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Analysis: Reforming Political Technology
Our system for electing presidents takes too long, has grown outrageously expensive, and remains technologically primitive. Most ironic of all, the country that helped give birth to the Net administers its political system in an inconvenient, mish-mashed network of ancient and inconvenient systems, confusing methodology and out-of-touch bureaucracies, all right out of the 18th century.
That means it's time to begin moving towards a digital voting system. New electoral technologies don't have to be -- shouldn't be -- rammed down anybody's throat. People who don't want to drive long distances, ponder complex ballots or wait in long lines shouldn't have to. Those who want to use the Net to register and vote ought to be able to do so; those who prefer the current system could keep on using it. Inevitably, the country and it's political processes will become fully wired, as they should be. Science and technology -- however far from infallible -- could also help address some of the other problems surfacing in last week's election fiasco.
Our political media has suddenly discovered voting procedures, and the challenges that have long faced the average voter. We are hearing about poorly-designed ballots, suspicious tabulation delays, endless lines, possible vote fraud. And that's just out of Palm Beach County in Florida, one of the richest communities in the nation. Imagine the potential scandals and sloppiness still lying uncovered in the rest of the country.
It's easy to be cyncical about votes from Chicago cemeteries, but the primary problem may not be political corruption, but technological incompetence. From local municipalities to state legistrators, government has lagged way behind the rest of the country and private industry when it comes to using digital technology to gather and tabulate information. All kinds of institutions, from retailers to universities, can gather certain kinds of information rapidly with at least passable accuracy. Networked digital systems are far from flawless, but they're far more highly evolved than our lumbering electoral process.
It's time -- past time -- to start considering national online registration, voting and tabulation. For safety and accuracy as well as cost, new technologies can be backed up by software, paper and human beings, in much the same way companies like Amazon, L.L. Bean, or for that matter, Microsoft, deal with consumers and online ordering, and double-check identities to confirm purchase and identity.
In an odd way, this election debacle is about voting theory and primitive balloting systems as well as politics. Even the sophisticated predictive polling operations hired by the networks broke down under the strain of a voting operation out of Jefferson's time, not ours.
As badly as we may need campaign finance reform to keep corporate money from polluting politics, we may need technological reform even more. Those punch-a-hole ballots in Florida are ludicrous (19,000 people were disqualified in Broward County alone because they filled out their ballots improperty), and anyone involved in politics knows hundreds of stories all over the country that are as or more horrifying. There are no uniform standards or procedures for collecting and tabulating votes. It's astounding to track reported voting precincts online on sites like Votes.com and Cnn.com, only to be reminded they are dependent on ancient and unreliable tabulation systems in many parts of the country, in this supposed Information Age. Where's that bridge to the 21st century when you need it? If he ends up winning, maybe the Net's Daddy will remember how he almost lost it.
Shouldn't Americans be able to register from their computers at home or work, as well as at government agencies, post offices and other public facilities? With ISPs and now as cheap as cable television service (which reaches the vast majority of Americans), there would be almost no reason not to vote, and tens of millions of citizens could begin participating in the political system. Polling places could be computerized, machines made available to those who can't afford or don't want home computers (much as voting booths are). The results could be tabulated, stored and archived instantly, replacing a patchwork system of paper, punch, machine, computer and mail balloting.
Registrars could e-mail or snail-mail confirmation of registration, and of voting, in the same way many online commercial sites confirm that orders have been placed. If Amazon can do it, can't the federal government?
There are serious about digital politics and online voting, and plenty of technical problems. One of the biggest would be political zealots, crackers and vandals, people breaking into a political system for fun or for uglier motives. It would definitely happen. But hacking a federal election is different from breaking into Microsoft or the New York Yankees' website. Tampering with elections is a felony with serious jail time. There are serious design issues relating to ballots, bond issues and referendums. Aside from that, only about half of the country is yet wired. Millions of people don't yet have computers or know how to use them.
Possibilities of fraud also exist in any system, including the present one. But perhaps voting records could be cross-checked by independent polling entities, or even by official spot-surveys. If irregularities surfaced, officials would investigate.
The system doesn't have to be completely digital, and can be backstopped in various ways . Voters could receive paper registration and voting receipts, either at the polls or by mail. Human beings could spot-check voting patterns, as software programs check for fraud. Teams of programmers and techs could be trained to monitor the system. Computers could randomly check for fraud a lot quicker than elderly volunteers screening neighborhood address lists.
Naturally, there are plenty of questions about e-voting reform. We might examine the experiences of other countries where digital voting technology works, as in some of the Scandanavian or South American countries, who have been experimenting with it for years.
There are also privacy and authentication issues. In many states, citizens simply affirm their identities in order to register. Digital registrants may need passwords, social security numbers, addresses or pseudonyms to protect their voting choices, techniques most Netizens use when they buy things online or access their local paper's Web version. We may need other means of assuring phobic voters that they aren't being monitored improperly. But the truth is, evil-doers could get their hands on paper or machine ballots now if they really wanted to. It's a serious felony, as would be the case with e-voting.
Most Americans have voluntarily agreed to give up some measure of privacy for retailing convenience. Will they be willing to take some risks to use technology to reform voting? Or should citizens be given a choice of digital and paper voting? As more and more functions, from filing for divorce to renewing licenses, become digitized, online voting and registration seem more feasible. Web-page design and architecture has evolved to the point where election choices might be clearer than on those Palm Beach or other confusing ballots. Write-in votes and absentee ballots can also be transmitted online or, when computers aren't available, by paper or e-mail. A new system doesn't have to be absolute. It can simply take advance of new technology to organize a process that seems tailor-made for the Net, which is all about moving point-to-point information quickly.
There's no question there's potential for mistakes and abuse, for manifold technical difficulties. But that possibility clearly exists now, as "Decision 2000" showed, or in any system devised by human beings. Certainly digital polling would work better than those Palm Beach ballot cards.
Beyond the nuts and bolts of counting votes, the larger question of what a vote should consiste of is also up for grabs. The Internet, mathemeticians Donald Saari and Steven Brams argue in a Discover magazine piece, is a natural laboratory for testing alternative voting methods. Six scientific societies in America use a method called "approval voting," they report, most notably the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers.
Approval voting, which Brams favors, dates to the 13th Century, when Venetians used it to help elect leaders. In an approval vote, Saari explains, a person casts one vote for every candidate he or she considers qualified for the office, rather than just one. The voting is conducted much like a survey or an opinion poll, except the results are calculated to determine the winner. If this year's election had been decided by an approval vote in February, John McCain would be president, by a comfortable margin, since for much of the year more Americans approved of him than the two candidates who eventually led their tickets.
Saari advocates an election method called the Borda count election, in which each voter ranks all of the candidates from top to bottom. If there are five candidates, then a voter's leading candidate gets 5 points, his second-ranked candidate gets 4, etc. In the end, the points are added up to determine the winner. The Borda count, once used in the Roman Senate, was named after a French physicist and American Revolutionary War hero named Jean-Charles deBorda. This method is used to rank college football and basketball teams.
Neither one is likely to take root in the U.S. anytime soon, but in the wake of the current outcry about the role of the electoral college, perhaps systems like these deserve greater consideration.
It's increasingly likely that the uncertainty and confusion over this election will go on for weeks, even months. It's ironic and appalling that the country which has produced the most sophisticated information technology network in world history can't even count up the votes that will determine its most important asset, its own political system.
The current system for voting is excellent. It works exactly as it was designed to; flawlessly. There is a reason why so many people failed to properly operate the voting machines (Palm Beach County). Because they are too stupid and incompetent to do so. Do you really want these kinds of people voicing their opinion in such an important matter? I certainly do not! If they are too stupid to operate such an extremely simple system, then they do not deserve the right to vote. It is not too difficult to see a giant arrow from Al Gore's name to a big circle. There is obviously nothing wrong with the butterfly ballot since it is used in many other places throughout the country. In fact, there really is not problem at all; this was all braught about by Democrats who did not like the results of the election. Last presidential election, the same thing happend and they did not use the butterfly ballot. What does this tell you? That these people are naturally incompetent anyway, it is not some 'illegal' ballot! Furthermore, most Palm Beach residents cannot comprehend a giant lever. How do you expect them to understand a computer? Our current system has served us well in keeping morons out of the electoral process. Why in the world would you want to change such a well designed system?!?
I belive the day when we all may vote online is quite a few years away, but the solution lies not with voting over the net, but simply by upgrading the method in which we vote. In Arizona (in only a few counties), Compaq setup machines with touchscreens, and the voter simply picked what they wanted (a task even which the most senile floridian could accomplish). A local computer to the voting computer than tabulated these results. In order to check against computer fraud, the voting computer also prints out a completed ballot, and then that ballot is put in a box, so any possible errors in the computer data can be checked by these hardcopies. At the end of the day, a guard takes the paper printouts and the digital data (im not sure of the media) to a central location, and the votes for the country can be tabulated almost immediatley. I belive this soultion is the most resonable and prudent, as it would elimate the ballot problems and tabulation problems we have currently, and also safegaurd against any type of digital fraud.
the one impediment to universal suffrage in this country is that you have to actually get up off your fat ass and go to a polling place to vote, which means you have to actually care about who wins enough to overcome the inherent laziness of the human being.
we already have enough people with practically no understanding of politics and no real interest voting as it is. i love the web, but it is not the perfect vehicle for every form of communication, much less participation in the political process.
