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But a few counties did jump on the "OMG GWB WAS ELECTED TEH MACHINES IS DEFECTIVE!11" bandwagon in 2001

I'm curious as to why a town of 80 people needs to be using electronic voting? It wouldn't be a particularly onerous task to hand count <= 80 paper votes.

Easy: mechanical lever voting machine. Served very well for about 100 years. Any idiot can see a picture or read some words and pull a lever. People don't even need to know how to read to use it. You know it worked when the curtains opened to let you out. You can lock it as tight as you want so it can be very hard to tamper with. There are no individual ballots for anyone to interpret.

Um, Clinton failed to garner more than 50% of the popular vote in EITHER election.

49.24% in 1996 and 43.01% in 1992.
http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/fe2004/appendix.xls

For the budget just browse through the thousands of bills passed each session

There are more like 13 appropriations bills. They are pretty long, but not intractable. The problem is that they are very high level allocations. For example, you won't see the name "Boeing" anywhere. You can look at individual departments to get a little more detail, but nowhere near the level of detail the database should provide. I'll be happy if it is anywhere near as good as the FEC's campaign finance disclosure database.

I wonder how many riders were attached to the bill authorizing this database

If you really wanted to find out, you could always do something radical like read the bill.

Er, no. In the 2004 US election, the Mickey Mouse vote constituted less than 1/2000th of the total vote. In fact, the FEC report seems to indicate a total of six votes, all in Rhode Island. For comparison, with the final count nearly complete, variations of "The Donald Duck Party" have recieved 103 votes in the Swedish election, or 0.0019%. A more useful comparision is that the Pirate Party (currently at 34,573 votes, or 0.63%) is ahead of the Swedish Senior Citizen Interest Party and the June List, both of which have been around longer and been percieved as serious candidates for parliament by the media, and is not far behind the Feminist Initiative (0.68%), which has the advantage of being led by a quite popular previous leader of a party with parliamentary representation, having recieved at least some funding and having attracted several celebrites.

Electronic systems - including electronic voting machines - will always be able to be tampered with, no matter who makes them, no matter what their CEOs stupidly say, no matter what ongoing audit mechanisms are implemented, whether they're open or proprietary, and no matter what legislation or other initiatives mandate or recommend them.

Finding out that computer systems can be tampered with and that some large-scale enterprise-class systems can have shoddy security, physical and otherwise, should come as no surprise to us, particularly in this community. On this particular issue, a generic security key is used because of key management issues and the fact that casual access is what's being prevented. Neither of which excuses this or any of the numerous other glaring shortcomings and flaws in this equipment. No one - citizen, politician, or party - benefits from universally shoddy security on electronic voting systems. No one.

Remember, too, that voting legislation, in large part in response to issues in the 2000 election, designed to ensure fair, uniform, and universal access to voting for all citizens by mandating electronic voting equipment, such as HAVA (2002), were Democratic and bipartisan efforts.

The real issue is that Congress screwed up: they inherently, and erroneously, believed that since we trust so many critically important things to machines, certainly reliable electronic voting is possible, and indeed, we use automation, computers, and machines in almost every aspect of our lives to increase efficiency and reliability - why should voting be any different?

Except for one problem: when you're trying to administer a one-vote-per-person system that also maintains anonymity, and also disallows any external entity from discovering who voted for which candidates, when there is no permanent, voter-verified paper trail, the system as a whole cannot be trusted, since any level of security will always be able to be overridden. This has nothing to do with open source versus proprietary, or how shoddy physical security on e-voting systems is. A permanent, voter-verified paper trail solves all of these problems.

The only problem is that no legislation mandating electronic voting systems includes or speaks to any provisions requiring permanent paper receipt printing capability. All of the major e-voting vendors - Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia - have this capability, but it's an add-on that requires retrofitting existing equipment, or in some cases, purchasing new equipment. And that takes money many counties and municipalities - particularly in the most hotly contested areas - don't have. (Hint: it's not just poor areas that have long lines)

Our focus now should be on passing legislation that requires permanent voter-verified paper trail capability on all newly deployed e-voting systems, and allocates funds and creates a timeline for deployment on existing systems. Please, continue to raise this issue with both your county election officials and your elected representatives.

This issue is too important and too critical to the integrity of our election process to let rest.

---
Temporary disclaimer, since this seems to have been an issue for people reading my posts lately: I am not a Republican, did not vote for Bush in the last election, and have always voted for more non-Republican (usually Democratic) candidates since I have been voting.

I still want to know why mechanical voting machines were phased out.

