Dear all:

1. Some combination of technologies can work.  It is important to be
pragmatic.  Speed and transparency are the two values worth maximizing.
Electronic systems with paper trails may be the way to go only if the paper
does not trace the voter's choice to his identity.  Australians ballots
really are a marvel of engineering -- simple, easy to use, and transparent
(no wonder the choice to shift to these ballot provoked so much anxiety and
opposition from parties).  Personally, I like paper -- we still have copies
of Gutenburg bibles, but I needn't tell you how much electronically stored
information produced in the past decade is no longer retrievalable.

2. I think the call for more research is great.  Yet, let's stop just
looking across the US.  Granted, decentralized election administration
promotes lots of ways of solving the relevant problems.  There are many
countries, however, that have been running fair, transparent elections in
highly competitive situations from which we can learn (Chile, Costa Rica,
Uruguay are three cases that come to mind).

3.  The real problem with electoral governance in the US is political and
institutional.  We are the only country left in the Americas that still uses
a eighteenth century theory of electoral governance.  It is amazing -- the
federal reserve runs our money supply, but we let partisan officials run our
elections.  According to the constitution, Congress judges the election of
its members (!) and lets states administer them (just imagine the incentives
governers have for doing the right thing).  Poorly trained workers, crappy
registration systems, faulty technology and the like are manifestations of
faulty institutional design (for more on this, see my article ãCan Parties
Police Themselves?  Electoral Governance and Democratization,
 International Political Science Review, Vol. 23, No. 1 (January 2002):
29-46).

Best,
Fabrice Lehoucq
Division of Political Studies
Centro de Investigaci—n y Docencia Econ—mica (CIDE)
Carret. Mexico-Toluca 3655
Lomas de Santa FŽ, Mexico City, DF, CP 01210
Tel. 52/5727-9800, ext. 2215 (voice) & -9871 or 9873 (fax)
E-mail: Fabrice.Lehoucq@cide.edu


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-election-law_gl@majordomo.lls.edu
[mailto:owner-election-law_gl@majordomo.lls.edu]On Behalf Of Henry E.
Brady
Sent: Martes, 24 de Septiembre de 2002 06:47 p.m.
To: Charlene Simmons
Cc: election-law@majordomo.lls.edu
Subject: Re: paper ballots


Thanks for your comment Charlene.  The term "paper ballots" refers to
manually
counted paper ballots.

There are, in fact, many counties, even relatively large ones that use
"optically scanned" ballots.  But I was not referring to those counties when
I
used the term paper ballots.

To be even more specific.  There are five different methods used for
counting
ballots in the US:

    -- Paper ballots (9% of counties, less than 1% of voters)
    -- Lever machines (12% of counties and 16% of voters)
    -- Punch cards (17% of counties and 32% of people)
    -- Optical Scan systems (43% of counties and 29% of voters)
    -- Direct Record Electronic systems (10% of counties and 12% of people)

In addition about 8% of the counties use a mixture of these five systems.

Note that punch cards, DRE systems, and Lever machines are disproportinately
used in counties with large populations while paper ballots and optical scan
systems are disproportionately used in smaller counties.  (To see this
compare
the percentage of counties with the percentage of people.  If the percentage
of
people is bigger than the percentage of counties, then the system is used in
counties with larger populations.)

Henry Brady
Professor of Political Science and Public Policy
University of California, Berkeley