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Paper Ballots Solved Nothing

In 2006, we made the change from clean and simple electronic voting back to an antiquated paper ballot system. I thought the move to paper ballots was ludicrous at the time, and I still do.

There are so many alternative solutions that make more sense. But, who are we kidding? It wouldn’t be New Mexico if there wasn’t institutionalized election fraud with unreasonable delays election after election. Not too mention, it is in the best interests of those who don’t really want to see an increase in voter turnout to make the voting process as painful as humanly possible.

The point of this whole rant… Well, it looks like paper ballots have done absolutely nothing to increase voter confidence. After all, it’s kind of hard to be confident in a system in which ballots are still being mysteriously “lost” (subscription):

Attorney General Gary King’s office is investigating what happened to 182 ballots that are missing from the June primary election.

Phil Sisneros, a spokesman for the attorney general, said Monday there was an investigation but he could not provide any details. Previously, the Attorney General’s Office would only say the matter was under review.

Two election reform groups — Verified Voting New Mexico and United Voters of New Mexico — called Monday for a thorough investigation into the missing ballots. They said that was necessary to maintain voter confidence in the fairness of elections, particularly with the state preparing for a general election in November in which New Mexico is likely to be critical in the outcome of the presidential race.

The paper ballots are missing from two precincts in Cibola County and local elections officials have no explanation for what happened.

The ballots were counted by a voting machine tabulator on Election Day, and there’s an electronic record of the votes because of the tabulator’s memory card, which was used in a recount in a state Senate race.

Hmm, funny how that worked out… We know that there was fraud, or at the very least incompetence, because of the electronic record of the votes. Kind of makes you sit up and question the logic behind moving away from electronic records, doesn’t it?