the printed office and candidate’s name printed on the ballot, it also has a QR code printed on the ballot.  The complaint is  that the QR code is undecipherable by the voters.  If the QR code is the problem, remove it and have the software use character recognition algorithms to find the name printed on the ballot for each office or the yes/no selection for ballot initiatives, and use that to tabulate the vote. The creation of such an application is not beyond the abilities of programmers found in Georgia schools and the resulting programs would be the property of the Secretary of State and would be examinable as well as audit able.

When we hear calls to return to hand marked paper ballots, I hear a call to return to a complex, confusing and extremely manipulatable process to determine the voter’s choices

Let us not return to the good old days that never were actually very good.