Was it the Chad? :)
The pursuit of efficiency and progress sometimes goes too far (is that slashdot heresy?). Look, the point of an election is that it should be a transparent, anonymous process with oversight. Oversight ensures a fair election. It is critical.
So (in Canada anyway) you mark an X in a box with pen on paper. Scrutineers watch you get the ballot, you mark it in private, then scrutineers watch you put it in the ballot box, then scrutineers watch the count.
In a computer voting system, there is NO OVERSIGHT. You push a button, it turns into bits, no one sees anything. That's not transparent. That just sucks. There's a zillion ways you could manipulate it.
Now in the States, as far as I understand, they have some mutant system left over from the days of punched cards. What is this, the 1960s? Punched cards?? All this so you can have a fast computer count.
Has no one down there heard of optical mark scanning? Have paper ballots marked with an X, use the computer to quickscan them, have it cough out any ambiguous ones for hand counting. If the results are skewy, hand count all of them in certain cases.
Problem solved.
The Ballot was created by a Democrat. You can buy a Democrat too. Look at eBay.
If you ever worked in an election you would know something about these "disenfranchised 19,000." They weren't ballots tossed aside, they we're ballots that were misused. A certain number of ballots is sent to each district and all ballots must be accounted. So, if you screw up your ballot and ask for a new one, they don't just throw it away, they include it in the balloting as an invalid ballot. Simple. Number of ballots in must equal number of ballots out. Many of those people who misused their ballots were issued new ones. But, I guess you can be forgiven for being ignorant since the media does explain this to ANYONE. Screw the media and screw the dems.
A. You make your selections on a computer screen.
...
B. You hit the DONE button
C. It prints them out. Make it very simple, and impossible to mistake for anyone who can read, e.g.:
1. President: Harry Browne
2. US Senator:
D. You check the printout. Either stick it in the VOTE slot or the SHRED slot.
E. When a ballot is detected in the VOTE slot, it sucks the printout in to a lockbox, increments the vote counters, and displays "Thank you, Goodbye." Of course, if you SHREDDED the ballot instead, you go back and correct your choices on screen.
F. At the end of the day or when the lockbox fills up and is changed, vote totals are transmitted electronically, also printed as a lock-box label.
G. Randomly selected lock-boxes will be hand-counted and compared to the electronic results. If there seems to be a problem, a full hand-count is always possible.
H. For the visually impaired, have one booth with soundproofing and a speech system. Or more than one booth in FL and AZ 8-). Grandpa didn't turn stupid when he went blind.
Note: why you don't have the machine transmit every time someone votes - it would be possible to relate the transmissions to who was coming out of the booth. Same reason, you don't want to have have a continuously readable counter.
I would prefer internet voting eventually - but we're years from being able to provide enough the security and from being able to get everyone in the system. I suggest for now allowing those who qualify for absentee ballots to choose whether to get an old-fashioned paper ballot, or to get a single-use public key for internet voting. That means everyone still has to appear in front of election officials once per election - it doesn't necessarily stop Chicago democrats from voting twice, or dead people from voting, but it does make it more difficult.Mark Moss
The 19,000 votes in question were found to be by CNN's Mary Madgline (SP?) punched wrong at the polls, and the voters who did that realized it and asked for new ones. There are not 19,000 votes which have not been accounted for as the mainstream press would like you to believe. Mary in fact did some reasearch and called a poll worker there and this is what she found out. Do some legwork Katz before pushing along the mainstream media's pap.
No Universal ballot: That's because (1) local officials are running the elections, and (2) it isn't just federal candidates on the ballot.
1) Maybe it would be a good idea to change this. Maybe it wouldn't. If an election this close is run by a single nationwide system, a hacker could influence the result by adding an undetectably 1/2% across the board. But the same number of stolen votes in one county would be a gross statistical anomaly. And our county officials may not be too bright, but they are generally honest - wish I could say the same for the higher levels. The one maybe good thing we could do with federal intervention is to get the counties money to replace outmoded, worn-out, or just plain badly conceived voting equipment. But it would make one heck of a lot more sense to _cut back_ the federal gov't and leave some money for the local gov'ts to collect and spend themselves!
2) My ballot had 3 federal offices, two of which (Senator & Representative) differ according to state and district, close to 20 state offices, and six county offices. So just what are you suggesting? Put out one ballot just for President, another one at the state level, and a third one at the county level?
What might be worth talking about is making the 1st Tuesday in Nov a federal-only election date. People worry that this would reduce the turnout on state and local elections. But - if people don't bother to find out about those levels of government which actually affect them the most, do you really want to be using Presidential candidates to shill them into the polling booth? One thing I'll note: since 1966, Michigan has been electing it's governors, in the off-years for Presidential campaigns. I think we've been getting better governors than Presidents. (No compliment intended to that fat fool Engler - but compared to Bush and Gore, he doesn't look that bad.)
Jon, I appreciate what you do on ./ but this is one case where I think you're a little off-kilter.
Two characteristics that any political voting system needs is observability and repeatability. You need to be able to make the process where it can be seen and eliminate or at least greatly reduce possibilities where it is unseen; where the process goes unseen, it is subject to being wrongly manipulated. It needs to be such that a reasonable person can review the process and declare it clean. Similarly, the process needs to be such that it can be "re-run" (absent the actual voters themselves) and produce identical results.
The Internet doesn't lend itself to that kind of scrutiny. It's too opaque and too subject to substitution of its components. I'm not saying that voting could not be made more accurate and easier to conduct via modern technology, but it is so much more important that the system not be cheatable that I think you're kind of barking up the wrong tree.
Where would we be without it?
There is absolutely no reason not to use a simple scantron. In my district we used the "connect the arrow" ballot. Simple. Hole punching and loosely hanging chad is a recipie for disaster.
Another thought I had last night is that Oregon is on to something! If everyone used a mail-in ballot which had to arrive by Tuesday, media projections couldn't influence the vote. Of course, there is less control over what happens to those ballots in transit, but manipulating federal post is already a felony.
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When you look at the nationwide county-by-county breakdown of winners, you can immediately identify all of the cities, because they are colored for Gore. Bush won over a much more geographically diverse portion of the country than Gore did.
Bush won at least one state in each major region of the country (Northeast, Midwest, Southeast, etc.) and Gore did not. This implies that in some way, Bush appeals to a more diverse segment of the population than Gore does. Assuming absentees go as expected, Bush won the election. This is how the system is supposed to work.
What a great election!
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And you are most correct that scantron wouldn't have helped the ballot layout confusion. Only responsible designers and voters can help that. People need to understand that when they drop the ballot in the box, they are certifying that it is correct. I can't really fault the designer in this case because the ballot in question was designed for readability and was accepted by the election commission. There must be a statute of limitations on ballot design. :)
As for multiple valid answers, that's not really relevant to voting, unless, as Bill Mahr pointed out, you want "universal health care and a master race." :)
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It's not that people in the Dakotas are "more important." It's that they need to have an influence on the election. If Gore couldn't carry the Midwestern farming communities, the fault is with his platform, not the electoral system. He didn't address the wide variety of concerns and viewpoints in this country and he paid for it.
As for the mapping of the states, it is somewhat arbitrary, but groups of states form regions, which tend to have similar societies. Bush won states from every region. Gore did not. This implies Bush appealed to a broader point of view than Gore. The system worked.
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Was it the Chad?
We can argue all day about ballots. What it really comes down to is informed voting. The PBC ballot was accepted by the election commission. What we need to determine is how to improve things for the future.
A lot of people are complaining about punchcards, due to chad, multiple punches, etc. When you mark no choices or multiple choices on a scantron, it's pretty hard to miss. Not so on a punchcard, where the chad can obscure a mark.
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The rest of your post argues for proportional allocation of electoral votes, which I am neither for nor against at this point. I don't have enough information to make a decision either way. I do know that depending on how it's implemented, it could make battles over congressional districting even more bitter than they are now.
However, I'll address your campaigning question because some people view the Electoral College as a way to get candidates to campaign in more states. It certainly does, but more importantly, it forces candidates to appeal to a broader range of voters. This is where Gore failed, not in the campaigning. Those states lean right because Gore couldn't make them lean left, not because there's some natural force that compels them to lean right.
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This has the effect of rendering all Jon's questions somewhat meaningless and replacing his answers with more questions. I think that's a useful effect...
Jon appears to be advocating a sort of populist control of authority- the classic 'vote in your pajamas' scenario. While the problem of political corruption is serious, I'd like to look for a second at some of the underlying assumptions- primarily, the assumption of a hierarchical authority.
If it is possible for invidivuals to specify their values so directly through technological means, might it be possible for this to take the place of hierarchical authority? True anarchism is not simply the destruction of government but a school of thought resisting _all_ imposed authority, governmental, economic and social: for this reason it is always somewhat socialist, for this reason it cannot be considered outside of a community.
Slashdot discussions are anarchy of communications, because while CmdrTaco and the Slashdot staff make the site available, in practice you do not have to get permission to speak- though an amount of authority still persists, it is far from what you'll find on a news.com or msn.com. "Permission" is a key concept to anarchy: it's not an abstract hypothesis for how to set up constant Darwinian struggle, it is a concept for community guidelines, and the question to ask is 'Whose permission must I get in order to do this?'
- Whose permission must I get in order to make a post to slashdot?
- Whose permission must I get in order to walk down the street?
- Whose permission must I get in order to open a store?
- Whose permission must I get in order to mug passersby?
- Whose permission must I get in order to run an Internet server?
- Whose permission must I get in order to buy a pair of shoes?
- Whose permission must I get in order to listen to music?
