Not News launched right before the 2000 election, and so it should not be too much of a surprise that we spent a lot of time in our forums in November and December talking about what do about the voting system. And at the time, I was a proponent of using electronic voting machines, ideally ones with photographs of candidates.
Well, the execution of that idea hasn’t exactly proven me prescient. There have been reports of buggy code, impossible-to-verify record trails, buggy code, and all sorts of other problems. So Rush Holt has reintroduced H.R. 811, an amendment to the Help America Vote Act that would mandate that every voting system produce a paper record.
I will say this: I still think electronic voting systems have potential. Every paper system of balloting has problems with spoiled ballots, and I’d like to see those reduced. Truth be told, I’m not sure I was ever really able to verify that the big machine with the levers was actually recording my vote, either. But in 2000, I imagined that a country that’s managed to make ATMs ubiquitous would be able to come up with better interfaces than we’ve gotten. I was wrong. So adding one more layer of verifiability through paper receipts is probably a good idea. But if we do put a whole new system into place, again, can we please put the time and money into making sure it works thsi time?