Retort: the idealistic voters who ignore the fact that we have a two party political system and, instead of choosing the better of the two candidates available, choose to throw their votes away and allow the conservative side to gain a numeric advantage are the real cause of all our (political) problems.

Are you implying that my write-in vote for Cthulhu was, in some manner, EVIL?

Seriously, though - it seems, to me, that there is something wrong with having to make a choice between two evils. The way that our current electorial system (in the U$A) is set up, today, that seems to be exactly the case, however.

If states/counties are smart, they'll avoid Diebold like the plague and stick to the old voting systems until a virtually fool-proof system can be designed and built.

"SEC. 104. &lt;&lt;NOTE: 42 USC 15304.&gt;&gt; AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS.
    (a) In General.--There are authorized to be appropriated for
payments under this title $650,000,000, of which--
            (1) 50 percent shall be for payments under section 101; and
            (2) 50 percent shall be for payments under section 102."

SEC. 101. &lt;&lt;NOTE: 42 USC 15301.&gt;&gt; PAYMENTS TO STATES FOR ACTIVITIES TO
            IMPROVE ADMINISTRATION OF ELECTIONS.
SEC. 102. &lt;&lt;NOTE: 42 USC 15302.&gt;&gt; REPLACEMENT OF PUNCH CARD OR LEVER
            VOTING MACHINES.

After the counting fiasco in FL, Congress passed the "Help America Vote Act" to get rid of the "hanging chad" forever. The Act provides funds to states to buy electronic machines so they can retire the punch card machines.

As you can see here with the Roll Call Vote, Overwhelming majorities of both parties voted for it, but MORE DEMOCRATS than republicans voted for it, even though Democrats are the minority party.

[posting as AC because I have mod points.]

So we have a presidential election with the non-choice between 2 major duds. We end up with a near evenly split electorate that would be challenge to ANY system of voting. Cries of disenfranchisement and stolen elections leads to the Help America Vote ACT which dangles a bunch of federal money and a fast-track deadline in front of a bunch of localities. Local politicians love political and real capital so they jump on the plan. Our flawed, but tried and trusted clunky lever boxes and punch cards are replaced. I suspect some localities made okay decisions, given the short time period, most are going backwards. I suspect history will show that the problems HAVA was designed to fix were made worse. And top-down federal approaches with carrot and stick bags of money lead to expedient changes, not necessarily good changes.

how can you expect your ideas to be taken seriously?

Do they make any mention of the bi-annual creation of hot air known as the U.S. Federal Elections?

Here is a punchline for you. Only stupid people think a republic is a direct democracy and only stupid people expect elections to be decided AGAINST the contents of the constitution.

But, I guess the U.S. Constitution doesn't mean anything if your candidate didn't get elected.

Do the world and yourself a favor and learn why the Electoral College exists and how it works, which you should have learned in Civics. You can start with the following:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constituti on.articleii.html#section1
http://www.fec.gov/pages/ecmenu2.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Electoral_Colleg e
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College

NO, please don't expand the duties of the electorial college. It exists to solve a problem that no longer exists, that of electing presidents in a country where it can take days to travel or even communicate.

gentelmen should not campaign for public office (The saying was "The office should seek the man, the man should not seek the office.")

Actually, both of those industries have suffered terribly from crappy local and federal laws designed to "protect minors". Ask yourself why you can't purchase wine over the internet from small vineyards in California or France. Ask youself where all the local breweries have gone. The control of alcohol has severely limited the quality and choice you have when you want any. I'm no friend of the porn industry, but they too suffer from an amazing and contradictory raft of both specific and vague legislation.

It really depends on who you classify as "the industry." Beer/Wine/Distributors have a state granted oligopoly that ends up being an incredibly lucritive business. Wholesales are VERY interested in keeping it this way. I was personally interested to find that for Political Action Committee contributions to candidates, the National Beer Wholesalers Assocation PAC was the 2nd largest.

As you say, it really is frustrating that these laws benefit a few lucky businesses to the detriment of the public good.

And change the rules. I mean, it's so easy! (it takes a bit of money, though. Just a bit.)

