Brent Batten: After advances in technology, voters move back to pen and paper

The quest for a better mousetrap is never-ending.

So too the quest for a more reliable system of voting.

Mankind has fumbled and bumbled along, looking for the perfect method for tallying public opinion on questions and candidates for as long as the notion of democracy has been around.

Primal forms of voting include the voice vote. All in favor say, “aye,” and the like.

The show of hands is its close cousin.

Both are good enough for small gatherings and matters of minimal significance but carry obvious drawbacks when the electorate grows and weighty issues arise.

As thinking advanced, early democrats came up with more sophisticated systems.

Colored rocks representing yes or no were placed in a bag, creating a tangible record of the vote.

According to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, the word “ballot” is derived from the Italian word for “little ball” and refers to early elections in which colored marbles were placed in a box as a form of voting.

Soon, paper ballots emerged as the favored method of voting. You write or check the name of your favored candidate on the paper, drop the paper in a locked box and you’re done.

The boxes are delivered to a secure location where they are unlocked, and the votes counted. What could be simpler?

But, never satisfied with standing still, voting mankind marched forward. So did the cheaters.

In the early 1800s, political parties were responsible for printing ballots with their candidates' names. Most people voted for a party’s slate, but it was possible to “split a ticket” and paste another name over the name of the party candidate.

Ballot boxes with hidden compartments inside were developed so that extra ballots could be added to the legitimate ones to favor a party or candidate.

Glass boxes were designed as a counter measure.

By the 1880s, blanket ballots, those listing all the candidates, were the norm in the U.S.

In the 1890s, the gear and lever voting machine was patented. It involved flipping levers to show the name of the preferred candidates, then pulling a handle to register a vote. By the 1920s, such machines were in use in more than a dozen states and were the predominant form of voting in many places into the 1960s.

Technology advanced and in the late 1950s a newfangled device called the computer was emerging.

Computers required punch cards, slips of papers with instructions for the mechanical brain, to operate.

IBM adapted the technology to voting, with a stylus used to punch holes in a card next to a candidate’s name.

Computers could count the cards at amazing speeds, a benefit in a nation with an ever-expanding number of voters.

But punch cards had their drawbacks, as demonstrated by the 2000 election in Florida that introduced terms such as dimpled ballot and hanging chad to the lexicon.

So we turned again to technology for the answer.

Touch screens are ideal for making smartphones do our bidding or withdrawing money from an ATM. Why not use them for voting?

Many places, including Collier County did, and learned the answer. As reliable as the machines might be, they produced no evidence of the voter’s intent. There wasn’t a paper trail.

Sure, the internal workings of those touch screen machines might be infallible, but people simply didn’t trust them. What if hackers got in there and changed the totals?

As much as the manufacturers and the elections officials assured us that couldn’t happen, people harbored suspicions. Touch screen voting machines fell out of favor and out of use.

So, here we are, back not quite where we started but somewhere close, using paper and pens to mark ballots that are placed in a locked box, taken to a secure location, and counted.

What could possibly go wrong?

Connect with Brent Batten at brent.batten@naplesnews.com, on Twitter @NDN_BrentBatten and at facebook.com/ndnbrentbatten.