EAC - Voluntary Voting System Guidelines

Name : | Timothy Willhard
Organization : | N/A
Post Date : | 9/9/2005
General Comments
Comment : | It is an embarrassment to the citizens of this country that here in the home of democracy we cannot demonstrate to international observers that we have a free and fair election system, with checks and balances assuring the legitimacy of our own political system, which we tout as the best in all the world. Many other democratic nations allow their elections to be verified. At a bare minimum, to repair the current system, the voters of this nation deserve to be able to verify that their vote actually counted in an election. There is no reason each and every voter in any election cannot be given a code number after voting to check back later and verify that all their votes for given candidates were recorded. Software can easily be designed to show individual ballots. There are no big technical hurdles there. Elections do have to be finalized- they cannot be challenged indefinitely. But there is no reason that voters should not be allowed to see the acuracy of the tabulation of their votes in an election, even if it takes till a following election to repair the cause of an election problem. If 5,000 people in a county report their votes were not counted, then the election system there could be examined to determine the cause of the problem, and repair and test it before the next election. A practice election with secured, sealed machines could be used to test the corrective actions.