Federal Election Commission

Donations to political parties is readily available online just to http://www.fec.gov/disclosure there you will find reports where canidates are required to list the donor, their occupation and the amount given. This allows to see to group your local politicians owes a favor too. In addition, when you vote in primary elections most states will make it publically available which political party you registered for and whether or not you voted in the last election. This helps to make sure that we don't have fraudulent elections.

http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/2000presgeresults.htm
Bush: 50,456,002 47.87%
Gore: 50,999,897 48.38%

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._presidential_ele ction,_2000
Due to the way our electoral system works, it went Bush's way due to the 537 vote victory in Florida, getting him the needed votes to surpass the 271 count electoral vote requirement. The issue at hand was that the Gore camp called for a recount in 4 counties in Florida, 4 counties which were heavily Democratic, but the final margins didn't indicate that heavy bias.

Do I think we would have been better off with Gore? Now, maybe. Short term, no. Long term, yes. But that's just my particular view.

http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2006/02/04/outr age-at-attacks-on-nasa-science/
And yes I do consider Bush a dictator. Suppression of science based on religious views speaks loudly to that effect.

Do I lean left? Absolutely. Bush cut taxes to stimulate the economy. Reagan showed that cutting taxes works great to stimulate the economy. But then Bush spends and spends like there's no tomorrow (increasing national debt).

http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/2006/ 0206.html
Basically Japan did in the 90's what we're doing now (ultra low rates and print money as fast as it can). They still haven't recovered and are under a huge pile of debt as a result. The only reason they're climbing out now is because they can export product that they can create because of the pool of cheap labor. Here in the US, we do not have that cheap labor.

To paraphrase, we in the US are on a downward trend to equalizing our standard of living with the rest of the world. It's only natural of those in power to fight it, but it's a losing battle. Remember, finite resources...

Forming federal political parties sucks. Trust me. Try the Libertarians, although they don't have a lot of money. See the previous link for the reason why.

he was said to have never spent more than $200 on a campaign

With today's incredibly complex campaign finance laws, you generally need to spend at least $10,000 on lawyer and accounting bills to be able to run even the smallest Federal campaign. State and local campaign finance laws can also require significant legal bills.

Here is the Federal campaign finance laws. Why don't you look through it, only 234 pags

1. (from weakest to strongest) It provides a last (theoretical!) check on "the will of the people." Even though being a faithless elector is against state law in many states, an elector can still choose to cast his vote for whomever and his vote will be federally binding.
2. The electoral college makes it highly improbable that a third-party candidate will win. Compare to Germany's recent mess, where it took a month just to figure out which party would actually be able to form a coalition.
3. It balances population and geography. In the Legislative Branch, the House is stacked in favor of populous states; the Senate, in favor of less populous states. That was agreed upon for a reason: the smaller states wanted to balance the power of bigger states like ... erm, New York. Similarly, the Electoral College allows a balance between population and geography in the presidential selection process.
4. The Electoral College isolates the consequences of voter fraud. Let's say someone commits fraud in New York City on election night. It would have to be massive (Republican!) fraud to actually make a difference in the outcome. By contrast, under a straight popular vote, just a small amount of fraud in every state could swing a tight race. Obviously, counterarguments could be made for fraud in tight states like FL in 2000 -- but the point is that regulators know where to look for the fraud, as opposed to having it distributed across the country. Ditto for proportional division of electoral votes, as ME, NE, and maybe now CO do. Interesting link here on the effects of the "Maine" method.
5. The electoral college provides that the candidates will have to make a genuine effort in many different states. If popular votes were the only consideration, candidates would promise and then enact policies favorable to high-population-density areas, and let the rest of the country go to hell. So to speak.

interesting article on the EC.

I happen to agree that in this instance Diebold is more than likely hiding behind the shield of the OS to avoid going down the road of opening their own code up to scrutiny. They have seen where that leads.

However...

As another poster pointed out, from a line count perspective, the Windows OS probably makes up 99% of the OS + Dieblold code stack. Further, I believe they use additional MS libraries like Access DB File DLLs. So the percentage of MS code is even higher.

So we come to an interesting point: Could the state of North Carolina require Diebold to exhaustively black-box test the voting application including the underlying Microsoft components and document that the software functions as expected and specified by both a requirements and design specification document?

Theoretically yes. IF the requirements and design specification documents were executed perfectly, AND IF all possible variables and test cases were known AND IF the testing was conducted in a perfect manner. This would "verify" that the software functions as advertised.

But... We already do that. Sort of. Take a look at section 1.6, 1.6.1-.3

Does looking at those two pages give you the warm fuzzies? Me neither... Also notice this gem:

Some voting systems use one or more readily available commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) devices (such as card readers, printers, or personal computers) or software products (such as operating systems, programming language compilers, or database management systems). COTS devices and software are exempted from certain portions of the qualification testing process as defined herein, as long as such products are not modified for use in a voting system.

