It’s a beautiful November morning. The Sun is shining. The air has a bit of a nip, but it is refreshing after the long hot summer.

Jane is whistling. She has just finished a cup of coffee, and is navigating through unusually light traffic for a weekday. She feels refreshed….since today is a National Holiday, she got to sleep in. And the thought that she is getting a free day with holiday pay gives her a nice feeling too.

She is thinking back to the wonderful weekend. It was nice to not have to see the constant barrage of political ads on TV…. She loved the new laws that prohibited Political ads after Midnight 3 days before the election.

And she was really impressed by the networks fairly balanced coverage. They all seemed to have nightly, informative specials about all the candidates all weekend long. The special Tax Credits and rebates given to Networks and Media stations who give equal time to all candidates really seemed to be working. And by giving additional incentives to donate 3 prime time hours to coverage the last 3 days before a Presidential Election really helped too.

She pulled up in front of her polling place. Though there was a lot of traffic in and out of the building, the line didn’t seem too long. Quite a change from the lunacy of 2004. Well, she thought, after all, this is the new age of reason, 2013. She thinks it is so good to only have to vote for the President now. It was a wonderful idea to move the Presidential elections to an odd numbered year. Sure, the last guy got an extra year, but that was a small price to pay for helping to ease the former pain that was a Presidential poll. And since the new term limits on the President, one 6 year term instead of 2 four year fiascos where the first 4 years was spent trying to get re-elected, and the last running away from The People, one President with a 5 year term was not such a big deal.

Inside the polling place, everything was quiet. There were plenty of tables and privacy booths set up…the old Downtown Community Center never looked so clean. She went up to the table, and gave her name. The clerk looked it up on her laptop, and found her registration. Jane thought it was cool…even though she lived in another precinct, she could vote anywhere in her county. The centralized database made this easy. As she was pressing her thumb down on the electronic inkpad to identify herself, she was thinking how much time she was saving combining a rare downtown shopping trip with her civic duty!

Duly identified and marked off, she was given a simple sheet of paper…the Presidential ballot. She entered an empty privacy booth, and marked her choice. Since this was the only measure on the ballot, and the directions were clear, this took only a few moments.

She left the booth, and went over, tore off the perforated receipt from the top of the ballot, and put her ballot in the locked box, watched by trio of friendly but attentive election judges.

Later that night Jane drove down to the elementary school near her house. She had signed up to help count the votes! There were a few dozen volunteers there, all eager to help THE PEOPLE exercise their power. Counting the votes was easy. There were 4 judges, one from each major party, and one ‘pool’ judge representing all the minor party interests. Her particular group had about 200 votes to count. Since the Voting reform act of 2006 limited each precinct to a manageable size, the counting would go quick. And since a lot of people were willing to work for the $500 Tax Credit given to those who spent 40 hours per year volunteering for Civic duties, manpower was not an issue.

The counting process was easy. The ballots were professionally designed. And it was easy to tell who someone voted for: as long as only one name was checked, circled, or underlined, it was a valid ballot. Each counter looked at every ballot and signed off on it. When all 4 signatures were made, each judge made an entry into the central database via the small wireless terminal in front of them. The ballot number was entered, along with the recorded vote. When all four had made the entry, the screen cleared and a new screen was displayed. All four also kept a hand written count sheet. At the end of the evening, each had to sign the others’ sheets. The 4 sheets were handed in, a hard copy that could be used to verify any inconsistencies.

By 11:30, the counting was done, tomorrow, another group of volunteers and officials would double check all the audit forms. And the electronic totals would be tabulated. Other groups would add the absentee count when the came in. And there were really no appreciable amount of those nasty provisional ballots, since anyone could walk up and register right up until the time the polls closed.

Jane went to bed that night, tired but satisfied she had helped shape her Country’s direction for the next 6 years. And images of the party tomorrow night when she and her friends would gather to watch the 4 hour TV extravaganza culminating in the announcement of the winner of the Presidency filled her head….

Sounds like a great process. Another would be to issue a voter registration card similar to a debit card that has a pin number. You walk up to a machine, you insert your card, enter your pin, you vote on the touch screen and you are given a receipt card that gets deposited into a recount box before you leave the voting establishment. Have the entire country use the same machines all tied into a central tabulator (just like MAC). It would be a costly start up but would be a perfect system.

I thought about that once too. But mag strip cards are too easy to fake and they cannot hold enough data to hold, say, a 128-bit key that would verify the authenticity. And, even if they could, no way to keep someone from just *borrowing* someone's card and making a copy of it.

Have you seen the latest on ATM scams? The part that scammers made that fits over the card reader and looks just like part of the ATM, but actually reads the data from cards inserted and stores it. The scammers then just come back later and pull it off and read the data from it.