- Whose permission must I get in order to distribute music that I didn't compose?
- Whose permission must I get in order to distribute music that is mine?
Plainly, for some of those actions there's going to be resistance from the community- permission to mug community members is not likely to be forthcoming even from an anarchist community, which may be a surprise to some! At the same time, this question reveals the power structures behind many current systems, and it's not always a pretty sight. For instance, if you wish to make a business selling productivity software to as many people as possible, you need to get the government's permission, sure (and it's largely a formality and some taxation) but you also need to get Microsoft's permission. Without it they will use their power to deprive you of resources and render you unable to conduct business.If you produce music, you need the RIAA labels' permission to distribute it widely, as they have a lock on distribution- except that the internet has undercut this radically! To the anarchist community the idea of 'distribution without permission' has to be more exciting all by itself than the typical corollary of 'damaging record company income'. The record company income is not itself a problem- the fact that you have to get permission from their authority in order to access mass media _is_. If Microsoft seized control of online music so that it was all totally costless and administrated through special 'MS content producer accounts', it would be just as repugnant to anarchist thought even though MS is not (quite) government: in this event you would, practically, have to seek permission from Microsoft in order to distribute media.
In this light, it's interesting to look at Katz's questions again: what is being established and why? He is arguing for technology-implemented direct manipulation of authority- yet the authority we have in the USA is based on a concept of public servants, not a concept of fascism or divine rule. This is the strongest argument I can see for what Jon is advocating- the authority we have is in essence community facilitation on a large scale, and only as hierarchical as it is because technology hasn't permitted anything more decentralised.
It may be possible to use technology in the service of community to approximate the anarchist ideal as it intersects with the American Dream: one day the state I live in, Vermont, might (for instance) reject the authority of the RIAA and DMCA and force them to negotiate from a position of equality, rather than an IP-derived position of assumed authority. One thing is for sure- using technology, it becomes much more practical to ascertain the status of USE: it may be difficult to search for 'patent information' denoting the property of ideas, but it's easy to search for usage information. Since usage rights are central to anarchist thought (as a community-derived replacement for hierarchical authority) it's plainly handy to be able to quickly access all information about how a thing is used- something that has historically been a lot more subjective.
Happened in MA 4 years ago. An electrinic count showed that one person won, but a hand recount showed that the punch cards were not counted properly, and it turns out the opponent won. Punch cards were then made illegal in MA for elections, and we use the "fill in the circle with the marker" method. This year's ballot was very clearly written.
However, a compromise may be feasible. Consider this:
After entering and reviewing your votes on a screen, the machine creates three tokens:
- a data-based token
- the voter's preferences
- the current time
- protected via a digital signature specific to the machine
- a physical token
- an actual punched-out card
- printed or punched copy of the data token
- human-readable preference data
Now, consider the safeguards built into this scheme: All electronic data has a physical, printed copy. All printed data should have an electronically stored copy. In the event of any loss of synchronization between these two, the issue can be localized. Since there are three copies of all information -- one in the computer and two on the cards -- any discrepancies can be dealt with. If the digitally signed, probably non-punched copy on the cards doesn't match the punched data, the card can be machine-identified and localized. By comparing with the third, electronic copy (which can be done because the digital signature, done over the timestamp, is the same) the accurate representation of the vote can be found.human-readable, but machine-punched. Ideally, if the voting machine can't read back the info it punched out itself, it reports itself faulty. No more situations with individuals punching out their cards incorrectly.
The data token itself -- digital signature and all -- should be reproduced here. In case of any discrepancies, there should ALWAYS be a physical copy of the data available. Always.
The human can actually read what their vote is when they drop it in the box -- yes, I think that this dropping the physical token in the box is important, and should be continued.
Finally, if a change needs to be made after someone finished with the machine -- and it happens, trust me -- they still get to redo before dropping the ballot into the box. If a machine-registered ballot has no physical counterpart, it isn't counted (but any irregularities, with unually large numbers of ballots being cast and not counted, can be avoided).
But then, don't listen to me. I want preferential voting, too, so what do I know? :)
That would be fine, so long as *fradulent* includeed the common abuse of language where they use the past tense to describe what are merely statistical predictions. It is a *lie* to say, "So-and-so has won in Florida", when no official count has even begun yet in Florida and all they have are guesses based on exit polls. (And they should be slapped around for calling it when it was so close that the difference of votes is lost in the course granularity of the exit polling techniques. (The difference is so small that when scaled down to the small population of an exit poll, it amounts to a fraction of one individual.)
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
But that said, here's some standards *I* would like to see, assuming that they can even be implemented, which I have my doubts about.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
I guess this will be modified as "flamebait", but
so be it:
IMHO, the real problem of US political system is that it is built in such a way as to minimise the
impact of any "third" party/candidate to a system, and ensure that no small grassroot party can ever grow big enough to challenge the two "big parties".
In presidential elections this boils down to one-pass system, where a vote cast to anyone but two main candidates is efectively a "lost vote". This year, for instance, people who voted for Nader but prefere Gore to Bush probably feel as
complete idiots (*)- and I have seen enough people who actually BLAME them for not voting for Gore.
In a two-round voting system, where two strongest candidates go in second round, unless one of them got more than 50% of the votes in the first round, Naders sympatisants would simply vote for Nader in the first round, and still have a chance to vote for Gore/against Bush in the second round if
they want to do so.
This ensures that:
1) Third-party candidates get their fair share of votes, and therefore more political power than in current system
2) President is hated by less than 50% of the voters who took part in elections.
I suppose that "Borda count election" could have similar impact, so I would have no objections to it, but unlike "Borda", two-pass presidential elections are already used in many states, while
I never heard of a state which uses "Borda" system.
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(*) I take Nader as example, because it has been disputed that his voters prefere Gore to Bush. I don't claim that this is true, but it is easier to write about Gore, Bush and Nader than candidates A,B and C. Please don't shout "Naders voters prefere Bush": that may be true, but it is completely irrelevant.
I can kind of live with small states having bigger influence than they would have in purely proportional system, but I really don't see why Floridas 24 electors couldn't split their votes, just as floridas voters apparently did: 12 for Gore and 12 for Bush. The life would go on, and all this s* we see now would not happen.
The column at www.reason.com says they ought to confiscate the drivers licenses of every voter down in Palm Beach who claims to have been confused by the ballot. If that ballot confused them, driving will too. fsckin' A! I've voted in 7 presidential elections using old flip lever machines, punch card ballots, op scan ballots and touch-screen electronic ballots. The instructions were made clear. In the case of punch card and op scan, if you screw up and vote for 2 candidates instead of just one, you go get a new ballot - none of this devining the voter's intent stuff. Your vote will be tossed otherwise. Vote for the wrong one? Tough. You should have asked the poll workers. This hand recount is nonsense. Gore just doesn't want to concede. I don't care which one gets in; I voted Libertarian anyway. Mark my words: this crap will be used to exclude 3rd parties from the ballot.
As for online voting, I don't know whether the advantages would really materialize. The implimentation will likely be poor. It will be too easy to find out how individuals voted and too tempting to resist.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Please don't give me a recipt. It sounds like a good idea, but in fact it is bad. With a recipt someone who really wants to win just comes by that night and shoots anyone who didn't vote for him. Don't have your recipt and you get shot for good measure.
Fraud hasn't been common in the US elections for a while. (Other shady practices, but in the end you cannot prove the homeless the democrats gave ciggeretts voted for Gore. Likewise if the republicans did something like this that I've not heard of)
Once I can find out who you voted for I can force your vote. If the election is public there will at least be more eveidence of who is cheating the system, making better odds that person is caught.
You forgot a step: the booth prints out a sheet listing your choices, which you then slip into a slot on a fireproof safe (THe slot nullifies teh fireproof, but all well). That way if lightning strikes or the hard drive crashes there is a backup.
in response to 1) we need voter registration as we have no national system of valid IDs (and SSNs are NOT supposed to be used as ID, so if it were used, it would be fought in court). Thus, what sort of block do you put on someone that votes from voting again if you lack registration? There needs to be registration available at the polls (which require some significant ID) while when you are actually there to vote, you should only need to present a photo ID and some encoded registration card (paper, not plastic) which is taken from you when you vote; the encoding would be based on individual so that only you could match that card. This reduces the chance for fraud and voting mulitple times, and you can still leave registration open on voting day.
On 3), there is serious talk in all the election reform to move the vote to a weekend. The second Tues after the first Monday in Nov is a holdover when people had to travel to reach the polls.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Now, most of the time we can deal with that error because the winner in the election usually wins by a few percentage points or more. This election, however, goes against that, where the two candidates differ by around 0.2% nationally, and less than 0.03% in FL. If there is any error (and there *is*), that error could easily be higher than those differences, thus causing inappropriate results.
Sure, I'd argue that the EC is broken, but as others have pointed out, there's a snowball's chance in heck that will be fixed before 2004. But there are things that can be added that can improve it. I'd personally like to see the splitting of all states electoral votes based on regional results, but I don't think that will happen either as each state would have to do something about it. Instead, what I suggest is to add in at the national level a rules that states if the difference between the top 2 candidates for President is split less than some X percentage, then the states' electors are split equally to both candidates. X here is some percentage that should reflect what the error can be in voting methods, somewhere around 0.1% or 0.2%, the true value calculated by some imparital committee after research of election results in the last 50 years. This would make most of the complaints in FL null and void, and a few other states (NM) would probably be split as well.
