Return to paper ballots for voting

There’s a great case that can be made for a return to paper ballots on Election Day.

Many do not realize that major Western nations, such as Australia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, as well as Argentina, Canada, Japan and Malaysia, all conduct conventional hand-count elections and have banned voting machines, including tabulators. In this process, ballots can be hand counted, with results reported the next day and forensically audited.

On the other hand, many nations using voting machines include Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Congo, Estonia, India, Namibia, the Philippines, Romania, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela. In many of these nations “voter fraud” has commonly been seen. The United States is also in this group.

Numerous countries that use machines have accused their governments of machine vote switching, remarkably similar to what we’ve seen in the United States. Just take a look at the recent Venezuela election results to prove my point. This isn’t by chance. Voter fraud exists with machines.

Recently, we’ve heard of cyber-attacks or hacking into systems. If a machine plugs into a wall, it can be hackable, on-site or remotely. The results can be manipulated in completely undetectable ways.

A key way to secure our elections is to ban all voting machines. We need voter identification and clean voter rolls safeguarded by citizenship verification. Without this, non-citizens, ineligible felons and dead people from cemeteries will vote in the November elections.

It’s time to have honest elections. It’s time to return to paper ballots and ban voting machines.

Michael Imhof

Aurora