Frank Phillips spent last Wednesday staring down 600 boxes of election materials — voted ballots, blank ballots, precinct records — sitting in a warehouse run by Denton County. After sitting in storage for the legally required periods — up to nearly two years in some cases — the roughly 24,000 pounds of paper were finally ready to be shredded.
Yet despite the hassle — and the significant cost — Phillips, Denton County’s elections administrator, is looking forward to this fall, when he will implement the county’s newest voting plan: a complete return to the paper ballot.
The unusual move sets Denton, the ninth-largest county in Texas and one of the fastest-growing, apart from the state’s other biggest counties, which all use some form of electronic voting, according to data collected by the Secretary of State’s office. Both Bexar and Harris Counties, for example, have had all electronic voting systems in place for 15 years.
Denton has been using a hybrid voting system that employs both electronic and paper ballots for about a decade. But county officials recently approved spending just shy of $9 million to buy new voting equipment from Austin-based Hart InterCivic that will return to an entirely paper-based system in time for this year's November elections. Even disabled voters, who will cast their votes on touch-screen machines, will have their ballots printed out and tallied through a print scanner.
Ahh, a return to voting system you can trust.
Hopefully the rest of the country will follow suit, especially since we now know that the Russians tried to hack state voter data bases and software systems as well in order to change results.
While we are on the subject of voter suppression, you may like to know that so far only Arkansas has complied with Trump's "Election Integrity" commission and provided all of the voter data that they requested.
So, that is two good news stories about voting integrity in only one post.
Not bad for a Sunday morning.
Two years ago Virginia de-certified touch-screen machines that tally the votes cast on them because, while the machines counted the votes cast on the machine, there was no paper trail -- you had to trust that the machine was counting screen touches correctly.
ReplyDeleteMy poor rural county purchased Hart Inter-Civic equipment and we are very pleased with it. The equipment consists of:
1. Digital scanner. Voters mark a paper ballot that then goes into the scanner to be counted. After passing through the scanner, the ballot drops into a sealed, locked ballot box where it's available for hand-counting if need e.
2. A handicapped-accessible touch screen machine THAT PRINTS A PAPER BALLOT, which is then fed through the scanner.
Every ballot is paper. If there's a question about the count, the paper ballots are there to be hand-counted.
New York has the same type of system. I feel much more secure knowing that there's a paper backup system in place in case of any problems or questions.
DeleteSo the red state of South Carolina is not going to comply with the request for info from the "voter fraud" commission. But the head of that states Republican party is going to purchase the voter info, ad allowed by law there, and give it to the commission. And he's bragging about it. Nothing like putting ur party first, but that is a theme with most republicans
ReplyDeletebetter yet, to hell with any sort of electronic voting, paper trail or no.
ReplyDeletelets go back to the big old mechanical beasts of yesteryear. they were reliable, unhackable, and best of all, made us wait a little longer for the results of the election.
a little patience can go a long way in rebuilding confidence in our voting system
Paper Trail is only way. If there are 300 million registered voters than there will be 300 million ballots. Each voter receives a receipt with number. It is outrageous to collect data with personal information and voting history etc and hand it over to a Liar and known bully or his corrupt cult. Tell your representatives to STOP being gullible and represent the people.
ReplyDeleteDoesn't romneys or bushes own the electronic voting machines companies or something? I read that somewhere years ago.
ReplyDeleteRMonEy! "f the family of a candidate in, say, a Russian election, owned the company that made the voting machines, reasonable observers would howl that the election might obviously be rigged. And they would be justified in doing so."
Deletehttp://www.businessinsider.com/romney-investment-in-voting-machines-2012-10
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2012/10/20/romney-family-investment-ties-to-voting-machine-company-that-could-decide-the-election-causes-concern/#267e29611afa
Is Romney a distant Russian?
DeleteThat would explain the $$$$
Caution! Hanging Chads!
ReplyDeleteOT:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.yahoo.com/news/court-constitution-grants-record-police-public-163654607.html
Good.
We've had vote by mail here in Oregon since 1998. I love it!
ReplyDeleteDon't forget: Texas has already complied. So much for "voting integrity"
ReplyDeleteIncorrect, while Gov wheelchair says he will comply many Texas lawmakers are fighting for the rights of voters....in the mean while many of us have chosen to unregister in Texas.
Deletehttp://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/09/california-republicans-sweat-trump-240307
ReplyDelete“There were 4.4 million Republicans in California who voted for Trump, and they are looking for real leadership in California,"