| When I was a kid living in Louisiana (a state well-known for political shenanigans), they had big mechanical voting machines for elections. The machines were very large and heavy and were stored in warehouses. Probably not much fun for the workers who had to move them to/from storage to polling places (they did have wheels though). Anyways, you would walk into it and throw a big mechanical lever that would close a privacy curtain behind you. Then you would have to manually turn an individual mechanical switch for each choice. When finished voting, you would throw the big mechanical lever back to the original position. Moving the lever back would cause all of your votes to be counted, reset all voting switches, and open the privacy curtains. There were mechanical counters for all possible voting options. Then, when the polls closed the votes would be read off the counters (and presumably verified by multiple individuals) and then reported to the whoever they reported the results to. This was before the internet, but the same machines could (and should) be used in the internet age. There's nothing to hack into electronically as the voting machines contain no electronics (at least for communications, for sure). The only big downside is that the machines have to be stored somewhere and they take up a sizable space. Also, they incur expenses to be moved from storage to polling places (and back). Someone will bring up voters with disabilities, but there were voters with disabilities back then too. I'm sure there was a protocol for accommodating voter disabilities. All in all, I think it's a sensible and pragmatic solution to thwart hacking and hopefully garner more confidence in voting integrity. |