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I must object to the way you attempt to 'frame' paper ballots as the cause of the problems you've cited.
You state, "Paper ballots do not insure a clean election."
That is a 'straw man' argument as I have never actually seen anyone try to make that claim other than those trying to shoot it down. The actual claim made by voting rights activists is that 'paper ballots are the safest method overall that can be used to assure a clean election.' the honest way to phrase your statement would be to say that "No voting method can entirely insure a clean election." Without complete transparency of the entire process, and proper public oversight, any method of voting can be subverted.
You attempt to bolster the argument with,
"The dead have been voting on paper ballots and black ballots and minority party ballots have been disappearing as long as paper ballots have been around."
Again you use 'straw man' arguments. An honest statement would read something like, "election fraud has been around for as long as elections have." If you spend any time at all researching the subject you will quickly find that the details behind reports of dead people voting do not support your claim that paper ballots are the cause. Unqualified voters casting ballots is a registration issue and trying to frame it as a problem with the type of ballot used is dishonest because it places the blame an the ballot type rather than the officials who allowed the vote to be cast in the first place. Dead and otherwise unqualified voters have cast votes on every election system ever used. It is also dishonest to frame the issue of minority votes being stolen by claiming that it has only happened "as long as paper ballots have been around" since minority votes have also been being stolen for as long as elections have been around, regardless of the voting method.
You attempt to make it appear that a 'stolen vote' can only occur if a paper ballot is used and can be made to disappear. That is simply not the case.
Stolen votes can be best characterized in a single phrase, "disenfranchised voters". Disenfranchised voters are most often denied their legal right to cast a ballot at all and for a number of reasons, regardless of the voting method used. Our elections officials have been very active pushing stories about a hand full of ballots here or there cast by supposed "dead or phantom voters" while repeating the refrain, "voter fraud" like a mantra. They'll point to a relatively small number of illegally cast votes and blame the voters or voting methodology in an attempt to deflect attention from the real problem, that they failed to adequately protect the sanctity of the election by allowing those few illegal votes to be cast in the first place! They are also deflecting attention away from the real "election fraud" that occurs under their watch, the hundreds or, in some cases, thousands of legal voters who are denied their right to vote at all, or to have their legal vote counted after casting their ballot.
You continue with, A recount only catches fraud if the ballots to be recounted include the ballots wrongly left out and exclude the fraudulent ones.
That is true to an extent but very misleading. Thousands of Floridians were subjected to a fraudulent "felon purge" that resulted in their being dropped from the voting rolls. Their votes were no less stolen from them than someone whose ballot is discarded after being placed in the ballot box. No recount can include ballots that were not allowed to be cast in the first place. Only a new election can remedy that situation, regardless of the voting technology used. If a voter casts a paper ballot and the count is somehow found to have been corrupted by the counting equipment, the ballots can be recounted by hand to everyone's satisfaction. If the voter casts an electronic or mechanical vote and the machine breaks or the ballot database is damaged, no satisfactory recount can ever take place. There is a case in Connecticut right now where a mechanical 'lever' type machine was found to be broken in such a way as it would not register votes for one candidate. The race was close and the candidate who suffered a narrow loss because of that defective machine won the right to have a new election conducted. He won the election. Had paper ballots been used, they could have conducted a simple hand recount months earlier and saved a lot of time and money. As far as excluding fraudulent ballots is concerned, it's the responsibility of the elections personnel to insure that no fraudulent ballots ever make it into the election in the first place, much less into a recount.
Your last point about the "disabled" not being able to cast a "secret" paper ballot on their own has been hyped to no end and is totally inaccurate on a number of levels. There was never any guarantee of voting secrecy built into the Constitution as it was written. That 'requirement' was added in the late 1800's with the introduction of what is known as the "Australian Ballot". A number of devices have been developed that allow people suffering a number of disabilities to mark a paper ballot unassisted. There are tactile and audio based devices that help blind and visually impaired voters mark paper ballots. There are "sip and puff" devices that assist mobility impaired voters mark paper ballots. The use of paper ballots is not an impediment to most of the disabled.
There are a small sub set of disabled who will always have to rely on someone else to help them vote. Someone who is both blind and deaf and can only communicate via 'ASL' (American Sign Language) may be informed and intelligent enough to cast a ballot but has no way of doing so on their own. I'm certain that with enough time and money, someone could develop a system that uses a robotic hand that could be taught to 'sign' the instructions to that voter and use a camera and computer to 'read' what they're 'signing' as their choices, but it would be prohibitively expensive to put into operation in every precinct in case someone there might need it.
Just a few honest things for you to think about. :)
Steven P. :kick:
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