Small steps, small steps

From Atrios we hear that

Miami-Dade County's elections chief has recommended ditching its ATM-style voting machines, just three years after buying them for $24.5 million to avoid a repeat of the hanging and dimpled chads from the 2000 election.

Elections supervisor Lester Sola said in a memo Friday that the county should switch to optical scanners that use paper ballots, based on declining voter confidence in the paperless touch-screen machines and quadrupled election day labor costs.

This is a good thing: Touchscreen voting machines, about which I've written on numerous occasions, are of doubtful security - giving rise to numerous accusations (and frankly, quite possibly some real incidents) of vote manipulation - and even more doubtful reliability.

Atrios suggests that even this change isn't enough and the only thing satisfactory as protection against hidden manipulation is actual paper ballots read in open session by people, not by machines. He has a good point: While the optical scanners do create a paper trail, that would serve only in the event of a recount. But what if there is no recount?

On the other hand, I don't know if a return to totally paper ballots is practical for anything beyond a purely local election. Counting by hand, especially in a close election (there really is no point to trying to manipulate a runaway) where ballots may be challenged aggressively, can be a slow, time-consuming process. I'm really not sure we any longer have the patience necessary to wait a couple of days to find out election results.

So while I actually agree that this is not the optimum solution, I still will be gratified that Miami-Dade County has come to its senses and has taken steps in the right direction. Now all they have to do is to make sure that the central computers which compile and tabulate the results from the scanners are secure - which they're not.