We Used to Count Ballots with Pencils. Now We Need a Court Order...
Voting Machines Glitch. Paper Doesn’t. Back to the Basics: One Day, One Vote, One Damn ID...
Let’s talk about paper ballots and mail-in voting.
Because somewhere between Nixon and TikTok, we went from “vote on election day, results by bedtime” to “count for ten days, flood the courts, bring in the lawyers, and hope CNN gets it right before Thanksgiving.”
Back in the 70s and 80s, you showed up on election day. In person. With your pants on. You filled out a paper ballot by hand and some local humans with eyeballs counted it. No biometric scanners. No “signature curing.” No disappearing thumb drives. Just ballots, pencils, and people doing their jobs.
And you know what? We trusted it. Not because it was perfect. But because it was visible. Transparent. Tangible. No one needed a PhD in Computer Science or a federal subpoena to understand the results.
Now we’ve got elections that look more like crime scenes.