So I think that you are technically correct in that the submission of the OS source code is not absolutely necessary to reach a relative comfort level (comparable to say: testing of FDA certified devices).

But... That doesn't mean that I think that there are any practical alternatives. And from what I can tell the state of North Carolina rather fairly or unfairly to closed source solutions, is looking out for the its citizens as best it can.

Paragraph (22) of section 301 of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 (2 U.S.C. 431(22)) is amended by adding at the end the following new sentence: `Such term shall not include communications over the Internet.'.

(22) Public communication. The term 'public communication' means a communication by means of any broadcast, cable, or satellite communication, newspaper, magazine, outdoor advertising facility, mass mailing, or telephone bank to the general public, or any other form of general public political advertising.

Ummm, I don't believe I said anything excusing the Democrats in my posting. Criticizing Republican ineptness is not the same as believing the Dems would be any better. And the fact that local Democrats screwed up Katrina, too, is no reason for letting the President off the hook when he was part and parcel of the same mess. As for equating Iraq with post WWII Japan, I don't recall the US Army letting non-governmental Japanese religious and political factions keep armed private militias the way we have let the Shiites and Kurds keep theirs. An administration that decides to occupy another country with no coherent plan for pacifying the locals afterward doesn't come across as very competent.

*sigh* And in case you're not really paying attention to what this whole political-speech-blog issue is REALLY about, it's Republicans trying to exclude bloggers from regulation, not the other way around. RTFA, OK?

Scott Thomas, the Republican Chairman of the FEC is calling for more regulation:

But Scott E. Thomas, the FEC commissioner, said his agency's original exemption for the Internet was a mistake and the FEC should come up with rules for Internet campaign ads in light of the $14 million spent on Internet ads in the 2004 campaign.

Hey there! Um, yeah... THAT was so mature. Well, let me quote your inability to spell English: Funny how democrates were the ones that wanted campaign finance reform in the first place (when it suited them).
Well, accordng to the FEC It is a BIPARTISAN Act (hence the B, in BCRA) AKA McCain-Feingold law. John McCain - (R) Arizona (my vote in the 2000 Primaries), Russell Feingold - (D) Wisconsin. They are both about as bipartisan as you can get in Washington. So tell me.... where are the Democrats wanting this?

Gore won the popular vote (50,999,897 to 50,456,002), so in my mind, that should have made him president. Yes, Bush got the electoral vote, and yes, we've used the electoral college since the founding of our country, but, IMHO, it's a stupid system that never should have been invented in the first place. You want to talk about "cutsie [sic] games with statistical fluctuations"? That's our electoral college for you. Why we couldn't have put the man in office that got the most votes is beyond me.

Several presidents have won by a true majority. George Washington was voted in unanimously. I wasn't referring to a majority of people in the country, but the typical majority referred to in elections. (IE, the majority of people who voted).

In 2000, Bush didn't have the most popular votes. Al Gore did.

The seeping of blogistan into the pages of the Times of London with regard to its own scoops seems to me a bellwether of the kinds of changes that are being produced in our information environment by the blogging phenomenon. The gatekeepers at the New York Times and the Washington Post can no longer decide whether a leak is a story or a non-story. The public decides what a story is."

Let's point out the obvious too: the FEC was taking comments recently about whether or not to exempt bloggers from campaign finance laws. It became an issue because citizen media are getting too big to ignore.

Paragraph (22) of section 301 of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 (2 U.S.C. 431(22)) is amended by adding at the end the following new sentence: `Such term shall not include communications over the Internet.'.

(22) Public communication. The term 'public communication' means a communication by means of any broadcast, cable, or satellite communication, newspaper, magazine, outdoor advertising facility, mass mailing, or telephone bank to the general public, or any other form of general public political advertising.

(22) Public communication. The term 'public communication' means a communication by means of any broadcast, cable, or satellite communication, newspaper, magazine, outdoor advertising facility, mass mailing, or telephone bank to the general public, or any other form of general public political advertising. Such term shall not include communications over the Internet.

Your belief is incorrect. There is no federal law that unequivocally forbids requiring identifcation to vote, although many people (including, the ACLU ) insist an ID requirement should be considered a poll tax, just as you do. Many states forbid requiring ID.

But in fact, one federal law requires identification for some voters. The Help America Vote Act (passed in 2002) requires first-time voters to show identification if they registered by mail and didn't include a driver's license number (or the last 4 digits of their SSN -- at least SSNs are free) on the registration form.

