United Liberty

In complying with recent state legislation that requires election officials to move their votings systems back towards paper ballots, Tuesday’s election will be the last federal election with a signficant usage of electronic touchscreens.

Goodbye, electronic voting. Farewell, fancy touch screen. Maryland and Virginia are going old school after Tuesday’s election.

Maryland will scrap its $65 million electronic system and go back to paper ballots in time for the 2010 midterm elections — and will still be paying for the abandoned system until 2014. In Virginia, localities are moving to paper after the General Assembly voted last year to phase out electronic voting machines as they wear out.— Washington Post

In reporting the issue the Washington Post was fairly adament that “the battle (between Paper & Electronic) has been decided” with the time-tested traditional method of paper balloting prevailing due to concerns about malfunction and hackability.

It was just a few years ago that electronic voting machines were heralded as a computerized panacea to the hanging chad, a state-of-the-art system immune to the kinds of hijinks and confusion that some say make paper ballots vulnerable. But now, after concern that the electronic voting machines could crash or be hacked, the two states are swinging away from the systems, saying paper ballots filled out by hand are more reliable, especially in a recount.

The trend reflects a national movement away from electronic voting machines. About a third of all voters will use them Tuesday, down from a peak of almost 40 percent in 2006, according to Election Data Services, a Manassas-based consulting firm specializing in election administration. Every jurisdiction that has changed election systems since 2006 has gone to paper ballots read by optical scan machines, said Kimball Brace, the firm’s president. And for the first time in the country’s history, fewer jurisdictions will be using electronic machines than in the previous election, he said.

“The battle for the hearts and minds of voters on whether electronic systems are good or bad has been lost,” Brace said. The academics and computer scientists who said they were unreliable “have won that battle.”- Washington Post

This trend is excellent news for our nation. With millions becoming disenfranchised with the political system in regards to policy and politicians, the last thing we need is for the public faith in the integrety of our their votes to continue to erode. In fact a recent poll showed that over 50% of Americans had some concern that their’s or somebody else’s vote would not be properly counted this election cycle. While the new systems will not be perfect, they will have a paper trail. Hopefully this will be enough to reduce the cases of fraud in and of itself.