Nine Iowa Counties Toss Their Touchscreens
By Jerry Depew, Iowa Voters
Nine
Iowa counties that used touchscreen voting machines as part of their
equipment in each precinct have decided to get rid of them. Their
change of heart was prompted by the legislature’s orders that all votes
must be put on paper. Counties had to add paper trail printers to their
touchscreens or replace the touchscreens. The counties opting to
replace are Benton, Black Hawk, Clinton, Davis, Floyd, Linn, Scott,
Story, and Wright. This covers some of Iowa’s biggest cities: Waterloo,
Cedar Rapids, Davenport and Ames.
If you live in one of these counties and if you appreciate this move by your auditor, send a thank you note.
Other counties have passed up this opportunity to improve their
voting equipment. Some of them, such as my county, seem to take every
opportunity to use the paperless gadgets despite the known flaws (high
failure rates, impossible recounts). Simple paper ballots have been
abandoned even in school board races and bond issues where only one
item is being voted on. It would appear to be far cheaper to use
ordinary paper and count by hand than to pay for special scanned
ballots or to pay for programming of touchscreens when the vote is
merely “YES” or “NO”.
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