One Good Outcome
December 4, 2006
According to the Sacramento Bee, where I was directed by Crooks and Liars, Senator Diane Feinstein will introduce legislation requiring paper trails and auditing of election results. That is one good outcome of the Democratic victory. The very idea that we have unauditable elections … the very idea!
Montana runs pretty clean elections, mandating paper trails. Our one shortcoming – we don’t audit. Paper trails are one safeguard, but if by chance there were to be fraud in the counting of ballots, we still have no way of knowing save the recount process, which only kicks in when the margin of victory is one-half percent or less. Random audits of precincts would be a good protection.
I intend to write my state legislator about this. His name is Roger Koopman. Wish me luck.
December 5, 2006 at 12:09 am
Mark: Good start, but most of the folks supporting cleaner elections, as far as I know, don’t just want what is called “a paper trail.” They want paper ballots, and there is a difference. In some states, they call the printed-out results from a touch-screen machine a “paper trail,” though it tells you nothing more than what you already know … or don’t know. There is a legislator in Bozeman who wants to work on election reform, I think, and I think his last name is Tropila.
December 5, 2006 at 8:15 am
In Montana paper ballots are the official record of the election. The national movement to create paper trails would have to have some force of law behind it – not just to have a record of the election, but to have that record be official. I think this is semantics.
Tropila is from Great Falls, but thanks. He’s a good one to contact.
December 5, 2006 at 11:24 am
It might be semantics, and that might be the problem. Some of the voting-reform advocates I’ve read seem to be afraid that politicians are using the phrase “paper trail” to mask systems that are not trackable.
December 5, 2006 at 12:10 pm
Ah – I see. A solution that merely masks the problem – a paper trail that is merely a carbon copy of the machine record and not a statement of voter intent. Good point.