Democracy's Gold Standard: Hand Counted Paper Ballots in The Polls on Election DAY !

[voternm]

The politics of election activists have lost sight of the goal:
Election Integrity and Federal Standards stipulating Hand Counted
Paper Ballots in the Polls ON ELECTION DAY.

The other debates are digressions with intellectual and technical
knowledge that makes politics out of election reform. When will we
find a common goal and work for real election reform in the U.S. ?
--------------------------
Last March, the country's highest court found that secret,
computerized vote counting was unconstitutional. Unfortunately, the
country was Germany, and the Constitution violated by e-voting systems
was the one that the U.S. wrote and insisted Germans ratify as part of
their terms of surrender following WWII.

Paul Lehto, a U.S. election attorney and Constitutional rights expert,
summarized the German court's unambiguous, landmark finding:

* "No 'specialized technical knowledge' can be required of citizens to
vote or to monitor vote counts."
* There is a "constitutional requirement of a publicly observed
count."
* "[T]he government substitution of its own check or what we’d
probably call an 'audit' is no substitute at all for public
observation."
* "A paper trail simply does not suffice to meet the above standards.
* "As a result of these principles,...'all independent observers'
conclude that 'electronic voting machines are totally banned in
Germany' because no conceivable computerized voting system can cast
and count votes that meet the twin requirements of...being both
'observable' and also not requiring specialized technical knowledge.

***Hand-counting paper ballots is no good at all, argue critics,
unless you really want to know who the actual winner of the election
was...********

After the verdict in the case --- filed by a computer expert and his
political scientist son --- Lehto wondered how it could be that open,
observable democracy is seemingly an inviolable right for "conquered
Nazis," but not, apparently, for citizens of the United States...

More at:

<a href="http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7417">http://www.bradblog.com/?
p=7417</a>