VOTE ON PAPER BALLOTS, HAND COUNTED BY LOCAL VOTERS, WITH PUBLIC EXIT POLLS

In the 2000 US Elections there were unprecedented levels of spoiled votes resulting in 2 - 3 million votes lost nationwide. In the 2004 US Elections there was a 5% discrepancy between official vote counts and exit polls in favor of the incumbent Republican administration.

Below are intuitive ways to block many holes in the legislation that created the means and opportunity for violations of fair elections to occur:

We should outlaw punch card voting. Paper ballots are a low cost and safer replacement.
Voters were handed provisional ballots, often for voting in the wrong precinct, and thereby delaying election results. We should ban provisional ballots and instead voters should be allowed to vote in any precinct in their city using their Driver's license or DMV ID card. No lists of voters or list purging would be required. To deter voting fraud, election officials should ask and require voter fingerprints on the back of the ballot and mark their pinky finger with indelible ink.
We should eliminate the restriction against felons from voting in elections. The constitution does not allow this restriction. Implementing a felon purge list is one of the main reasons voter registration can be challenged on the day of the Election.
To verify a voter's rights, we should print the voter's right on each driver's license or DMV ID card. The DMV would electronically perform a DHS citizenship check based on SSN and no additional document inspection would be necessary at the DMV or on Election Day.
We can therefore ban the practice of challenging a voter's rights to vote on the day of the Election.
At many polling stations there was a shortage of ballots or the lines were terribly long. The actual ballot format should be for 8.5" x 11" paper and made public as an Internet document viewable by all types of computers and operating systems (e.g. RTF or PDF). Voter verified paper ballots could be then printed from any computer and brought to the polling station for the DMV ID check before voting & inking.
The elections should be held on a holiday. Alternatively Election Day could be declared a holiday.
Elections with hand counting matched up the best and nearly identical to exit polls in the US and abroad. Require all ballots be paper and counted by hand. This would outlaw the official use of electronic ballots including computerized counting from scanned paper ballots.
One hundred ballots from a precinct should be counted by each 100th voter from that precinct. If a voter protests his/her request to be a vote counter, the next voter could be asked to count 101 ballots. However the types of reasons for protesting the public service of counting votes would need to be restricted and public service mandated by law.
All polling places must be open to the media and to election inspectors from any registered agency (including the U.N. and The Carter Center) at all times.
As a condition of legally performing exit polls, agencies doing so must make the raw exit poll data and discrepancies with tallied votes available on www.eac.gov (or appropriate local website) within 14 days after the election.
All officials and employees of companies involved in the election must never have felony records.
Like music MPEG videos, MP3 files, credit card data, SSNs and any other precious data, once election data has been made into an electonic record or file it is subject to deletion, unlimited copying and editing. Don't let your election be "Napsterized" again!
VOTING SYSTEM MATRIX

Risk/option	Hand marked paper ballots, hand counted	Hand marked paper ballots, machine counted	Touch screen electronically cast ballots, machine counted	Voter verified paper ballots printed from a touch screen PC, machine counted	Voter verified paper ballots printed from a touch screen PC, hand counted
Problems casting ballots?	No.	No.	Yes, PC may crash, give wrong ballot form, misinterpret finger heat as a vote or secretly cast wrong vote.	Yes, printer or PC may fail or give wrong ballot form.	Yes, printer or PC may fail or give wrong ballot form.
Problems with double votes (over-votes) or no visible vote (under-votes)?\| Neg.	Yes.	N/A	No.	No.
Problems counting votes?	No.	Yes, tally machine may fail.	Yes, tally machine may fail.	Yes, tally machine may fail.	No.
Can ballot stuffing occur?	Especially not if voter puts their unique fingerprints on back of ballot.	Especially not if voter puts their unique fingerprints on back of ballot.	Yes, the votes reside in a database that can be altered centrally.	Especially not if voter puts their unique fingerprints on back of ballot.	Especially not if voter puts their unique fingerprints on back of ballot.
Can the vote count be easily tampered with?	No, many people do the counting.	Yes, the tally machine is centrally controlled.	Yes, the tally machine is centrally controlled.	Yes, the tally machine is centrally controlled.	No, many people do the counting.
Can the election be easily rigged?	No.	Yes.	Yes.	Yes.	No.
Is system expensive or election prep time-intensive?\| No.	Yes.	Yes.	Yes.	Not if using openvotingconsortium.org
Allows for an independent hand recount?	Yes.	Yes.	No.	Yes.	Yes.
Complaints of votes not counted?	No, exit polls match to within 1%	A few.	Yes, many. See blackbox voting.org	N/A proposed.	N/A proposed.
Recommended choice?	Best	Third. If tally machine fails, could hand count	Fifth.	Fourth. Allows a hand recount of provisional + printed ballots	Second. Hand counting is highly important

Other references: Dr. Steven F. Freeman (U. Penn), www.ucdata.berkeley.edu, www.moveleft.com, www.wheresthepaper.org, www.verifiedvoting.org, www.servesecurityreport.org and www.house.gov/conyers