Paper Ballots This week’s reader column

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It begins:

Last week I noted that in 1860 even in the Southern states, where Abe Lincoln was kept off the presidential ballot, no one cried “fraud.” No one disputed the election. Angry states simply seceded.
The voting machine was invented in 1881, the same time as states began adopting the secret ballot.
By the time I cast my first ballot in 1972, drawing a curtain around myself like the Wizard of Oz with the pull of a lever, the huge clunky machines were old hat. I’m sure my wife brought our kids in with her behind the curtain to teach them their civic duty by her good example.
Eventually the monster machines gave way…..

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