After all is said and done, paper ballots have proven to be far more reliable than any punch cards or electronic forms of voting. But now President Obama thinks online voting will provide the American people with a fairer voting system. But the question is "fairer" to whom?

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I received an email today (April 13, 2016) from The Progressive Turnout Pac , which announced that President Obama is seeking a "secure" way for the public to vote online. The email said, "Last month President Obama announced his support for exploring secure ways to vote online, so that anyone with a smartphone can exercise their democratic responsibility."

I have to admit that whenever President Obama puts forth an idea that he wants to see happen because it will "make things great for the American people", I become very leery. Just like his idea to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq way too soon, and his idea to get on board with the TPP; his idea of opening the internet to "secure" voting is equally as suspicious.

Obama is kidding, right? There not a computer that a country and not even the Pentagon have proven to be un-hackable. Recently the FBI put the Apple CEO through hell trying to force Apple to create a program that would allow them to hack any phone, any time and for any reason. The FBI even sued Apple, only to drop the suit later because they found someone who hacked the phone they wanted opened, which left the matter moot.

So just how secure can President Obama promise that an online voting system will be? "He can't", said a computer expert, responding to my phone call today to Thom Hartmann's showto advise him of President Obama's idea, and the poll against it being taken by Progressive Turnout. Banks have been hacked, the NSA has been hacked, hospitals and private users have been hacked by the millions. Even countries have been hacked. Computer voting is a terrible idea.

Voting machines also have proven to be less than reliable. They even allow votes to be flipped, depending on the company contracted to install them.

So why not just go back to paper ballots? They leave a record, they can be counted by humans, or they can even be counted by money-counting machines. Just make sure they are correctly separated, throw them in the machine, and let it do the counting. There could even be a second counting-machine to do a recount to make sure the numbers match. There are also the scanning machines that can scan and count, but these too can malfunction, so a secondary backup count should be required.

Ireland bought up a fortune's worth of voting machines much like we use here in Florida and in some other states. Ireland used them for one year and then threw them out. They didn't even try to sell them to some other country. They just trashed them and went back paper ballots.

On November 2, 2014, Cory Bennett reportedfrom The Hill, "that dozens upon dozens of states are ditching their electronic voting machines and returning to 'paper & pencil' and saving a fortune on maintaining these untrustworthy machines." Bennett also reported that "in Ohio alone, $115 million was required for upgrades to their voting machines. These machines are known to malfunction." Florida went to voting machines after the "hanging chad" debacle that cost Al Gore the election. Pencil and paper would have worked much better.

"An electronic machine in North Carolina lost roughly 4,500 votes in a 2004 statewide race after it simply stopped recording votes. The race was ultimately decided by fewer than 2,000 votes. Now what do you do", asked Pamela Smith, president of election watchdog Verified Voting. Adding, "You can't really do a recount? There's nothing to count."

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Authors Bio:

Marsha is a resident of the State of Florida. She graduated from Miami-Dade CC in 1975 when college was so low cost that it was not hard to work & pay her own way.

She has always been a strong advocate for democracy for all, and have always been opposed to racism of any kind. I believe the time is right to make major corrections to the U.S. Constitution so that the polarization that has been occurring in our country for many years, but very much more so in recent years can be addressed with some degree of success. Voting right must be a Constitutional right for all Americans, even those in jail. Today, it is not. Laws governing lobbiests, how they can conduct themselves either publicly or privately, must have guidelines. And no lobbiest should ever be allowed to hold any government office. Money in politics should never be allowed to be the linchpin under which our courts make decisions. School systems nationwide should be required to teach nothing but the truth. Slanted educations from one state to another in a country where moving from one state to another is a common occurrence is unfair to a young mind. Each state has its own history which should be taught fairly, but as to governmental history, the history should not be allowed to change factually from one state to another.

She had the advantage of living under the New Deal and can promise anyone who did not have that advantage that it does, indeed, work. It worked very well. Taxes are not and never have been the culprit in this economy. It is the lack of taxes and rigging of the democratic system by both parties causing the great divide between the haves and have nots.