Mike's Election Guide by Michael Moore

Author:Michael Moore [MOORE, MICHAEL]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: POL040000
ISBN: 9780446548052
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2008-08-19T04:00:00+00:00

3. Use Paper Ballots. And a #2 Pencil.

Gee, what a simple idea. Here’s how it works in nearly every other high-tech, industrialized country:

A voter shows up at the polls, she or he is handed a paper ballot, the voter then goes behind a curtain where—lo and behold!—there sits a #2 pencil! The voter takes said pencil and places a mark next to the names of the candidates she or he wishes to vote for. The voter then opens the curtain, walks over to a big box, and places his or her ballot inside it. Done. No tiny holes to try and punch, no computer screen that is harder to read than an ATM machine in Tunisia, no ballot that must then be fed into an optical reader.

An optical reader! Man, are we a bunch of lazy asses or what? We’d rather trust a machine to do our reading for us? Or some computer server a hundred miles away? What happened to our own two eyeballs?

Because “those two eyeballs” is how they do it most other places. When the polls close, the box of ballots is opened and, in the presence of a representative from each party with a candidate running for office, the ballots are placed on a big table and, in full view of everyone, the counting begins. When they are done, they often count them again. Any observer can object at any time.

How has this worked for the Canadians, the Brits, the Irish, and everyone else? Just fine. The mistake rate is practically nonexistent. Compare that to our mistake rates for electronic voting machines (2.2 percent), optical scanners (1.6 percent), or punch cards (2.6 percent). So if a hundred million Americans vote, that means that over 2.5 million of them don’t get their votes counted. There is no better way to vote and count ballots than the old school way—a piece of paper, and a pencil.

But wouldn’t this take too long? No. In Canada, a nation of over 30 million people—and with the second largest land mass in the world—their ballots are all counted within hours. I mean, these Canadians have to get to the polls by canoe, dogsled, or baby seal, from way up in the Yukon to the provinces that are half way to Iceland. Larger countries like the UK and France also use paper ballots (though there is a drive on in many of these countries to turn to computerized voting, this would be a huge mistake. They always want to copy us. Crazy).

Voting by paper ballot and pencil is a classic “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” We broke something. Now we need to fix it.

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