I e-mailed this article to the Democrat running for county clerk, the office responsible for administering elections in my area. The Republican incumbent is spouting her usual election-year rhetoric of fairness and impartiality, but I know people who have observed her do things like: bad-mouth our Democratic state senator at an election judge training seminar; and remain oblivious to the fact that election night returns were showing a popular Democrat with ZERO votes in his own precinct ! The county clerk's office finally jumped on it when the candidate himself called to ask what the h*** was going on!

Anyway. As I started to say, paper receipts aren't enough. If I have a piece of paper that says I voted for Joe Smith, but the late-night election returns say that Pat Jones won, am I likely to question it? Probably not, especially if the results are close. I mean, how many people would take the time to poll their neighbors and associates to see how they voted, and raise a stink if the numbers didn't match?

That's why a mandatory, bipartisan hand-count of a statistically significant percentage of votes (10%? 20%?) from randomly-selected precincts has to be part and parcel of any electronic voting system, whether it be touchscreen, punch card, optical scan, etc. Which, of course, requires a paper trail. If the hand-count is in line with the electronic results, fine. But if there's any deviation above, say, 1%, then it should be law that a hand-count of all votes is automatically initiated. Yes, it'd be a pain in the butt for election judges, but that's why a 2-3 week gap between election day and the deadline for certifying the election results is built into the system -- precisely for such an event.

Two last points: 1) I encourage anyone who can to volunteer to be an election judge, especially if your local government is skewed heavily towards the other party -- we need you to be the eyes and ears to ensure that the system is working; and 2) in my state (IL) and probably others, you have the right to go to court and demand the aforementioned hand-count of a certain percentage of precincts.

Find out if any local political organizations are taking advantage of this right, and, if not, insist that they do so. They can only steal the election if we let them.