We can pay for Starbucks with our phones, but most people walking into polling stations for the 2014 midterm elections will cast their ballots using something far simpler than a digitized machine or a mobile phone: Paper ballots remain commonplace in the U.S., filled out with a pen or pencil depending on the exact type of voting machine. The old-school approach seems archaic, but it has an advantage over electronic voting machines: It works. Pamela Smith, the president of election watchdog Verified Voting, estimates that nearly 70 percent of voters will manually fill out ballots to participate in the election this year. "Paper, even though it sounds kind of old school, it actually has properties that serve the elections really well," Smith told The Hill.
Source: Nearly 70 percent of voters this election are casting paper ballots
