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Why the Best Voting Technology May Be No Technology at All

My model for smart voting is Canada. The Canadians are watching our election problems and laughing their butts off. They think we are crazy, and they are right.

I’m hoping that all three of you that read this site understand that I find this to be absolutely crucial. If we have no confidence in our voting system, then the system falls apart.

Also, the most amazing part of this article is the discussion of costs…

The 2002-2003 budget for Elections Canada is just over $57 million U.S. dollars, or $1.81 per Canadian citizen. It is extremely hard to get an equivalent per-citizen figure for U.S. elections, but trust me, it is a LOT higher. This week, San Francisco held a runoff mayoral election that cost $2.5 million, or $3.27 per citizen of the city. And this was for just one election, not a whole year of them.

We are spending $3.9 billion or $10 per citizen for new voting machines. Canada just prints ballots.

Now this is the kind of stuff that gets me. $10 per citizen just for the MACHINES! Canada runs their entire year of elections for $1.81/citizen. As he points out in the article, Canada and California are roughly equal in population, so it’s not a stretch that we’d be able to do this for a similar cost.