(This weird rule was added at the behest of Congressional Republicans, who apparently think the Democrats make up voters. That's silly. Democracts don't use imaginary voters, they used dead voters.)

Two big problems with the HAVA identification requirement:

"First time voter" actually means "first time voter in a given state", so if you move to another state, you'll need to be carded again. If that's not inconvienent enough, Oregon thinks people need to show ID every time they change counties.

The whole carding scheme requires states to have a state-wide voter registration database. Not all states have this. (In fact, most don't.) If a state doesn't have the database ready for 2006, it will have to card people more often. Santa Cruz county thinks they'll have to card everyone. Won't that be fun for them?

Oh, and technically, Arizona requires ID for every voter. New Mexico is thinking about it. Some states require ID before they'll give someone a provisional ballot. And I don't even want to think about what happens when Republicans go around contesting people's voter registrations....

This is not directed at spam. It is directed at webpages. Not so much those of candidates, but of independent organizations like moveon.org.
In a recent enforcement decision, wisconsin right to life was reprimanded for posting a link.
W RtL is a corporation, and the FEC decided this was a prohibited corporate contribution. www.fec.gov.
I'm concerned about that.
In 2000, I and 1200 other people wrote the FEC to ask them to keep hands off the internet, and they were doin somewhat ok with that, until this decision last fall in the Shays v FEC case.
They received another 1200 comments and are in the process of adopting regulations.
Shays is on appeal.
Amicus briefs supporting an unregulated internet would be welcome.
In 1992, when I saw John Gilmore hand Glenn Tenny a several hundred dollar contribution to his internet-based run for congress, I thought the internet would someday have a big impact on campaigns. In 1994, with the de-foley-8 america PAC, it did, but it was this last election cycle where the net became maybe more important than TV. Dean's fundraising and moveon.org and blogs were real players, and the usual suspects are calling for regulation and censorship.
Votelaw.org, electionlawblog.org and electionline are some good places to follow these issues. In contrast, ballots.blogspot.com, my election law blog, is not as good.
The fight against internet censorship has usually focused on smut and indecency. I've been trying, without success, to use political speech cases to make the same points.

[1] In fairness, this bill does have a couple of minor differences: it proposes that election day be a federal holiday, and makes doing things that liberals would like to make people believe are routine and widespread, like intimidating minorities and passing out fliers with incorrect voting dates, a felony. It also prohibits executives at voting vendors from being politically active, likely to pander to the people who think Diebold's CEO stole the election for Bush, completely ignoring the impossibility of actually executing on such an allegation statewide. In short, a shameless pandering publicity stunt, which ignores the completely legitimate bills already proposed two years ago above by respected members of Congress that would have addressed the two very topics discussed by Kos and noted in the article summary (namely receipts and open source).

[2] Before anyone decries HAVA: a frequent charge levied after the 2000 election was voter disenfranchisement and ballot spoilage due, in large part, to antiquated, malfunctioning, or broken mechanical voting equipment. Legislation was introduced guaranteeing a minimum standard for the equipment and processes associated with voting in all jurisdictions. Since we are living in the 21st century, electronic systems were specified. $3.9 billion was set aside under HAVA to replace all mechanical punch card systems with electronic systems by 1 January, 2006. The goal is to ensure a consistency and fairness in the appearance and operation of the voting systems, both for voters and local election officials.

After the 2000 presidential election, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA):

To establish a program to provide funds to States to replace punch card voting systems, to establish the Election Assistance Commission to assist in the administration of Federal elections and to otherwise provide assistance with the administration of certain Federal election laws and progra

[1] In fairness, this bill does have a couple of minor differences: it proposes that election day be a federal holiday, and makes doing things that liberals would like to make people believe are routine and widespread, like intimidating minorities and passing out fliers with incorrect voting dates, a felony. It also prohibits executives at voting vendors from being politically active, likely to pander to the people who think Diebold's CEO stole the election for Bush, completely ignoring the impossibility of actually executing on such an allegation statewide. In short, a shameless pandering publicity stunt, which ignores the completely legitimate bills already proposed two years ago above by respected members of Congress that would have addressed the two very topics discussed by Kos and noted in the article summary (namely receipts and open source).

[2] Before anyone decries HAVA: a frequent charge levied after the 2000 election was voter disenfranchisement and ballot spoilage due, in large part, to antiquated, malfunctioning, or broken mechanical voting equipment. Legislation was introduced guaranteeing a minimum standard for the equipment and processes associated with voting in all jurisdictions. Since we are living in the 21st century, electronic systems were specified. $3.9 billion was set aside under HAVA to replace all mechanical punch card systems with electronic systems by 1 January, 2006. The goal is to ensure a consistency and fairness in the appearance and operation of the voting systems, both for voters and local election officials.

