Paper Ballots Vs. Electronic Ballots

The 2000 election in Florida stirred the electorate. Since then, changes have been discussed, argued, and ultimately implemented. In the end, what is the right choice?

In Canada, elections are held secretly, with one piece of paper--clearly demarcating the candidates, and the initiatives--and one writing instrument. After the voter casts their ballot, it is dropped into a ballot box. After the polls close, these boxes are emptied and counted, usually twice. In nearly every election in Canada, the winner of any election is announced shortly after the polls close--usually within two or three hours. It is a model of efficiency.

Now, to be fair, voter turnout in Canada is far, far less than the United States. In the 2008 election, 13,669,857 Canadians voted in the General Election, In the United States in 2008, nearly 150 million voters came to the polls to cast their ballots. This is a stark difference, for sure. Similarly, congestion at polls in major cities like New York, Atlanta, Chicago, and Los Angeles leads to a more disruptive and disorganized counting procedure. The numbers are far smaller in Canada, and the bureaucracy is less entrenched.

But in the United States, the differences in methodology and procedure from polling place to polling place, and from county to county leads to inherent disorganization. There is no uniform pattern to which each State is instructed to adhere. Some polling stations use electronic ballots with a paper trail, some use paper ballots with machine counters, and some use the simple paper and pen method. As voting officials come and go, training procedures break down leading to slower, less efficient progress.

Further, the wide number of practices in the US leads to isolated problems that cause not only legal trouble--voting lawsuits in 2004 were record-breaking--but also myriad trouble-shooting instructions that are geographically-specific, and useless to the wider administrative community. In effect, voting stations must be self-reliant and cannot reach out for help to officials in other states, and in some cases, neighboring counties.

The problems seems to be the age-old debate of technology vs. tradition. The general consensus is that technology advances the nation. Advances in government, medicine, business and academia have all been chartered on the back of technology. And, to be fair, the 2008 turnout was the largest in the nation's history and involved the smallest number of voting-related lawsuits--a result of targeted improvements in voting machines and elimination of failed practices. But, when elections are close and every vote matters, sometimes results take days and weeks after elections to determine.

The voting system in America is not perfect, but seems to run like a well-oiled engine when elections are decidedly lopsided; however, the practice could be streamlined and standardized thus providing clear results when the races are neck and neck.