Anyway. I have no doubt that a nearly perfect system can be devised. However, I would rather see an electronic one where the entire system is designed in a bi-partisan (because non-partisan is just a myth) manner and overseen the same way. I trust a well designed computer not to be partisan, bribable, corrupt, etc., I cannot say the same of the most well designed humans.

I don't mean to burst your bubble, but this sounds an awful lot like the kind of system DRE manufacturers and election tamperers only dream of (and what we unfortunately seem to be moving toward anyway) -- not a perfect system at all for the rest of us. One possibly partisan manufacturer gets a nation-wide monopoly. If someone wanted to change the vote without anyone suspecting, they could get into the central tabulator (either through hacking or, more likely, through insider access), make sure whatever program they put into the system prints out on the receipts what the voter intended while recording electronically something else -- leaving a margin of victory large enough to avoid any possibility of a recount, but small enough not to arouse suspicion. It also sounds like it would be hard to preserve a secret ballot, unconnected with the voter's identity, with this system.

Nobody has ever, or will ever, produce a foolproof system -- human beings are just too ingenious. For every person smart enough to invent one, someone else just as smart or smarter will find a way to circumvent it (e.g. the Nazi Enigma encoders). Or the manufacturer will create it with ways to circumvent it already built in (e.g. the Diebold DRE's and GEMS tabulator). We cannot depend on esoteric technology to secure the voting process -- only the "many eyes" approach, in which anyone can observe the vote-counting process, with or without a degree in computer science, can best protect its integrity. A low-tech system, such as paper-only ballots, may seem less secure, but actually it is much more difficult to commit fraud on a massive scale than with a central tabulator through which one could change millions of votes at once.

Except people have their price. People are inherently corruptable. Pay off enough of them and you buy an election. No need to steal anything.

Besides, have you actually calculated the number of people and the amount of time it would take to hand count paper ballots in the suggested manner? We would have to vote in odd numbered years solely because it would take a year to complete the count. And that doesn't even consider recounts.

THANK YOU - THANK YOU and THANK YOU!!!!!!

i could write a book on what you said but why would i, you've saved me sooooo much typing....

John Kerry for 2008!

- perry

Of course people are fallible -- but the more people that would have to be involved to carry out large-scale fraud, the more likely they would get caught and the public would find out about it.

As far as counting paper ballots goes, other countries, such as many in Europe, do it and have no significant delay. In my mind, it is much more important to get an accurate vote count than an instant result (funny how here in America we amnt instant gratification for everything, even when in the end we wonder about how gratifying it really was to get it instantly). In France, the whole village shows up when the votes are bieing counted manually, so everyone is confident of the outcome.

Yes, but none of Europe has 120 million ballots to count.

And, in the country we live in, most simply do not care enough to show up to count ballots.

Is that going to change? Maybe. But, better change that to 2113.

I love your system. Very similar to what I have been recommending. Volunteer vote counters, concise paper ballots, nothing in the computer without a paper trail.

Let's make this dream come true!

It wouldn't have to take a year. I think after this latest fiasco that lots of people would volunteer. I know I would. Recounts would be simpler, because of the verification process, actually, there wouldn't be much need for recounts.

No, they have potentially 500 million or so, for the European Parliament.

EDIT: That was a population count. My guess is that real voters are less than half of that.

Of coarse people are corruptible. But to bribe tens of thousands of them would be very expensive. And if you really read my 'viginette' you may notice a few safeguards. 4 judges, one from each major party, and a pool judge from the combined minor parties all must agree on a count. There could be other safeguards, my story is just an outline of different things we could do.

And as far as taking a year to count the vote, that is rhetorical hyperbole. Yes, it would take a lot of people to count 120 million + votes..if you look at it as a large number. But in truth, if you limit precinct size to a reasonable number, each precinct would only have to count between 500 and 2500 votes. Not a difficult task. It could be done in an evening...and by giving a small tax credit for 40 hours of volunteer civil service per year, you would get a lot of volunteers. This would not only help out at election time, but would help cut costs for public services year round by giving municipalities a guaranteed labor base to help them perform things like elections, after school programs, senior programs, etc.

Everyone wins. Conservatives get some unwanted public service costs off the books; liberals get a program that helps some of their priorities; people get a small tax break and an incentive to be more involved in their communities, and Our Country gets a system of elections that is tried and true, transparent and much more resistant to fraud than voting into an electronic black hole.

No!! Machines should count the paper ballots, but simultaneously the votes should be registered electronically, so the expected results from machine counting the paper ballots can be anticipated in advance already at the end of election day. Also, letting each vote be accompanied by tracking numbers, allows each individual voter to verify the vote he/she casted really was counted and is part of the final tally.

If you read my post, that is pretty much waht is done. One difference is the votes are registered electronically during the count while 4 judges are present. You also have a reciept from your ballot with a number, and the paper ballots are counted by hand. finally in addition to the electronic tally, you have 4 separate paper summaries verified by 4 different people.

Lots of safeguards built in.