Chasing a paper dream: Hand-count ballot measures undermine trust in democracy

[LiberalArkie]

Except for small, private group elections, I’ve never voted using anything other than a machine. I always trusted that my vote on mechanical or electronic devices would be counted appropriately and accurately — and I still do.

But a lot of folks have swallowed the canard that voter fraud is rampant and that the machines that tally their votes can’t be trusted.

That distrust has been simmering in Arkansas, where a group called Arkansas Voter Integrity Initiative tried unsuccessfully earlier this year to get a measure on the statewide ballot to require votes to be cast in ink on paper ballots and counted by hand.

Since then, we’ve seen Republican lawmakers try mightily to put the virus back in its test tube. At least two legislative panel sessions have been devoted to showing skeptics that the state’s electronic vote tabulators are totally accurate and that hand-counting votes is not only time-consuming and expensive but prone to human error.

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https://arkansasadvocate.com/2024/08/29/chasing-a-paper-dream/