Concerning Election Reform

It’s very exciting to me that with our technology, even the confused little old lady in Florida can’t screw up the voting system. Instead of her being able to carefully hang a chad, or vote for both Gore and Bush, she must now press a frail, uncertain finger against a touch screen that won’t tolerate anything other than a single choice.
But now, as the election reform issue turns to other topics, there is a growing mindset that is willing to sacrifice secrecy for accurate vote count. This bothers me because I don’t want man or machine to know how we vote.
The question, then, is how do we obtain both a very high degree of voting privacy and accuracy?
This is how:

(1) Require photo identification (such as a driver’s license) against the up-to-date list of names of registered voters.
We should enter the voting precinct and show picture I.D. to the poll worker, who then finds us on the list. Then we sign on the line next to our name, and go vote.

(2) Use a computer touch screen which both issues a paper ballot to the voter, and records the vote electronically.

(3) The paper ballot is then inspected by the voter and put into the ballot box.
After the polls close, the paper ballots are carefully counted, the count is matched against the number of people who showed i.d., and signed the list, and against the computer disk record. All three must match: paper ballot, number of people who signed to vote, and computer disk count.
So if 2000 people showed I.D.., 2000 must have voted electronically and there must be 2000 paper ballots. If they don’t match, work it out amongst all parties to satisfaction.
(4) Randomly pre-assign the ballot with a number, issued to the voter. For example, the number 4XXX2170 might be your ballot number. This number is on your paper ballot and you either write it down or tear a little tab with the number on it before putting the paper ballot in the ballot box. Then all the numbers are displayed on the internet. No one else has any idea who 4XXX2170 is, but you. This helps verify that your vote was recorded and counted. This also gives the total number of voters, again. If not there, voter reports discrepancy.
(5) Provide appropriate punishment for those who cheat, so it’s not worth it to do so.
For example, I think it was some place in Florida, more people voted for Al Gore in 2000 than there were registered voters.
Cheating like this should be investigated and prosecuted vigorously.

One thing I really dread is a federal takeover of our election process. States are reforming their ballot process just fine, thank you very much, and should receive neither federal mandates nor federal money, in spite of what Jimmy Carter wants.
The state run election is one of the more subtle yet powerful checks and balances in our system of government and besides, the govt is already too large, powerful and wasteful to be taking on more responsibility.
Incidentally, people should not be overly encouraged to vote. I’m very willing to study the issues and candidates and vote for those who don’t feel like it.
Being able to register and vote the same day is a bad idea because it disrupts the carefully maintained list of registered voters needed for accurate elections (see point #1).
It’s an embarrassing fact that one of the components of our Judeo/Christian heritage, honesty, is now so lacking in our culture that the foregoing is necessary. As a result, our voting system, in order to be accurate, must contain redundancy and therefore be expensive to administer. But I’m certainly willing to pay the price for secret, thoroughly accurate elections, and suggest the preceding as a way to achieve much needed election reform.
Grimgold