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

[Vickie Karp]

You got it, Christina! We are supposed to believe young people (or also,
old people, or whichever group might be believable) cannot figure out
paper ballots.  Hilarious, eh? Those "butterfly ballots" in Florida were
designed to confuse people.  That kind of thing does work.  But those
were punchcard ballots where the place to punch the hole for the
candidate did not line up with the proper candidate's name.  It was also
done on purpose. Hand-marking a paper ballot by putting an X or filling
in an oval directly in front of the right name or issue - THAT is
certainly not rocket science! Vickie

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: "Timms Christina"
  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
  Date: Fri, 08 Aug 2008 13:55:15 -0500

  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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