What just seems odd to me right now about the current system is that there is a definite cry in FL that there is no strong majority of either candidate, but this fence sitting is worth nearly 10% of the votes needed for Presidency, and by our current system, it's winner takes all. This IMO does not adequetely reflect the will of the people, and these types of problems need to be fixed now.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
because amendment 10 to the US Constitution denys the US government any power not expressly given to it in the constitution -- and that one wasn't. Frankly I'm glad for it. It will allow various states to try different methods and learn from eachother's mistakes, instead of going with the almost certain disaster of a nation-wide switchover.
--
Katz,
You seem to be laboring under the illusion that our voting system can be made to be "fair". It can't. Arrow's Theorem pretty much demolishes the concept.
A google search for "Arrow's Theorem" will turn up lots of useful links, like this on path-voting or this collection of notes.
If you're going to talk about changing how we vote, other than just the mechanics, you really need to read up on this stuff. Yeah, it's all academic and abstract, but it's quite relevent (imagine that!).
Pick One: http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~stremler/sigs/sigs.html (Note - disable Javascript first!)
If you really think that, then you must not get out much. Regional issues are alive and well. For example, in the Pacific Northwest there are all sorts of issues that we see differently than the rest of the nation.
For example, we aren't nearly as interested in the deregulation of power as the rest of the US, and we certainly don't want Californians deciding if our dams get breached. We are also concerned about being able to use Federal lands. I imagine in New York they would probably vote to keep all federal lands "pristine." No logging, no ranching, no roads. However, some of us actually live out here.
Trust me, regional politics will be alive and well long after we are all dead and gone. Silicon valley has its set of issues, and the Magic Valley in Idaho has a totally separate set of issues and values. Part of the reason that the small states chose to join this Union in the first place was that we realized that there would be checks and balances that would keep the more populous areas of the country from imposing their wills on us. Our votes would in essence "count more."
If you really think that the states are merely a convenient partitioning scheme, then you should consider moving to a state where your vote would matter more. For example, Wyoming has just as many Senators as California, and it's people have a lot more of say in the Presidential election per capita. Just don't be surprised when you find that the political climate in Wyoming is very different than in whatever state you happen to live in.
You really need to get out more.
I grew up in Eastern Washington, and so I definitely agree that the current boundaries for the states don't necessarily make as much sense as they should. As a child I could never understand why they called Washington the "Evergreen State." It certainly wasn't green in my home town.
Your solution is to just say that the majority voice should have its say. That's fine and dandy as long as you are on the side of the majority. If you, for example, feel that guns should be banned, then it probably upsets you quite a bit that the people in Eastern Washington are very NRA friendly. Or if you feel like breaching the dams on the Columbia river you are probably sick to death of hearing from the Eastern Washington farmers. On the other hand the people in Eastern Washington probably see these attempts as "those damn Seattle-ites trying to take away our guns and our livelihood."
The whole point of our system is that laws should be difficult to pass simply because any new law will effect some people in a negative manner. Our current system of presidential elections is part of this system. For example, radical candidates (like Nader or Buchannon) have almost zero chance of making any impact at all, and contrary to what the third party folks say this isn't due to advertising. It's due to the fact that Americans are very centrist politically. Our system isn't so much about electing the best man for the job as it is about electing the lesser of two evils. This may seem like a bad thing, but in reality it guarantees that any changes that are made are incremental, and widely popular. Even if your candidate does lose, it's not the end of the world, because the opponent A) was strangely similar, and B) can make incremental changes at best.
Contrast that with a world in which Nader gets elected one year, and Buchannon gets elected four years later. Losing that sort of election would be devastating.
You may feel that universal gun control laws and abortion statutes are important, but I can't imagine that a bureaucrat in Washington D.C. has any chance of coming up with a good compromise if we can't even come up with a workable solution at the state level. If the people on either side of the Puget Sound can't agree on a local issue, then what are the chances that someone not from the area is likely to resolve the issue correctly. Our national leaders would simply decide the issue based on what the average Californian thinks if it wasn't for our current system of government. The average Californian can't even find the state of Washington on a map.
I would rather have separate laws in every state than have one universally poor law in all states. Which is, of course, the crux of this whole argument. Fortunately for all of us it is the local elections that really matter, and we certainly have a say in those.
--
You have the right to vote; you do not have the right to require the system to hold your hand to make absolutely, positively sure your vote is counted. For those who were confused by the ballot, they should have asked for help. For those who "accidentally" voted for the wrong candidate, and for those whose ballots were discarded, they should have paid more attention to what they were doing. Obviously, they didn't care enough to make any attempt to protect their own voting right. Except by bitching afterwards, of course. Your vote is your responsibility, not the State's.
Speaking of the State, it looks like they can't count, either. One would expect a recount to be pointless, since it should come up the same, modulo trivial discrepancies. But that's not what's happening: Bush's lead of several thousand has shrunk to several hundred, on a recount of the same ballots. This means either the ballots have been tampered with, or that the accuracy of the count cannot be guaranteed to less than a few thousand votes. One has to assume that any tampering by one party will be cancelled out by the other party's tampering; that's another issue entirely. What happens if Gore "wins" this recount? What happens if they're within, say, fifty votes? What happened to that big lead for Bush during the first count? How do we know the manual count will be more "accurate" than the machine count? Which one is correct?
None of them are correct. If the count cannot be accurate to within a margin of error less than the difference between two of the candidates, you cannot know "the will of the people", all whining about procedure aside. And if that's true in Florida, isn't it probably true everywhere else? Is the margin for error less than two thousand? Why don't we recount every close State's numbers?
The current attempt to ennumerate pregnant and detached chads is the epitomy of silliness. At the very least, I suppose, it throws into a glaring light the need for a strict procedure to legally resolve such issues, and to clearly dictate when a ballot gets thrown out for good.
This would be the only place "technology" (I'm coming to hate that word) would help: a better user interface for voting, including feedback, and counting the results. But using the 'net is a very bad idea; computers are just tools, not Mankind's Savior. Tools can be misused, and the 'net can be misused very easily. Just read bugtraq. With this much money and power at stake (you don't think they're running to better humanity, do you?), technology should be applied carefully to augment accuracy, not as a vague replacement.
--
--
"I find your lack of faith disturbing." -- Darth Vader
IF voting is too hard for some one currently, then I don't want them voting. My god, It is not that hard to vote! Do you really want people who can't take 30 min - 1 hour out of ONE day voting???
Motherjones suggests The United States needs International Election Observers like any other Banana Republic. Given that the Republican districts in Florida primarily used OptiScan systems which show significantly less error than the Punch Card Systems used in primarily Democrat area such as Palm Beach county, one wonders if this was just one of many approaches used to skew election results. There have been many accusations from Florida regarding voting irregularities, from a previous Republican mayoral candidate who had a an election overturned from absentee ballot fraud who was involved in an "Get out the vote" absentee ballot vote drive, to a large number of allegations regarding voter intimidation and outright fraud. Welcome to the United States, where we citizens don't have the right to vote unless we agree with the decision of our power brokers.
This just disgusts me.
So here's what I propose:
USE THE PHONE.
In short, I don't see the need for something as complex as a packet-switched network with various internet-enabled devices and computers to vote. Voting is a very simple, basic, straightforward task, and should be made thru the simplest most straighforward and efficient medium we can think of. I know for sure the internet isn't and I think a phone system meets those goals fairly nicely.
Extraordinary Vacations. Exceptional Prices
Nope, 2/3 of _Congress_ _AND_ 3/4 of the States. You're right, though, VERY tough to pass.
What would be MUCH better would be for all the states to split their EC votes ala Maine. Then the smaller states would get to keep their unfair influence over the election, but the EC votes would much more accurately reflect the popular vote. Not completely fair, true, but vastly more likely to happen (especially after this year's fiasco).
Why 'unfair', do you ask? Simple - yes, EC votes are alloted by population, but it's not proportional - a state with a population of 10 million doesn't have twice the EC votes as a state with a population of 5 million. If you live in a populous state, THEN YOUR VOTE IS WORTH LESS.
The smaller states get their representation by their Senators & Reps - the President is for everyone, and should, IMO, be elected solely on the popular vote.
President -> Represents everyone, should be elected by everyone (against the Constitution)
Senators & Reps -> Represent their state, should be elected by their state (how it works now)
Simple, right? Fair? Seems so to me! *shrug*
I must say, though, that all this political talk on Slashdot & elsewhere is very heartening to see. Finally everyone seems to give a damn! Right on.
But the regions that have common issues are usually NOT state-wide, and certainly aren't in the same place as the state boundaries. Let's take the PNW as an example, as I live there, too.
Western Washington has MUCH more in common with Western Oregon than with Eastern Washington.
Also, the regions that have REAL issues are usually not as large as a state would be, even IF those state regions were homogenous. Puget Sound has issues completely different than those of, say, Portland/Vancouver. And even smaller than that - Seattle versus the 'East Side' - very different issues.
If you look at how people voted during the election - there were major differences by region even within the small states, yet all you see is the total of the EC votes for that state going to one candidate or the other.
The United States may have started out as a conglomeration of states, true, but it's over 200 years later, and things are VASTLY different now. Implementing laws (say, gun control) in one state and not all is pretty ridiculous - people will (and have) just go over the state border and bring them back in. Same thing for state-by-state abortion laws, etc. The age where a 'state' in this country really made sense is long, LONG gone.
Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad IIRC.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Someone want to moderate me down, and The Pim up? Finally, a chance for someone to use "Overrated" fairly...