After the 2000 presidential election, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA):

To establish a program to provide funds to States to replace punch card voting systems, to establish the Election Assistance Commission to assist in the administration of Federal elections and to otherwise provide assistance with the administration of certain Federal election laws and progra

And why are only these two standpoints ever mentioned?
Are there only two parties? What if I'm not satisfied with those two? Am I allowed to start my own party?

The problem with the US's political parties is the existence of the electoral college. The President -- head of the executive branch of government (which is currently arguably the most powerful branch) -- is elected through the electoral college, a system by which each state selects a group of electors to go and cast votes for President on behalf of the people. In 48 out of 50 states, all electors go to whichever candidate gets the most votes in that state. An in-depth history is here.

The country can only support two viable parties as a mathematical consequence. If a third party gains a significant share of the vote (say 5% or more), it will sap strength from the party whose views are closest to theirs in a Presidential like the Reform party did to the Republicans when Clinton was elected and like the Green Party did to the Democrats when Bush was elected. This causes people who may like a third party candidate better to vote with the lesser of two evils instead to prevent the worst-case scenario. As a result, no third party ever gains enough political clout and campaign financing to compete.

There have been few exceptions to this and all have been as a result of the death of one of the two major parties. Here's a nice webpage showing the history of the two major US political parties and how they grew and shifted. Third parties as you can see are pretty ephemeral in the US, and major parties only survive a split by having eliminated the competition or by rejoining.

The electoral college also has a few other effects on American politics. Since almost all states have an all-or-nothing approach to portioning out votes, there are only a few states in each election that can swing either way, which are called swing states. In 2000, it was said that Bush won by only a few hundred votes (despite losing the national popular vote) by winning that margin in the swing state of Florida. In this past election, Ohio was the deciding state. Republican sentiment typicall has strongest sway in rural and suburban areas while Democratic sentiment has strongest sway in urban and coastal areas. If you're a liberal in Atlanta, Georgia or a conservative in northern California, your vote doesn't mean jack except for your House and state government officials despite the fact that most of your neighbors agree with you. Presidential and Senate votes are going to be dominated by the rest of the state. Also, thanks to the small state-large state compromise behind the way that electoral seats are proportioned out, states with low population density have more say than they would if seats were based purely on population.

Personally, I think the electoral college should be abolished. It promotes political stagnation, unfairly rewards small population states, and is obsolete for many of the purposes it was intended for. Third parties will never stand a chance so long as it exists, which has made both parties corrupt and complacent.

Support the bills already in the House and Senate that will fix this, instead of fantasizing about how the 2004 election was "stolen" (it wasn't).

A frequent charge levied after the 2000 election was voter disenfranchisement and ballot spoilage due, in large part, to antiquated, malfunctioning, or broken mechanical voting equipment. Legislation was introduced guaranteeing a minimum standard for the equipment and processes associated with voting in all jurisdictions. Since we are living in the 21st century, electronic systems were specified. $3.9 billion was set aside under HAVA to replace all mechanical punch card systems with electronic systems by 1 January, 2006. The goal is to ensure a consistency and fairness in the appearance and operation of the voting systems, both for voters and local election officials.

After the 2000 presidential election, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA):

To establish a program to provide funds to States to replace punch card voting systems, to establish the Election Assistance Commission to assist in the administration of Federal elections and to otherwise provide assistance with the administration of certain Federal election laws and programs, to establish minimum election administration standards for States and units of local government with responsibility for the administration of Federal elections...

The putative reasoning for going with electronic systems was likely that since we have managed to design accountable and reliable electronic and computing equipment for the management of our power, medical care, money, etc., it likely was more or less assumed by the legislature that such accountable systems could also be applied to voting.

A bill has been introduced to amend HAVA. H.R.2239 and its twin Senate counterpart S.1980, discussed further here, will amend the Help America Vote Act such that there is "a voter-verified permanent record or hardcopy" attached with each and every ballot cast by every voter, and that "any voting system containing or using software shall disclose the source code of that software to the Commission, and the Commission shall make that source code available for inspection upon request to any citizen".

Additionally, the three electronic voting manufacturers already have the ability to add permanent, individual voter-verified paper audit trails to their products. Some e-voting critics make it seem like vendors are resisting. However, it is the local election boards that are resisting (as well as the slow march of bureaucracy). The e-voting vendors will build - and sell - whatever municipalities will buy.

