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http://aceproject.org/electora...

How incredibly inaccurate. India went all electronic in 2004.

Prior to that, they had a long history of electronic voting:
Since 1998, the Election Commission ) has increasingly used Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) in polling places. In 2003, all state elections and by-elections were held using EVMs. Encouraged by this the Commission has decided to use only EVMs for the Lok Sabha (Lower House) election in 2004. EVMs were used throughout India with a voter population of about 672 million. Nearly 700'000 polling stations spread over 35 states and Union territories were equipped with EVMs to elect the 543 representatives to the Lok Sabha and 697 representatives to four state assemblies of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Orissa and Sikkim. Over one million EVMs were used in these elections

But aside from spelling ("its wrath" not "it's rath" :-)), I agree that the US system of government is horribly flawed in a few ways. Especially this Supreme Court judges appointed-for-life shit. That's just wrong.

The worst bit is, as you say, when a party has (over a period of time) managed to eliminate all the checks and balances. There are rather a lot of sham-democracy one-party states around the world. It'd be rather depressing (to put it mildly) to see the US fall too far in that direction.

Real competition is a critical element in the capitalist marketplace - I think it's much more important in the political marketplace. It's a pity that the US have such a fucked-up voting system (ie. not that other voting systems are flawless, but the US system is really bad).

....I just wrote a screed ranting on about the stranger parts of the weird and bizarre US "system", but it was getting even further off topic, so I've cut it. :)

An alternative is the alternative vote system, which we use in Australia. Basicially you rank candidates in order of preference. If no single candidate has an absolute majority of the votes, then the candidate with the lowest number of votes drops out, and their votes are redistributed according to the next preference. This continues until somebody gets an absolute majority. Sounds a bit confusing, perhaps, but it has the advantages of choosing a candidate who is least offensive to the majority of the electorate (ie less divisive) and also does not discourage you from voting independent/third-party or whatever - because your vote is not wasted, you can vote Greens against a Liberal incumbent, but your vote may still help get the Labor candidate elected, depending on how you have ordered your preferences.

Single Transferable Voting, aka Proportional Representation.

This simulataneously removes the problem of voters voting against their consciences for fear of wasting their vote. In the PR system, no votes are wasted. It has been used in Ireland and other European countries for quite some time now, and the constitution is designed to allow for coalition governments. Just about all of the smaller parties have been players in coalition governments at one time or another.

Or marbles: "Another form of mechanical voting system is used in Gambia, where marbles are placed in a machine to indicate votes for candidates. The machine calculates the number of marbles allocated to each candidate." from ace project

I live in the UK and we're quickly catching up with your country's low voter turnout and general disinterest in the things done in our name.

In Australia, Belgium, and Luxembourg there's compulsary voting. I think that's be a good idea in the US, but then big business would lose out once people started voting "none of the above" or picking random Green or Libertarians to vote for because you don't like the Republican/Democrats. As the Feederz once said, "When you're being sodomized who cares if it's from The Left or The Right".

Mandatory voting article

Obviously the electronic systems would give a result as soon as polling closes

Naturally, you would THINK that would be the case, but in Florida, it wasn't during this last primary. The votes weren't counted instantly. There was some sort of counting going on all Tuesday night and all day Wednesday.

In Oklahoma, I think we have some of the best ballot systems in America. (PDF file) We mark the ballot with a marker - connecting the two lines together to indicate candidate preference. It's not at all electronic. It's near-foolproof, and it's easy to count.

BTW, "scrutineer" is a really cool word you don't hear in America - at least, I don't hear it.

A referendum would / will cost $150 million to the Canadian Taxpayer, and in the words of Rick Mercer ( the comedian who came up with the idea ), "Any idiot could get a referendum on his pet issue. I'm just the first idiot."

This is wrong. A referendum does not need to cost $150m to run. The major cost in any election is registration of voters (see: here). However, in a referendum, why care about _where_ someone votes? All you should really care about is that they only vote once. This is a much easier problem. Everyone already has unique identifiers (SIN anyone?), and has to present photo-ID in order to vote. Just record the fact that they voted, and keep going. No registration required. The fact that the last one was run in such a way as to cost $150m doesn't they all should.