Don't dismiss the possibility of computer error and fraud so lightly. This year, the Republican National Committee's webpage was defacedVolusia County is doing a manual recount now, after computer error injected 15,000 erroneous Socialist Workers and Constitutionalist Party votes into their first tally. Keep in mind: the people who will be administering our first computerized elections will be these people, not Linus and Alan.
Sure, we can have physical "backstops" to try and prevent these kinds of problems... but if these backstops have to be resorted to every time an election comes this close, how is it any improvement over our current situation? If a software glitch in your voting machine causes every voter whose last name begins with Z to get 10 votes, will that same glitch from causing your voting machine to print out 10 punchcards to backstop those votes?
Don't get me wrong, there's certainly a lot of room for technological improvement here. Some Slashdotter suggested a touchscreen voting machine which would give you a clearer GUI, prevent or check for any invalid double votes, and print out a sheet with your ID and only the names of the people you voted for, in easily machine-scannable form, so you could take that sheet and give it to the poll workers. That would prevent both the ballot and the discarded vote problems in Palm Beach, at least.
It's tempting to think that there could be something even better. A little smartcard (because I don't trust the nation who let Melissa and ILOVEYOU loose to maintain their PCs securely) with public key crypto could let your "vote" be a digitally signed statement that you could safely send over the net, and the collection of all those signed statements could be publically downloadable, to allow you to check and make sure nobody tampers with your vote or the vote count. But even in that case, who would we trust to distribute the private keys, and never have their systems compromised? Verisign? Even if you can check your own vote's integrity, how do you know that a 6 million vote list isn't actually 5 million real votes, plus 1 million fraudulent inserts?
Oh, yeah, I forgot; I titled this post "Optimizing Election Fraud" for a reason. Consider: Right now, tampering with n votes is an O(n) operation. A well designed computer system could make that an O(1) operation. In most programs this would be a fantastic optimization; in this particular case it is not an improvement.
How do you intend to vote in the next election?
* In person
* By absentee ballot
* Online
* By writing a Libertarian macrovirus
What you incorrectly call "lying", most people call setting priorities.
No, a ballot that said "I prefer Browne to Nader to Gore to Bush" would be setting priorities (plural). A ballot that says "I prefer Gore to everyone else" sets a priority (singular), and millions of voters regularly set that priority in a way that makes it an inaccurate statement, a "lie".
Voters in the U.S. here have more power because they can decide they dislike a candidate so much that they'll vote for a stronger candidate who would otherwise be their second or third choice just to be able to knock the guy they dislke off.
Did you read about approval voting? Instant runoff voting? Those systems let you express an "I don't want this person to be president" opinion just as strongly; they just don't force you to sacrifice your other opinions in a multicandidate race to do it.
This leads to candidates who not only worry about energizing their base, but also worry about being considerate enough of their opposition to not unduly piss them off.
No, it leads to candidates who cannot afford be considerate of their opposition, lest their least moderate "base" voters splinter off to a more extreme candidate and fracture their party. It leads to primary elections which drop candidates like McCain who have broad bipartisan appeal but less appeal among the party faithful.
On the other hand in most EU democracies,
In most EU demt EU democracies, don't they have proportional representation to ensure that the legislature is just as split as the voters? That has nothing to do with any of the voting methods being discussed; we can dump the plurality system without getting rid of the "one district, one representative" House.
This leads to extremist parties (willing to switch votes on national concerns) in a position to make or break governments
You mean like the Green Party just did?
Is this really an advantage of IRV? I'd think that any system which allows voters to do a complete preference ranking of candidates would allow multiple winners to be selected by one vote: Select first place winner; remove that candidate from everyone's vote; repeat until all seats are filled.
A letter to the editor I wrote to Discover:
I just finished reading your recent article, "May the Best Man Lose".
The author unfortunately underestimates one of the greatest weaknesses of the plurality system, and so fails to realize that this weakness applies nearly as strongly to the Borda count: both voting systems encourage voters to lie!
Of course, the media today doesn't call strategic voting "lying", they call it "not wasting your vote". It is considered standard practice to give your vote not to the candidate you prefer, but to the poll-leading candidate you dislike least.
This practice would not change under a Borda count system. Voters who prefer Nader to Browne to Gore to Bush will still be encouraged to vote for Gore above either Nader or Browne, because that way they will add 3 points to the separation between the leading candidates rather than 1 point, and their vote will have almost three times the impact in the election.
Strategic voting makes independent and third-party candidates nearly irrelevant, and gives the Democrats and Republicans a chokehold on politics. That bipartisan chokehold, by the way, is why we may very well soon see a constitutional amendment to eliminate the electoral college, but we will never see a superior system of voting replace the plurality system. The electoral college is much less damaging to our democracy (and had less of a detrimental effect in this presidential election) than the plurality system, but removing the electoral college will result in only a minor power shift from the Democrats towards the Republicans; changing the plurality system would result in a major power shift away from both.
I was surprised to see that one important voting system was not even mentioned in your article: Instant Runoff. In that system, voters rank their candidates by preference. If no candidate has a majority of first place votes, the candidate with the fewest first place votes is removed from consideration, and from the rankings of voters who voted for him. (i.e. if Alice's second place choice was dropped, then her third place choice becomes her new second, her fourth becomes her new third, etc.) Once a candidate has a majority of first place votes, that candidate wins. The results are not guaranteed to equal Borda count results, but they often will. I don't think strategic voting is impossible, but it's a lot harder.
I am tired of all the media hype and down right misinformation. Florida can not announce it's results until after Friday, November 17. Why because that is the deadline for absentee ballots. Quite simply all the votes are not in. The other point is that under Florida law, they have to do a recount if an election is within .05%. Up to now the system is working just the way it was designed to work.
If the media would relax and allow the completion of the election, I for one would be greatful.
I suspect that some of the court challenges in Florida will be heard. This, however, will not happen until after Friday. Further, since each state controls it's own election processes. It is fitting that a Florida court rule on any suspitious activity. Florida will follow it's rules and select electors. A president will be elected by the electorial college in December and everything will have worked as it is designed.
There is no constitutional crisis. There is no civil crisis. Things will be completed and work as they are design to.
Now, before any ignorant journalist spouts off about the constitutional matter or other BS. Please make a modicum of effort to understand the issues involved.
Troy Roberts
The questions isn't if but when.
Imagine sitting down at your computer to vote and as you read each question you can research each one thoroughly, without time contraints.
We'll be able to get around the restrictive state voting laws which attempt to negate third parties, with online petitions, thanks to Digital Signature reform.
What if candidates ran on the platform of promising to vote the will of his or her constituents? What if before each vote, he informed and polled his constituents for their views? Not only would it lead to a true democracy, but it would circumvent the middle man and the lobbyist altogether. Think Just in Time Democracy.
I think the time is ripe for such a political movement to begin!
Tabulating & reporting electronically sounds ok, but I want something that can be looked at later, and know that it hasn't been tampered with. Any solution should still allow some sort of physical, manual count, IMHO.
---
it is fairly simple. The only reason why people have come foward to say that they messed up, and that they are stupid, is because the fact that 15-20k of them messed up never changed the outcome of the election before. Right now, those 19k votes would decide who our next president will be.
.mincus
- The popular vote vs the electoral college.
- I mean, come on! 100Million people vote, one candidate has a majority, and he's facing the distinct possibility of losing by less than 500 votes in a single state?
- No universal ballot
- Some one tell me again why presidential ballots aren't designed by the federal government, and are allowed to be different everywhere?
- Hand vote counting introduces human error
- Eh? At least if you hand count ballots you can have them cross checked multiple times. On a polling place basis.
- No matching vote to voter
- Please. If you had some transient method of connecting votes to voters, than those supposed deluded individuals who spoiled ballots in Palm Beach by voting for two candidates could vote again (although I think political darwinism should take this lot out - if you mess up the process you don't count....)
Not that this would make everything perfect. Perfect is never acheivable, but better is, always.... and today's pet project has
An example would be the people running for sherriff. If you are unaware of the candidates for that office, you may vote for someone who is being paid off by drug dealers and such. It's hard to know all the candidates that you want to elect. Some people do research before they vote, but the majority do not, and simply vote for names by political party, or even randomly. I once voted for someone because he had a funny name (Dick Wood or something like that) but I knew nothing of the guy and can't remember what office he was running for.
This is why having a "none" or "no choice" on the ballot is a good idea. If you think you are unimformed, just vote for "none". I left several choices blank because I had no idea who the candidates were (local judges and such).
Was it complicated ?
Just have a look and then tell us with a straight face that it's simple.
--
Why pay for drugs when you can get Linux for free ?
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
Let me say this:
Slowdowns and bottlenecks in the process of the
American government are *features* not *bugs*.
It's better to have slow bureaucracy than rapid
tyranny. Ironically, the success of this system
has sheilded many generations from the consequences of less successful systems.
> For starters - on a state-by-state basis >(because the Presidential election is, after all, >a series of 51 state elections), we must >standardize both
> ballots and recount processes.
Another feature of the election system is that
it cannot be manipulated from a central point.
Again, a feature, not a bug. If all the voting
systems were the same, the door is open to a corrupt federal government keeping itself in office indefinitely.
Changing the electoral process now sets a precedent for the future -- the process can be changed in arbitrary ways! We need to think about whether doing away with the
electoral college and replacing it with "something else" amounts to a bloodless coup d'etat.
Actually, it remains to be seen whether it will
bloodless. No matter what happens, there will be
a lack of confidence in the government that this
process installs. This government should definitely not be allowed to change the electoral process!! It's ONLY four years, and it probably
will not go wrong next time.
