Which wit at the OED set the ‘Word of the Day’ to ‘chad’?  Material texts have lain at the heart of American political ideology and national identity since the Declaration of Independence in 1776, which is on permanent, reverent display alongside the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights in the Rotunda Building of the National Archives in Washington D.C.  It is ironic that the outcome of the 2000 presidential election hung not on these grand constitutional documents but on tiny squares of waste paper, and whether they had dropped or were dangling or dimpled.

Given past and present anxieties over the reliability of the electronic voting machines that consigned the chad to the paper recycling bin of history, perhaps it is time the U.S. honoured the Founding Fathers’ commitment to the material text and reintroduced to its democratic process a piece of paper and a stubby little pencil on a piece of string.