[Voterescue] Record number of U.S. voters may cast paper ballots this year

[chamade at chamade.com]

Actually yes.  Thanks to Katrina and other natural disasters, the 
price of wood has risen dramatically.  We ship cardboard to China 
where they recycle
it and send it back to us.  But paper prices have risen a lot!

At 02:53 PM 8/7/2008, Laura Westcott wrote:
>Wonder why counties have to "spend tens of millions of dollars 
>printing ballots"...are paper prices rising too?
>
>
>On Thu, Aug 7, 2008 at 1:34 PM, Jenny Clark 
><<mailto:jclark99 at austin.rr.com>jclark99 at austin.rr.com> wrote:
><http://www.statesman.com/search/content/news/stories/nation/08/07/08>http://www.statesman.com/search/content/news/stories/nation/08/07/0807papervoting.html
>
>PAPER BALLOTS
>Record number of U.S. voters may cast paper ballots this year
>Many officials shelving electronic devices over glitches, hacker fears.
>By Allison Hoffman
>ASSOCIATED PRESS
>
>Thursday, August 07, 2008
>SAN DIEGO - Come November, more Americans might cast their ballots 
>on paper than in any other election in U.S. history.
>That wasn't supposed to happen. If everything had gone according to 
>the government's $3 billion plan to upgrade voting technology after 
>the hanging-chad fiasco in Florida in 2000, that sentence would read 
>"electronic machines" instead of paper.
>Instead, thousands of touchscreen devices are collecting dust in 
>warehouses from California to Florida, where officials worried about 
>hackers and fed up with technical glitches have replaced the 
>equipment with scanners that will read paper ballots.
>An Associated Press Election Research survey has found that 57 
>percent of the nation's registered voters live in counties that will 
>be relying on paper ballots this fall.
>The number of registered voters in jurisdictions that will rely 
>mainly on electronic voting machines has fallen from a high of 44 
>percent during the 2006 midterm elections to 36 percent. (Much of 
>the rest of the electorate consists of voters in New York state, who 
>will be using old-fashioned pull-lever machines.)
>In fact, because of growth in the electorate, expansion of absentee 
>voting rules, and expectations of high turnout for the contest 
>between presumptive presidential nominees Democrat Sen. Barack Obama 
>and Republican Sen. John McCain, some experts are predicting a 
>record number of Americans will cast ballots on paper this year.
>"More people will be using computer-read paper ballots than at any 
>other time in the nation's history," said Kimball Brace, head of 
>Election Data Services, a consulting firm. "As you get more 
>registered voters and more people in the pool, it exacerbates this 
>bigger issue of paper."
>In 2000, about 97 million registered voters lived in counties that 
>relied on some form of paper ballot, Brace said. The number is 
>expected to top 100 million this fall, according to the AP data.
>The return to paper creates extra stress on an already-strapped 
>election system. Cash-poor counties will have to spend tens of 
>millions of dollars printing ballots. Voters, many of them 
>first-timers, may wind up confused by the ballot formats and 
>frustrated by long lines of people waiting to use the scanners.
>All states but Idaho have junked the punch-card ballots that caused 
>so much trouble in Florida. But many plan to use paper ballots that 
>require voters to fill in ovals with a pen.
>"After 2000, there was a widespread revulsion about paper - everyone 
>had the mental image of the guy cross-eyed looking at the punch-card 
>ballot," said Doug Chapin, director of the watchdog Electionline. 
>"But there's no silver bullet. You're trading one set of problems for another."
>
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