Anything that increases a citizens involvement in government is a good thing. Otherwise, you end up with people telling you what is right, rather than you telling them what you want.

The buzzword of proportional representation has shunted the issue of different kinds of preferentional voting down the agenda in many jurisdictions, however I like the idea of a (or more) representative being elected from my local area to represent my local area, now the fact that the individual(s) in question may be party aligned diminishes the benefit (perhaps) but it does not eliminate it. The relative simplicity of the US electoral college means that the mechanics of counting ballots is really easy, but some of the more equitable systems such as PPP or Hare-Clark the actual process of counting the ballots is, er, tricky and needs a good scrut (p scroot). (have a gook at The ACE Project).

The need to physically move around ballots makes the automation of the process via computers an excellent methodology. Whilst at university we used one of these systems for Student council elections and for the few thousand ballots that were cast, a team of tens of volunteers spent all night shuffling papers to try and get a result. I wrote some software (as an exercise to teach myself C) that would do the actual counting in seconds. I also looked at the processes needed to take a manual ballot and data enter the ballots so that the computer could process them. Even with a cross check and audit process the whole counting could be an order of magnitude faster (and probably much more accurate). With electronic vote capture (polling booth or not) even more so.

I guess the point here is that IT has roles to play even in the scrutineering process. Remember the "spoiled ballot" issue. When the first count goes through the scrutineers from the candidates are unlikely to have too much to do with fighting about spoiled ballots, it is only once the election becomes close that the real barneys occur about whether a ballot is spoiled or not. This is probably part of the reason why Gore caught up some in the recount, some of the previously spoiled ballots were admitted or vice verse.

The buzzword of proportional representation has shunted the issue of different kinds of preferentional voting down the agenda in many jurisdictions, however I like the idea of a (or more) representative being elected from my local area to represent my local area, now the fact that the individual(s) in question may be party aligned diminishes the benefit (perhaps) but it does not eliminate it. The relative simplicity of the US electoral college means that the mechanics of counting ballots is really easy, but some of the more equitable systems such as PPP or Hare-Clark the actual process of counting the ballots is, er, tricky and needs a good scrut (p scroot). (have a gook at The ACE Project).

The need to physically move around ballots makes the automation of the process via computers an excellent methodology. Whilst at university we used one of these systems for Student council elections and for the few thousand ballots that were cast, a team of tens of volunteers spent all night shuffling papers to try and get a result. I wrote some software (as an exercise to teach myself C) that would do the actual counting in seconds. I also looked at the processes needed to take a manual ballot and data enter the ballots so that the computer could process them. Even with a cross check and audit process the whole counting could be an order of magnitude faster (and probably much more accurate). With electronic vote capture (polling booth or not) even more so.

I guess the point here is that IT has roles to play even in the scrutineering process. Remember the "spoiled ballot" issue. When the first count goes through the scrutineers from the candidates are unlikely to have too much to do with fighting about spoiled ballots, it is only once the election becomes close that the real barneys occur about whether a ballot is spoiled or not. This is probably part of the reason why Gore caught up some in the recount, some of the previously spoiled ballots were admitted or vice verse.

4 What difference does an electoral system make where the difference between the candidates is almost zero. We would be better served with a random lottery. Who cares about if a candidate gets 10% of the pop vote but 0 electoral votes. Isn't it much more serious when a candidate wins with say 45% of the total vote and that vote represents 45% of the people who can vote. One could say that you no longer live in a Democracy with numbers like that.

An excellent alternative to the current system is preferential voting. Ranking candidates ensures "that whoever wins the election will have the support of the majority of the electorate". That way I don't have to be afraid that my vote for Nader is going to get Bush elected. Whether this would encourage apathetic voters to return to the polls is another question.

Then there is porportional representation, but that doesn't work so well for single-position offices.