Ontario, Can. on 10/2 voted with paper ballots - count finished in 1 hr. [View All]

http://xymphora.blogspot.com/2003_10_01_xymphora_archive.html#106516635608139568

The boring Canadian province of Ontario had an election yesterday, and the voters finally managed to kick out the right-wing American-influenced tax cutters, replacing them with a party whose main promise was that it would not cut taxes so that it would have enough money to pay for things considered inessential by the previous government, such as health care, education, public security and safety, and the electricity supply. A little sanity in an insane world. The interesting thing is the mechanics of the voting procedure. The election used paper ballots which were counted by hand at each polling station, with the results telephoned in to the Returning Officers, who communicated the results to the media. Ontario is a huge place, with over 11 million people on 415,000 square miles or over one million square kilometers (at the longest points, 1,000 miles high and 1,000 miles wide), and yet this old-fashioned system produced election results in about an hour, with the winner giving his victory speech less than two hours after the polls closed. Since paper ballots were used, and absolutely no computers were involved in the balloting process, the ballots can be recounted at any time should there be any dispute, and the ballots themselves serve as decisive evidence of the validity of the results. When I look at computer voting, I see a system which is in every possible way inferior to the paper ballot system:

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2. Let's face facts. The voting machine companies are all owned by doctrinaire extreme-right-wing Republicans. If the United States holds fair elections in the next round, the Republicans will lose. The Republicans need these machines. Their main purpose, after making money for their creators, is to cheat.


People should go after these awful voting machines like the Luddites went after automated weaving machines: with sledgehammers. Paper ballots have worked well and have formed the basis for the whole history of Anglo-American democracies (with marked shards in urns going back to ancient Athens), and there is no good reason for voting machines. Paper ballots, counted by hand!
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"11 million people on 415,000 square miles" voted on paper and the paper was counted in about 1 hr.

Kill the Voting Machines!