under strict and bipartisan supervision.

You're on to something -- a little something called REAL DEMOCRACY!

I've never understood why private corporations with super-secret proprietary software are given the responsibility of counting our votes...

In 2000 the republicans stole the election from Gore. Why would they stop there?

And who doesn't. It's more like a lottery than voting.

I still cannot figure out why this idiocy still exists. Mind boggling.

The people that count the mail in votes are not bipartisan. As I've heard the jerk-off Republicans I work for complain, their votes often don't get counted. [insert Nelson from the Simpsons "Ah Ha" picture here]

and to the machine. Which reminds me, I need to look into volunteering. Several of my friends that work at Boeing do it every year. I was jealous hearing about their after party after the 2008 election.

End of the election process if you ever vote for (or maybe even run yourself) and then find that the election results are very close.

In a close election,it is critical that the ballots be counted by hand. But often, the "recount" is done simply by putting the same ballots through the same machine.

In Marin County Calif, in a close election, the people wanting the recount to be a hands on only, no Opti Scan recount, had to come up with 106,000 dollars, with 15% of it up front, to have a recount for the hospital district board, a position that pays zero in salary. the candidate who was seeking that office, a true indie and wonderful community leader, backed off from the recount.

That is why I say: Paper ballots counted ONLY by hand!

One should be able to walk into one's polling place, get one's own pre-mailed ballot and submit a changed vote.

The ballots should be kept on display until the longest term of office completes, unless undergoing recount of course. Then they can go to research institutions if wanted, or to anyone who does want them. The last persons able to discard ballots should be in government.

Ballots can be printed on plain old 8.5x11 sheets off an ordinary computer printer.

Valid ballots can be counted by machine after being stamped by an poll-worker's personal marred stamp made for that day with a trace element in the ink. And, the machine count of ballots poll-workers entered must match the number of votes in that poll-workers' list of voters. A poll-worker thumb print on each would be good as well.

Manual random and requested recounts are mandatory with a mandatory full manual recount if any error is found.

If contested or close, all ballots go online and are recounted there as well as recounting the paper.

It's just a matter of designing a layout and programming a reader for the scanned image.

It could also handle instant runoff voting.

That's how we do it here (UK). Once the polls close, all the ballots are dumped on a big table where a team of local volunteers will count them, watched by local representatives of each party and the local returning officer. Anyone can object to any ballot at any time but, since it's just putting a pencil cross in a box, there's rarely any difficulty working out who the vote was meant for. Error rate is almost non-existent and we usually know who's won within five or six hours (last election took longer because it was incredibly close).

You don't know Republicans. They'll lie and say that pencil lines don't exist. Just look at what they did in FLA to the poor voters who punched holes in cards. They lied and said punching a hole was not sufficient unless they also removed the piece that was still connected. They also lied and would claim more than one hole was punched when it wasn't. The rarely any difficulty thing won't work with the stupid people in this country.