Our voting system has to be secure, and it has to feel secure. It’s our system, and we need to be able to trust it. The only way that this can really happen is if we have paper ballots. A lot of Kentucky counties have already recognized this and moved to paper ballots and optical scanning. This makes people feel secure, gives us a voting record that’s easy to protect and to recount, and doesn’t cost a whole lot of money. This combination of high tech and low tech is a great example of how we should handle the entire voting process. Computers can help to process the vote accurately and securely, but the sense of security that comes with paper ballots must be respected. There’s no reason why Kentucky can’t file and process paper ballots without giving up any of the advantages of modern technology.