Disclaimer: this comes from a previous post of mine on the subject

A frequent charge levied after the 2000 election was voter disenfranchisement and ballot spoilage due, in large part, to antiquated, malfunctioning, or broken mechanical voting equipment. Legislation was introduced guaranteeing a minimum standard for the equipment and processes associated with voting in all jurisdictions. Since we are living in the 21st century, electronic systems were specified. $3.9 billion was set aside under HAVA to replace all mechanical punch card systems with electronic systems by 1 January, 2006. The goal is to ensure a consistency and fairness in the appearance and operation of the voting systems, both for voters and local election officials.

After the 2000 presidential election, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA):

To establish a program to provide funds to States to replace punch card voting systems, to establish the Election Assistance Commission to assist in the administration of Federal elections and to otherwise provide assistance with the administration of certain Federal election laws and programs, to establish minimum election administration standards for States and units of local government with responsibility for the administration of Federal elections...

The putative reasoning for going with electronic systems was likely that since we have managed to design accountable and reliable electronic and computing equipment for the management of our power, medical care, money, etc., it likely was more or less assumed by the legislature that such accountable systems could also be applied to voting.

A bill has been introduced to amend HAVA. H.R.2239 and its twin Senate counterpart S.1980, discussed further here, will amend the Help America Vote Act such that there is "a voter-verified permanent record or hardcopy" attached with each and every ballot cast by every voter, and that "any voting system containing or using software shall disclose the source code of that software to the Commission, and the Commission shall make that source code available for inspection upon request to any citizen".

Additionally, the three electronic voting manufacturers already have the ability to add permanent, individual voter-verified paper audit trails to their products. Some e-voting critics make it seem like vendors are resisting. However, it is the local election boards that are resisting (as well as the slow march of bureaucracy). The e-voting vendors will build - and sell - whatever municipalities will buy.

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=239735 (video)

Doug Chapin, a nonpartisan election analyst, finds the claims to be baseless. "There were no problems that would lead me to believe that there were stolen elections or widespread fraud," he said.

"There was no overwhelming reason to cast doubt on the outcome of this election," seconded Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, the campaign manager for Al Gore's 2000 campaign. "George Bush got more votes this time."

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/11 /10/internet_buzz_on_vote_fraud_is_dismissed/

Much of the traffic is little more than Internet-fueled conspiracy theories, and none of the vote-counting problems and anomalies that have emerged are sufficiently widespread to have affected the election's ultimate result.

Kerry campaign officials and a range of election-law specialists agree that while machines made errors and long lines in Democratic precincts kept many voters away, there's no realistic chance that Kerry actually beat Bush.

''No one would be more interested than me in finding out that we really won, but that ain't the case," said Jack Corrigan, a veteran Kerry adviser who led the Democrats' team of 3,600 attorneys who fanned out across the country on Election Day to address voting irregularities.

''I get why people are frustrated, but they did not steal this election," Corrigan said. ''There were a few problems here and there in the election. But unlike 2000, there is no doubt that they actually got more votes than we did, and they got them in the states that mattered."

''I think it's safe to say that on the votes that were cast in Ohio, Bush won," said Dan Tokaji, a law professor at Ohio State University who is working with the ACLU to challenge Ohio's use of punch-card ballots. ''If the margin had been 36,000 rather than 136,000, we would have seen another post-election meltdown."

http://www.sacbee.com/state_wire/story/11436220p-1 2350492c.html

All three said their networks had set up investigative units to review any claims of voter fraud or problems with electronic voting technology this year, but that nothing significant had appeared anywhere to affect the election's outcome.

"A lot of the allegations we've looked into, they're just not true," Shapiro said. "Believe me, I'd love a juicy story about the election as much as anybody. Florida was a great story, but it's just not there this time."

A frequent charge levied after the 2000 election was voter disenfranchisement and ballot spoilage due, in large part, to antiquated, malfunctioning, or broken mechanical voting equipment. Legislation was introduced guaranteeing a minimum standard for the equipment and processes associated with voting in all jurisdictions. Since we are living in the 21st century, electronic systems were specified. $3.9 billion was set aside under HAVA to replace all mechanical punch card systems with electronic systems by 1 January, 2006. The goal is to ensure a consistency and fairness in the appearance and operation of the voting systems, both for voters and local election officials.

