Washington, USA – With the American presidential elections scheduled for this Tuesday, millions of people in the United States will go out to vote. Contrary to India, however, America employs ballot papers more than the Electronic Voting Machines or commonly known as EVMs. Though voting in the United States does not occur 100% through ballot papers, a large number of clients use this method because of perceived accuracy.
Late in the exercise, future head of SpaceX company and member of Donald Trump’s campaign team, Alan Musk deplored the adoption of electronic voting systems claiming that they are hackable. Musk opined that paper ballots are more secure and indeed many agree that for this reason, several nations including the United States engage in the use of this method in their ballot.
Perspective of US and Indian Elections
But when comparing the American presidential elections to India’s general elections there are many differences. Campaigning comes to a halt 36 hours before the voting exercise starts in India. However, in the US for example, voting can begin several weeks before the main poll day, similar to the Indian postal ballot facility. This early voting provides an opportunity for the voters to either vote personally or to vote using mail in votes. More than 72 million voters have already voted early this year for the general elections. The remaining voters will vote today Tuesday at the polling stations within the various states of the country.
The Development of Ballot Voting in The United States
The 2000 US presidential election used both paper votes and punch-card voting machine. But the system was set to controversy when during a Dec 2000 election, the results from Florida were disputed. In Florida, the Republican candidate, George W. Bush was finally declared the winner by a bare wafer of five hundred and thirty-seven votes against Al Gore after the supreme court put an end to the recount exercise. It was a very debatable conclusion that had severe consequences to the American voting system.
In the year 2002 the US government passed what came to be known as the Help America Vote Act that envisioned the principles of reforming the electoral system. In this reform, the acquisition of ‘Direct Recording Electronic’ (DRE) machines that do not produce a paper record was ceased. Subsequently, the public withdrew its support on paper less machines, and hand marked paper ballots were preferred. By the cast and count year of 2006, all the hand-marked ballots were both scanned and electronically tabulated in order to offer both electronic record and voter-verified paper audit trail.
For more than 10 years of using such systems, one third of the votes were made on DRE machines, which are similar to India’s EVMS. BrennanCenter.org stated that about 25% of voters was the use of paperless machines up to 2014. But what happened in 2016 was the complete reversal of the trend back to paper ballots.
As election and government programme expert, in an interview with Reuters, Derek Tisler said, “It’s our job to identify disparities and evenly them out so that every election is as precise as it can be. And this is why we are experiencing higher and higher numbers of voters preferring paper ballots. The United States government meanwhile approved $800 million to enable many states to shift from the older systems of voting to paper ballots. Around 96 millions of voters which is 69 percent of the total registered voters in 2022 mid-term elections used hand-marked paper ballots and 27 million or 22 percent of the total voters were able to voted using either balloting paper or electronic machines.
The Transformation to Paper Ballots
In the mid-term election, only 7% of voters used DRE machines, a percentage gets lower every year. Based on our analysis via BrennanCenter.org it was found that, in the coming 2024 presidential elections over ninety-eight percent of the voters are expected to use paper ballots slightly higher than the ninety-three percent recorded in the recent 2020 elections. What is more, all the seven swing states, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin have chosen voting systems that produce a paper record, which could be used to conduct post-election recounts.
Retired university of Iowa computer science professor, Douglas Jones, who specialises in the use of computers in elections affirmed that paper is used for voting since it can be audited. Vote counting is performed using the scanners, and thus there are ways of eliminating bad spots as well.
This extensive use of ballot papers was also why vote tallying and declaration of results in U.S. elections may take several days. I also want to note that the president of the United States is not elected by the people of the country itself, according to the results of the people’s vote, but by the Electoral College. Choices of the voters in each state are electors, and the candidate who gathers more than two hundred and seventy supporting electors is considered the winner.
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