Why voter suppression? Those specialized touchscreen voting machines are expensive: between $2500 and $3000 according to the Pew Trusts. This provides a perfect excuse to limit the number of polling places as well as the number of machines at each polling place. The result? Long lines. You may have noticed that reporting of long lines has dominated the last few presidential elections, even when ultimate turnout was lower than normal. This is probably the main reason for those reports. But states which have a bent towards suppression have a tendency to strategic deployment — more in rich white areas and fewer in poor minority areas. This is probably the biggest problem with this technology and certainly has had the biggest impact on our elections.

There is an alternative to this though. It may be low tech, but it works, is reliable and has fewer security problems: Scantron ballots. Have long lines? Put up a few more security shields, they’re cheap. Want fast counts? Programmable scanning machines allow a fast count. Questions about the machine count? An audit against the ballots counted by that machine is quick and easy — you don’t have to do a full recount, just a statistical sample. Everyone under the age of death has filled out one of these things at some point in their lives, so everyone knows what to do. Most state laws allow a voter to have an someone (or their choice) help them fill out the ballot. And the best thing? An election based on Scantron ballots CANNOT BE HACKED.

So: cheap, everyone knows how to use them, secure, fast returns. What’s not to love?

All of these electronic machines came about because of Bush v Gore and hanging chads. It was pretty obvious at the time that this was a ridiculous idea, but the reformers and computer folks wouldn’t have it. People then said ATM’s don’t make mistakes, so why can’t we have voting machines like that? The premise is likely flawed, but then people drove out the leading ATM maker from the market for election machines(Diebold). On top of that, there is the need to maintain a secret ballot, so you can’t get a receipt for your vote.

Simple idea, but with a fatal flaw. If your candidate loses, and you are the type of ultrapartisan voter concerned only with the ends and not the means, what easier means to cast an election’s legitimacy into doubt than by thousands of false claims that your votes were wrongly recorded?

Don’t forget that one party has been systematically attempting (and often succeeding) in disenfranchising millions of American citizens while making absurdly false claims of systematic electoral fraud via ineligible voters. (If that party excels at only one thing, it’s projection.) Consider not just the uses of a new tool, but how it will be abused as well.

Agree completely. A paper ballot, marked by the voter and optically scanned, with the original saved for electronic or manual recount, is cheap, fast, reliable, secure and low-tech. To further increase security and the ability to audit the count of used/unused voting forms, polling station ballots could be sequentially (or at least uniquely) numbered, though not tied to the voters they are randomly handed out to.

The focus of some states on elaborate, costly and insecure electronic voting is either deeply stupid or deeply suspicious.

When you get your voter registration in the mail have it come with a pass code. After you vote and all votes are tallied then ask people to log into a site that can access the votes and type in their info and pass code and verify that what is recorded is what they actually voted. If it is not trace back the baker trail.

Simple.

Having some form of paper backup is critical, or how would we even know if a voting machine or precinct was hacked?

So we need to prevent hacking, ensure that if there is hacking it can be caught and ensure that an after the fact audit can detect hacking.

Paper backup provides the answer to all of these issues.

Even if we transition to voting by phone (someday), a copy of the vote should be sent to the voter and to the voter’s princinct. That way you have a backup of the vote (although you lose anonymity).