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

Fri Aug 8 15:00:30 CDT 2008

I have a problem with being given, by the elitists, which of two morons
I may choose from to further sink this country into the shitter and all
the sheoples happy to pull the lever, flip the switch, poke the paper or
push the button and never ask WTF.

Happy Friday!

From: voterescue-bounces at voterescue.org
[mailto:voterescue-bounces at voterescue.org] On Behalf Of Timms Christina
Sent: Friday, August 08, 2008 1:55 PM
To: chamade at chamade.com; Laura Westcott; voterescue at voterescue.org
Subject: Re: [Voterescue] Record number of U.S. voters may cast paper
ballots this year

I still have a problem with the whole idea that first time voters are
going to be "confused" about how to use the paper ballot. I'm sorry but
its not rocket science, I think young voters deserve a little more
credit

On 8/7/08 3:55 PM, "chamade at chamade.com" <chamade at chamade.com> wrote:

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 <jclark99 at austin.rr.com >
wrote:

http://www.statesman.com/search/content/news/stories/nation/08/07/08
07papervoting.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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