Not to worry; I believe the abolition of the electoral college is about as likely as Texas' independence or the voluntary income tax.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
" In the UK, we vote with pen and paper, and they're all counted manually. The system is transparent, and so has public confidence. It only
takes a few hours to count all the votes. "
My understanding is that in the UK, the people can call a general election whenever they want.
I'm not convinced that the voting public has any
real franchise in Britain (and N. Ireland).
On the other hand, Britain as a whole does give proper credibility to political parties.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
"The US is a republic not a democracy....
If the electoral college decided to screw the election... there is absolutely nothing that anyone could do about it."
During this long period of relative peace and tranquility that we have enjoyed, we seem to have forgotten the very basis on which our Republic was founded: That it is acceptable and necessary, under extreme circumstances, to violently remove the lawful authority from power and completely rebuild the nation from first principles. This is easier to do when the issues are divisive enough to divide the military as well as the common people. We don't want to exercise the option because it might cause us to miss our programs on cable tv, or we might go a week without a paycheck; not to mention that we might DIE, or be forced to kill our own brothers.
The remedies are all spelled out in the laws of the land, but either we don't have the stomach to perform the duties mandated by the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, or else circumstances have not deteriorated enough to lead us to such dire consequences. But to say there is "nothing we can do" is to deny the entire history of this country, and shames everyone who has ever died for freedom.
"As it currently stands 50% of the college is bound by law to vote for their party's choice. "
Do you realize the fines are $1000.00 or less? That no criminal penalties would be imposed? There would be little risk to the faithless elector, who might actually be seen as a hero for
taking the risk, voting their conscience and bringing us out of this dark space.
The resulting government would at least have been legally elected. I would much prefer faithless elector votes to decide the president than for the decision to be made by the judicial branch or appointment by the House.
"A real democratic system would be a lot cheaper. "
Maybe in the short term, but I fear the real price would be paid in graves. Does no-one take into consideration the fact that the people who decided a representative system would be more stable and more equitable, were standing on bloodstained soil?
The rest of your message is rhetoric that I can't address right now.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Unfortunetly, your argument is wrong in that:
a) it would ignore the system where the voting had become to complex for the people you do want voting.
b) and assumes that there is a certain type you don't want voting... wich kicks in the balls of the constitution, the bill of rights, and the declaration of independance.
The WHOLE DAMN POINT is that everyone gets a FAIR vote. If you're Mr.Einstein but get a ballot resembling the unabridged tax code and Mr.Moron P Freely gets a big marker and ballot with one checkbox per side. [quick joke... Florida(jeb) directions:"please flip over to vote for Gore" on both sides] That's not fair, is it? then why in the hell would the reverse be true? I want the idiots voting, I also want the smarts, the greens, the blue, the KennyGs (must destroy), the Pauly Shores, cuz that means I value my vote, becuase I value theirs. My vote is important because just that, it's MINE.
USA-Democracy is 270 million YESes and NOes a day, not one every four years.
I was a bit surprised that you vote on a Tuesday in the US. All Elections in Germany are placed on Sundays, when at least most of the people have enough time to vote.
So either make a public holiday for something that important as a Presidential Election or vote on Sundays - but not on a workday!
We had a lot of discussions here at my company about which democratic vote system is the best - we came to the conclusion that France has one of the most developed voting systems.
As a democratic person I'm really pissed with all of that, some people already started speaking of a "Banana Republic" and worser things.
Australia doesn't elect judges, sheriffs, school boards, doesn't have citizen-initiated referenda (a few local councils are starting to try them, but it's not widespread) and so on, and federal, state, and local elections are on different days, so the problems of knowing how to vote on ten squillion different ballots doesn't arise. If voting is shifted online over time, the need to have one big polling day disappears and people can consider each ballot appropriately.
Additionally, could somebody convince me that it's really appropriate to elect judges, prosecutors, and police? While I'm not naive enough to believe that those jobs aren't political, wouldn't that just encourage those people to make legally dubious but politically popular decisions?
As for misinformed people voting, that is a concern, but in Australia we look at the American system, see that it's overwhelmingly the young, the poor, and minorities who don't vote, and the general (but not universal) view is it's better to make sure that politicians have to work to attract votes from those people. There has been some agitation towards voluntary voting from the conservative parties, but support for a change is very limited.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Oh, please. You can't have it both ways. Either I stole it from someone or I invented it myself (possibly simultaneously with others).
I will grant that I wasn't trying to be original; I was critiquing a fool's rant. It's entirely obvious that Katz doesn't give much thought to what he writes, as the logical and historical errors in his columns almost always demonstrate. One need not have original or stolen ideas to nevertheless be "insightful" in pointing out a writer's errors (and I do not mean to say that I was "insightful" or "interesting;" I'm merely pointing out that neither of those descriptions requires "ideas" and can apply to one's analysis of another's writing).
You're not a Gore drone, are you? Or are you Katz himself? :-)
No, I'm not a Bush drone; I didn't vote for him and would never even consider voting for him. I simply reject the fantasies of those who suppose -- as Katz does -- that there's something wrong with the system. There's nothing wrong with it. Gore and his gang of election thieves could figure out a way to steal the election under *any* voting scheme we might devise, and it's simply absurd to pretend otherwise.
Our system of government has always assumed and depended upon the fundamental notion that the citizens must be virtuous, because without that it cannot work. Gore's chicanery (preceded by Clinton's in the impeachment) is simply evidence of the veracity of what the Founders believed: the Republic cannot survive if the people are not virtuous.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
Our system for electing presidents takes too long. Rubbish. Under normal circumstances it does NOT take long. This happens to be a very close election with an increasing amount of political fighting instigated by a poor loser (that would be Gore).
the country that helped give birth to the Net administers its political system in an inconvenient, mish-mashed network of ancient and inconvenient systems, confusing methodology and out-of-touch bureaucracies, all right out of the 18th century.
This is an adequate example of Katz's historical myopia. If it's older than he is, it can't be any good -- or so says Katz. Of course this is pure nonsense. Katz has no problem with that good 'ol "ancient" First Amendment, though.
What part of a punch card system comes from the 18th century, Katz? Which modern American bureaucracy dates from the 18th century, Katz?
Science and technology -- however far from infallible -- could also help address some of the other problems surfacing in last week's election fiasco.
This is laughable. Everyone in the Gore campaign is sputtering and fuming about the errors and failures in Florida, and Katz wants to replace it with...another fallible system! What a "brilliant" idea! Note to Katz: fallible sytems fail. That's why they're fallible. Absent physical data as we have now, exactly how would we verify an election if we were to go to a digital election system as you so blithely recommend?
We are hearing about poorly-designed ballots Baloney. That ballot was NOT, NOT, NOT poorly designed. As has been demonstrated in various news reports, 2nd graders have been able to successfully fill that ballot out. Whining about that ballot after the fact is pure sour grapes. The ballot was designed by Democrats, approved by Democrats, and sent in advance to every registered voter in the county. No complaints. If these whiners really did screw up, they were a) incompetent (because it was NOT hard to fill out that ballot), and b) unworthy of the privilege of voting, because they failed to exert even a tiny bit of energy to get help with it at the time they were voting -- which shows the contempt in which they held their privilege.
And that's just out of Palm Beach County in Florida, one of the richest communities in the nation. Imagine the potential scandals and sloppiness still lying uncovered in the rest of the country.
In Katz's demented worldview, having less money implies carelessness about a solemn privilege. He has no evidence for such an assertion, but he makes it nonetheless. I'm sure the poor would be pleased to hear about this.
Networked digital systems are far from flawless, but they're far more highly evolved than our lumbering electoral process.
Katz doesn't really care whether the process is error-free; he just wants more "highly evolved" errors. Great, Katz.
As badly as we may need campaign finance reform to keep corporate money from polluting politics,...
We don't need any such thing. It's called "Freedom of Speech", Katz. See that First Amendment you love so much.
There are no uniform standards or procedures for collecting and tabulating votes.
Katz assumes that if the national government inflicts national standards on everyone, then we won't have problems with the election system we use. Dumb, Katz. Dumb.
they are dependent on ancient and unreliable tabulation systems in many parts of the country
So Katz would replace them with...new and unreliable tabulation systems? Great, Katz. No thanks.
There are serious about digital politics and online voting, and plenty of technical problems. One of the biggest would be political zealots, crackers and vandals, people breaking into a political system for fun or for uglier motives. It would definitely happen. But hacking a federal election is different from breaking into Microsoft or the New York Yankees' website. Tampering with elections is a felony with serious jail time.
Katz is also terminally naïve. Even though there is all sorts of computer crime going on even as we speak, and even though people commit felonies all the time, he thinks that crackers would be scared off of tampering with a computerized election. Wake up and smell the reality, Katz.
Approval voting, which Brams favors, dates to the 13th Century,
But Katz! That's "ancient!" You don't really mean that, do you??? What hypocrisy.
Katz, you fancy yourself an informed critic, but you are desperately far from being informed at all. The shallowness of your historical perspective is simply appalling. You far too readily condemn systems and ideas that have stood the test of centuries, in favor of the latest modern fad. Hint, Katz: there's nothing new under the sun. Your "ideas" have been done, and we don't use them because they don't work.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
IIRC (and I may be mistaken), the 1996 ballot was a straight-line one-side ballot layout. If that's correct, then the number indicates there's a problem far more fundamental than the butterfly layout.
Ah, well... it's only news, not like it's supposed to be investigated or make sense or anything.
