It should be required by law that all voting machines be electronic. They should be required in the specification to keep track ONLY of totals, NOT of in what order the votes were cast (to protect voters' privacy). The totals from the machines are not to be viewed or recorded by humans. The totals are to be electronically transmitted to a central computer. Once the central computer has acknowledged receipt of the transmission, the total is to be erased from the voting machine. The computer adds up the vote totals AS it receives them, keeping only a running total and displaying only a final total.

Advantages:

1) No chads. No recounts.

2) Nobody has to keep any secrets, because there are none to keep.

3) No complicated record keeping. Just something like "Bob Smith -- 72,100,572; Joe Bloggs -- 76,550,891". No town-by-town breakdown or any of that. And no electoral college bullshit either. No data, I repeat, NO DATA, is to be known except the final totals.
-- juuitchan3, Jul 11 2002

There was much discussion of this in and around the last Presidential election. The drawback to any electronic system is that it is tough to spot ballot box stuffing, which would be made even more difficult by your version.

Or do you *want* the next President of the United States to be a thirteen-year-old kid from the Ukraine?
-- DrCurry, Jul 11 2002


In an electronic voting system there has to be a record of who voted for whom. That's how the paper version works. The most practical electronic system allows for tracking votes. Some states are already setting up to do this in the US, DrCurry, not just discussing.
-- polartomato, Jul 11 2002


As someone who is excellent with computers but poor at campaigning and public speaking, I am all in favor of this.
-- hexadecimal, Jul 11 2002



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