Grassroots Assault on Blackbox Voting (An Idea) [View All]

[sharman]

Here's an idea. If we could convince some huge percentage of our voters to vote absentee, could we bring down blackbox voting?

Ideally, the cost of processing absentee ballots would convince local governments to insist on paper trail machines. Do I correctly recall one of the lame excuses for not doing so in the first place was the expense of adding printers to each polling station? Let's take that excuse away. Let's make it so painful to use Diebold that something finally gives.

While usually absentee ballots are ignored if the election results from the machines are otherwise determinative of the result (true?), I also seem to recall reading that they must be processed if they reach a certain percentage.

Second best, if we really can turn out our voters on paper ballots, that might be enough to counteract the (i) unfortunate albeit inadvertent errors to which computer ballots seem prone especially with liberal votes/(ii) dirty tricks and voter suppression efforts/(iii) outright fraud .

Now, if we're going to try this, let's please please please start with Arnold's special election in California this fall.

Whaddya think? Could it work? And where should we start?