Don't pretend that this somehow justifies us overturning the results of a lawfully conducted and lawfully counted election! This is a motivation for overhauling the system in the future, not for overturning what has already been lawfully done. ex post facto, dude.
Again, arbitrarily inserting words in my mouth. Thanks for your input. Election law requires that a voter exercise due care and give due attention to the process of executing their vote. You can argue until the cows come home about what constitutes an "adequate diligence" and whatnot, but it seems to me that we're stooping pretty low on this one; call me elitist if you want, but this is the kind of decision lawmakers and judges make daily, and many of them set a much higher bar for "due diligence" and "appropriate care" than I would. And it worries me that "elitism" is (once again) being used as an inflammatory mark against those who disagree with the political ends some wish to see accomplished.I do not disagree with you that there may be room for improvement in the layout and format of ballots - in Palm Beach County and at large. I would love to see computerized voting stations printing out bar-coded hard copy ballots, so we have a physical ballot count to validate the computer count. But as a matter of present case law, there is no right to ballots being a "perfect user interface", and as a matter of present statutory law the election was conducted properly, and as a matter of constitutional law we are able to redress concerns raised by this election (that, if they're such a big deal, should have been raised and addressed long ago) for the purposes of future elections.
The fact that 19K ballots were discarded in the presidential tally for double-punching is not a surprise - because it happens every time there's a presidential election in PBC! (1996 it was 16K IIRC.) Why is it that only after the fact, when it became apparent that Gore was going to lose, did these thousands of people turn up, hell-bent on telling the world that they screwed it up? If they're so certain, why didn't they address the problem at the appropriate time, when they were in the polling location casting their vote? Why is the system unfair now, after the fact, when all the mechanisms were in place at the appropriate time to address their confusion? You can't change the rules after the game has been played - remember the ex post facto clause in the Constitution?
The only answer I've heard anyone make is "I was too embarassed to ask for help". Which is not surprising given the pride and snootiness that permeates much of PBC. But find 19K (mostly Democrat) friends who made the same undeniably stupid mistake and it's not embarassing any more?
I'll probably get marked as flaimbait for saying this, not to mention ruin my chances of ever getting elected to public office in PBC, but I'm getting tired of seeing so much pandering to this kind of irresponsibility and foolishness.
All you have to do is convence Senators Strom Thurmond (about 100yrs old) and Robert Byrd - geez these guys were in their prime when the Model-T and Victrola were state of the art technology, yet they cling onto their 'seniority' status and have a big influence on the way things are.
Yet again, I don't think they could understand any other solution than buying a ton of Microsoft VOTE©® licenses at taxpayer expense, then we'd really be in a pickle.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
The ACM Risks Forum ("Risks Digest") has lately been full of talk about elections, vote-counting, and electronic voting. Most notable is this item:
Security of electronic voting in public elections
which contains many pointers to discussions on the topic of "net voting". Also see issues 21.11 and 21.12, which contain some interesting comments on the current recounts going on in Florida and whether machine counting is more or less accurate than hand counting (spoiler: Peter Neuman and Lauren Weinstein disagree with the Bush campaign's contention that machine counting is more accurate).
--Jim
Elections Canada has a report, written in 1998, from KPMG/Sussex Circle on their web page outlining issues in voting technology, as they pertain to Canadian electoral policy.
The authors of the report use the state of Florida as an example of a U.S. state that has investigated internet voting, particularly for their absentee voters.
And it really doesn't matter anyway.
The US is a republic not a democracy. The elections are there as a salve to public opinion but its not the people who vote. If the electoral college decided to screw the election and write in votes to elect Ralph Nader or even you there is absolutely nothing that anyone could do about it.
As it currently stands 50% of the college is bound by law to vote for their party's choice. (Though that's never been tested in the courts and of dubious legality or practicality.) In this election, that 25% for Gore, 25% for Bush and 50% for grabs.
If we could corrupt enough college members (and a million each ought to do it,) we could dispense with this expensive and humiliating election process of racking up favors by one party and the other (notice, and nor or,) which will have to be paid back with partisan contracts awarded or with non-interference in illegal but lucrative business practices. (What M$ is hoping for after contributing to (both sides.)
If you want a democracy, you just have to recruit representatives by conscription.
Just pick names from the phone books. Four years in, and you're out, here's your job back. See ya, an' thanks.
Imagine! Government without constant currying of favors, whining about the opposition who have said exactly what you said because both of you are two sides of the same slice of tasteless white bread.
And not to watch these Bozos trying to come up with creative ways to repay hose $50,000,000 worth of favors. Remember, vulture capitalists and other industrial strength investors expect to be repaid between 10 and 100 times their investment. That's gonna cost you between $500,000,000 and $5,000,000,000 over the next four years in sheer budget fat that wasn't trimmed.
Remember Papa Bush's famous line, proclaimed loudly at every sound bite opportunity? Read my lips. No, New, Taxes! Remember the next famous line, muttered once while he signed a new tax bill to pay for those favors? Read the page.
A real democratic system would be a lot cheaper.
Total cost 1 television program every four years. No election race, no people not doing their job because they're too busy running for re-election. No trees dying for A to talk trash about B.
If you want a democracy, you just have to recruit representatives by conscription.
Just pick names from the phone books. Four years in, and you're out, here's your job back. See ya, an' thanks.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Reforming the mechanism for registering votes bought with your money by people who are going to owe so many favors that they are completely hog-tied is a waste of time.
Anyway YOU don't elect a president. The electoral college does. You are there to contribute, (and not just crowd noise either.)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
If voter registration isn't tied to a specific identification system, what's to prevent someone from voting multiple times, short of a real-time networked voting system (which is technilogically impossible at this time)? Perhaps you would suggest that voting location be restricted based on residence, but people move and location of residence is notoriously difficult to prove. I could vote in my neighborhood based on my driver's license address, and in my parents' neighborhood based on my Social Security address, for example.
3) Just exactly why isn't voting day a national holiday?!?
Or better still, why not hold elections on the weekend, or over several days? I still don't understand those who take off from work to vote -- surely one doesn't have to lose an 8-hour workday to cast a 5-minute vote.
- Richie
As a resident of Palm Beach County, I find the widely-accepted claim that the ballot was complicated to be highly offensive.
You offend my sensibilities by suggesting that my neighbors have trouble adapting to poor user interfaces.
There was nothing novel about the ballot design (it has been used in PBC before).
We've always used poor interfaces; therefore, we must maintain this grand Floridian tradition.
There was nothing about the ballot design that an average 3rd grader could not grasp.
Furthermore, you insult my children's intelligence. They've always scored in the 97th percentile on standardized tests, and have absolutely no trouble filling in those bubbles with #2 pencils.
The fact that 19K ballots were discarded in the presidential tally for double-punching is not a surprise - because it happens every time there's a presidential election in PBC! (1996 it was 16K IIRC.)
As a matter of fact, we point to our poor user interface design with pride. Regardless of the fact that 16,000 voters were disenfranchised in 1996, we steadfastly stuck by our ballot. Maybe in 2004 we can set a new world record of invalid ballots!
Why is it that only after the fact, when it became apparent that Gore was going to lose, did these thousands of people turn up, hell-bent on telling the world that they screwed it up? If they're so certain, why didn't they address the problem at the appropriate time, when they were in the polling location casting their vote?
Our poorly-designed ballots have the wonderful side-effect of forcing voters to check and double-check the appropriate method with their polling monitors, thereby breaking up the monotony of the election official's boring day. What's more, the voting line will back up, which will help forge a community relationship with fellow voters. Too many Floridians live lonely, solitary lives -- we can help bring people together.
Why is the system unfair now, after the fact, when all the mechanisms were in place at the appropriate time to address their confusion? You can't change the rules after the game has been played - remember the ex post facto clause in the Constitution?
How dare disgruntled voters try to make their grievances heard! These protests and demonstrations threaten the sanctity of our poorly-designed ballot, a tradition which we must keep for future elections.
But find 19K (mostly Democrat) friends who made the same undeniably stupid mistake and it's not embarassing any more?
After all, if these nutty super-liberal Democrats don't have the intelligence to properly fill out a ballot, how educated could their opinion on who should run the country be?
(no offense intended, other than to elitism)
- Richie
<toc> <toc> <toc> These Americans are crazy.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
> Rather than try to graft cryptography on top of
> the voting process, I would rather see human
>reforms.
How about preventing corporations from donating money to slush funds? Corruption is generally considered a Bad Thing.
How about some form of proportional representation, rather than this 18th century nightmare of an electoral college (FFS!) which you're stuck with?
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
Write-in votes and absentee ballots can also be transmitted online or, when computers aren't available, by paper or e-mail.
.. it's the whole mess of so many candidates to vote for that needs addressing. Standardising how to vote too would be good. Electronic voting could be considered AFTER that, maybe.
Jeez, Katz... email IS using a computer.
Anyone else get tired too of him saying the SAME thing over and over again?
He thinks bells and whistles will help
Need the KISS methodology. Keep It Simple, Stupid.
--
Delphis
This would be a very bad idea. Why shouldn't groups of like-minded people be able to organize and pool their resources for political purposes?
Did you ever notice that when someone agrees with a group, it is grass roots democracy. When they disagree with the group, it is an evil special interest group.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Sen.-Elect Clinton has, if memory serves, already publicly stated that she would support the elimination of the EC.
Not suprising, New York is one of about 4 states I could see supporting that. However, it will never make it through the Senate, where each state has equal voice.