After the 2000 presidential election, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA):

To establish a program to provide funds to States to replace punch card voting systems, to establish the Election Assistance Commission to assist in the administration of Federal elections and to otherwise provide assistance with the administration of certain Federal election laws and programs, to establish minimum election administration standards for

The appropriate State or local official shall establish and maintain reasonable procedures necessary to protect the security, confidentiality, and integrity of personal information collected, stored, or otherwise used by the free access system established under paragraph (5)(B). Access to information about an individual provisional ballot shall be restricted to the individual who cast the ballot.

The last thing that we need is yet another massive Federal program with arbritrary rules and unfunded mandates.

About a politically indepedent federal electoral authority ... Yes, WTF? is right! Yes, the situation is that bad! :) Basically (the situation may vary from place to place, as control of voting is devolved to the states), state legislatures draw up the electoral boundaries, which means that whichever party is in power in each state gets to do that however they like. I think the most controversy has been in Texas, eg the 25th District. Similarly, the job of electoral comissioner (or whatever they call it) is either a political appointee or an elected official - either way, it has the potential to be a politicised position. Katherine Harris, Florida's Secretary of State during the 2000 elections, is the best known example of this, but it goes right down to the county level - the government of each county appoints its own election officials. Now, I'm sure the vast majority of such officials are conscientious and carry out their jobs without bias. But when you couple the possibility of bias with the gerrymandered districts and the dodgy voting systems (again, the choice of each state or even county), well, it boggles the mind why Americans put up with this. But you guys are welcome to explain why you do, or alternatively, point out where I'm wrong!

PS. There is something called the Federal Election Commission, but all it seems to do is monitor and enforce election campaign finance laws.

But to Candidate1 and Candidate 2 (and 3 and 4...) the smaller states won't matter any more. They won't bother to visit these states in order to get elected. They will only go to the populous states and be sure to get their votes. Any important issues to a small state (e.g., the Alaska Pipeline) will be completely ignored if a more populous state can benefit from something else (e.g., Texas).

If you think the country is divided now, just wait after a few elections after implementing a national election and see how many divisions exist in this country.

Check out http://www.fec.gov/pdf/eleccoll.pdf to see why what we have now is a good idea, especially compared to a national popular vote.

> The electoral college ensures this since electoral representation is determined based on raw population data from the census.

This is not exactly true as, "Each State is allocated a number of Electors equal to the number of its U.S. Senators (always 2) plus the number of its U.S. Representatives (which may change each decade according to the size of each State's population as determined in the Census)." http://www.fec.gov/pages/ecworks.htm

So small states actually get more electoral votes per person than larger states. In the example below D.C. gets 3 electoral votes representing 570,000 people while California gets 1 electoral vote for each 616,000 people.

For Example:
California
pop = 33,900,000
electoral votes = 55
each electoral vote represents 616,000+

Texas
pop = 20,900,000
electoral votes = 34
each electoral vote represents 615,000

Ohio
pop = 11,400,000
electoral votes = 20
each electoral vote represents 570,000

Tennessee
pop = 5,700,000
electoral votes = 11
each electoral vote represents 518,000

District of Columbia
pop = 570,000
electoral votes = 3
each electoral vote represents 190,000

NOTE: Data from 2000 census http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/

A third idea was to have the president elected by a direct popular vote. Direct election was rejected not because the Framers of the Constitution doubted public intelligence but rather because they feared that without sufficient information about candidates from outside their State, people would naturally vote for a "favorite son" from their own State or region. At worst, no president would emerge with a popular majority sufficient to govern the whole country. At best, the choice of president would always be decided by the largest, most populous States with little regard for the smaller ones.

The electoral college was a compromise solution designed to balance the power of the states' legislatures with that of the people, to act as a sort of brake on potential irrational exuberance of the people (though this is probably overstated as a reason, these days), and simply as a practical method of coming to a consensus within a reasonable amount of time when you have a population spread out over a vast land area with crappy roads, no modern communications, and illegible handwriting (ok, that one's my bias).

There's a great summary of electoral college history + it's pros and cons here.

In case anyone finds it of use, here is a site with history of the electoral college.

Personally, I thought the EC was complete bunk until I read through some of the more interesting bits on the reasons why. Not that I am now in complete agreement, but there is some sense to it.

"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it." -Groucho Marx

I suggest you read it: http://www.fec.gov/pages/ecworks.htm

For more information about the electoral college, check out this brief history.

You did the right thing by fighting to have your ballot cast as a regular ballot. If they had not allowed you to, though, then they are required by federal law to let you cast a provisional ballot, and your poll worker should have known this. They can then sort out the situation later on, and if your vote was legit, count it.