Printworthy

I noted that the previous column I wrote wasn't printed due to the potential for perception of conflict of interest. However, the Examiner was willing to let me address the topic in a letter to the editor, which I submitted and they printed on Friday.

Computerized voting not the best

Computerized voting allows you to vote at any convenient Barrie location. But this benefit is from the online voter list, not the touchscreens. We could do it with the electronic voting list and paper ballots. Of course, counting would be slower. Or would it?

This past election's vote-tallying was an embarrassment. Municipalities all around us with paper ballots reported and went home while our computerized results trickled in.

Candidates went to sleep not knowing if they had been elected; newspapers to press with races too close to call. Even places opening mail-in ballot envelopes before sorting and counting were beating us.

The final insult: a trustee result reversed upon manual examination two weeks after the vote. And it wasn't even a close call, the first-and fourth-place contestants were switched by computer error.

If the computer voting results are late and we have to hand-count them anyway to be sure, are they worth the extra cost, or should we consider returning to the tried-and-true pencil on paper?

Erich Jacoby-Hawkins
Barrie