Paper trail

Pretty good post on Count Every Vote.

Just to make clear, I don't buy the 2004 "Ohio vote was stolen" line, at least in the sense that I doubt if the Republicans did anything worse than the Democrats did. As for the canard of exit polls: the early returns in 2004 were wrong because they were unrepresentative. Period. Exit polls always will have discrepancies with the counted result because 1) older conservatives generally don't brag about it to pollsters, 2) whoever thinks they're the minority may feel intimidated.

My only quibble with paper voting is the ridiculous "push a pencil through the perforation" system that gave use "hanging chads", "dimple chads" "pregnant chads" and months of wrangling in 2000.

If it's reasonable to expect an illiterate person to sign with an "X", I can't see why putting an "X" in a box won't do on a ballot paper. Many countries put party logos on the ballot paper, which should be enough for someone who can't read.

The only exceptions I can think of are blind people and those who can't hold a pencil. Worst case scenario there is to have proxy voting, but I'm sure there are viable alternatives.