Finkployd
Origionally the Electorial College system was seen as a compramise between the framers of the Constitution who wanted the President elected as a popular vote, and those who wanted the Senate to choose. While, on the surface a straight popular vote may seem fair, remember that our from of government is representative, with the strongest emphasis on state's rights. I think the Electorial system is the best wany to preserve state's rights and also have the popular vote mean something, but I also also agree that Maine's system is the best. Lobby in your state to get it changed to that because the federal government has NO authority to tell a state how to run it's Electorial College system.
Finkployd
Never happen.
Why? It would require an amendment, which requires a 2/3 state vote to pass. There is no way in hell any of the small states would do that (since they get a boost from the EC). That would be like voting to lessen the impact of their voice. With a straight popularity contest, all a candidate would have to do is woo FL, CA, NY, and TX, and to hell with those other insignificant states.
Finkployd
Implentations of PGP have been cracked.
Implentations of the RSA encryption in netscape have been cracked.
Pseudo random number generators have been cracked.
Microsofts been cracked.
The Army has been cracked.
SDMI has been cracked.
Come to think of it, what hasn't been cracked?
Those are all next to nothing compared to putting a new president in power (IMHO). The moment we are able to cast ballots on line is going to be the most insane moment of our existance. I would trust that nobody could make it 100% secure, and if it's not able to be 100% secure, then it's possible that a single hacker could sway way more than just the votes of one precint.
We could end up with Max Headroom as president. Or worse yet, Sadam Hussein might mysteriously lead us, thanks to few million dollars worth of bribes to the citizens designing and implementing the voting system.
I think that paper ballots are much less easy to corrupt on the grander scale. We just need to simplify simplify simplify. On Nov 7, we should only be casting votes for President, Senator and Congress. Forget about all the other ballot questions and initiatives, etc. Mandate a single voting form for all states, with varying data depending on the state (senator and congressman).
Well, actually since the entire gist of Jon Katz's article was bout online registration and voting, and since the comment i responded to didn't actually say "this is not in reference to...", i supposed that it was in reference to the Katz article.
IMHO, computerized voting booths are just as bad as online voting. It should stay mechanical, because then, when problems do arise, we can do a recount of the ballots, rather than if say a memory card got corrupted, we'd never know the difference, or if we did know the difference there still would be no trail for us to follow to figure out what the outcome should have been.
If that was the case, then that's what candidates would do anyhow. With so many states in the midwest having 4 or 6 EC votes, they really don't have that much impact on elections.
And any system that can make the 2nd place runner up winner is rather flawed, wouldn't you say?
The EC makes votes count less, and keeps canditates form campaigning at all in states which they know they won't do well in, because the votes a state hands out are on an all or nothing basis. There's no incentive for a canditate to try to get 50,000 votes out of a state that the majority of citizen won't go for him, because if they don't get the majority of votes, they get nothing.
If we don't get rid of the EC altogether after this election, we really need to move to make each vote independant of one another. So a candidate would have to fight for votes in every county. And mandate that electors vote according to the "will of the people" rather than being allowed (in some states) to disregard the citizens votes and cast their ballot however they choose.
EC: Get rid of it altogether, or at least reform the hell out of it.
I think Jon just doesn't want to drag his ass over to the polling place.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
I'm pretty sure I could have voted twice in this election. I've moved about a half mile since I registered, and it put me in a different ward. Not a problem, of course, I just showed some ID and brought along a phone bill to prove where I lived. However, I could have easily wandered down the road to the polling place for my old location and cast a vote there as well. Since I updated my registration the day I voted, they wouldn't have recieved the information that I moved.
Now, I'm sure somebody would have looked at the records, put two and two together, and sent somebody knocking on my door, but that's closing the barn door after the horse has already left, in this case.
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I hereby declare myself a Presidential candidate. I will use my campaign funds to purchase a really neat computer system which I will use to talk to my voters via Quake III servers.
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IMO, one of the best things about the American system is how the President's party can and often does have only a minority in the congress. This results in gridlock and nothing getting done, which is better for everybody and seems to be one of the great benefits of democracy overall. If your public officials are busy making people like them, they don't have so much time to go out and pass laws.
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That is exactly my point. (I was hoping I wouldn't have to explain it....) Whoever is in charge of determining who is a candidate, or who gets money, or what you can spend it on, suddenly becomes extremely powerful. It doesn't matter if it's a committee, not even an "impartial" committee. Power corrupts, and it will happen. I'd be amazed to NOT see things happen where Candidate X suddenly discovers that buying radio time is not allowed because every station he tries to buy ads on coincidentally is disqualified by this committee.
How do we fix this problem? Please don't invent magical impartial committee members who will never abuse their power, as such people do not exist in the real world.
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For example: If it weren't for their 2 Senate seats and 1 house seat, Wyoming's influence tiny influence would be even considereably smaller than it is now. The same can be said for other scarcely populated states. The electoral college keeps politicians "honest" in that the they need to win the State and not just enough people across the US.
It is the states that dictate who are the rep's for Fed gov't. It may be a mistake to give the Fed gov't power on how the states may hold its elections. This is an uncharted constitutional area and allowing the Fed gov't to rule how elections are held may sway the voters. Remember the stories of gender/race bias in standardized tests? The same may occur if the fed gov't imposes rules on voting. (What is good for one state, may be horroble for other states) My arguement is using the slippery slope, but my main point is: There are some areas that need to be taken care of by the states and not by the Fed Gov't. This particular topic needs to be handled by the states.
I couldn't agree more with that.
We also use a similar system in France, where we
also elect directly a head-of-state with executive
power (a not-so-frequent situation in industrialized democraties).
We use pre-printed ballots instead of pencils,
but the system basically consists in putting on
of the ballots in an envelope and putting the
enveloppe in a poll box.
Counting is proposed to people when they vote.
I did it once and it couldn't be more transparent
and efficient. It is quite formal, we formed
groups of four on separate tables, number one
opens an envelope, number 2 reads the name on
the ballot, number three counts, number 4 checks.
Any ballot with anything written on it or any mark
of any kind, or any enveloppe containing anything
else than one ballot are presented to the
people in charge who stamp it, have everybody
on the table sign it, and it is put aside to
be discarded.
Results are progressively entered on a computer
system that sends them to the interior ministry.
The counting was done by 11pm in an office that
closed at 8pm. Even though exit polls have always
called the election at 8pm when the last offices
close, final results are given by the interior
ministry the morning of the next day.
Another thing is that there is no vote-by-mail
at all. It would be considered non-constitutional
since it doesn't guarantee that the vote is cast
free from any pressure. It is possible to mandate
someone to vote in your place, if you can justify your need for it (I did it during my military service).
Bottom line : the simpler the better.
This problem we are seeing with the election is asymptomatic of the problems in the goverment today. We need to implement a better and easier way of dealing with elections. People also need to be able to get a reciept after they vote so that they know who they voted for.
The patent office is filled with this type of inadequacies. The DMV, and many other offices. What can be done? Don't let Bush or Gore in the white house. Neither of them know enough about technology althougth Gore may be a little better. Get this the Republicans think that the electronic counting system is more accurate than hand counting Yet there were 33 votes that were found when hand counted cause the card reader did not pick up on holes that were not punched through correctly. To top it off who do they think programmed that thing? Robots? How stupid do they have to be to think that? Now they want to mess with the Fl voting system which is none of there business. Both Bush and Gore need to get the hell out of Fl and take there parties with them and let FL do its job. If Bush gets into office then let it be after all the counts are done. Let the Fl voting system work its way out.
Even if we reform the political system and govement beaurocries (sp), we will still have problems. There is not an easy answer and technology is only as good as its programmer. Hey what programmer out there has never made a mistake? ALL software has bugs and by putting a machine in to deal with the voting system does not guarentee anything. Just my .02 cents.
I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!
Only 'flamers' flame!
What do you suppose happens when the government DOES "get it"? We wind up with things like Echelon and move ever closer to a police state. I for one, am happy that the government remains incompetent because at least then they're relatively harmless.
In Soviet Russia, hot grits put YOU down THEIR pants.
Thanks for the link - it was an interesting read.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
..there doesn't seem to be too much wrong with the electoral college system you have over there. The only degree of unfairness seems to be the 'all or nothing' allocation of votes that most of your states seem to implement. That said, when a state only has 3 or 4 votes, the method chosen is the only way of making them count. In the UK, you can get the majority of seats in Parliament with about 40% of the popular vote AND your man gets to be Prime Minister, meaning you have theoretically almost total power for the next 5 years.
OTOH, I think both candidates have caused a certain loss of dignity to America with this pulling and tearing over the corpse of the election. Maybe they should both agree to step down and allow someone else to try. Both candidates should wait till all the postal votes are in and agree to accept the result. For once Tricky Dicky Nixon was in the right in accepting the result even though there was clear evidence of some vote rigging. This problem is not even due to criminal influence, just a major cockup in form design.
The common opinion in the UK seems to be that if you can't see a damn big arrow pointing at the hole you should punch out then you are too daft to vote. Secondly both main parties accepted the format of the paper before the vote and therefore should accept that it wasn't quite perfect after the vote. In the UK, I believe that you have the ability to get a new ballot paper provided you return your spoiled one before you pop it in the box.
P.S can anyone provide a link to that joke Florida ballot paper that's doing the rounds ? I think it says it all...
BTW, as far as being poorly sighted goes I was -10.25/-9.75 till the wonders of LASIK had their effect, so I do understand about eyesight problems.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
..a lot of them said they were too embarrassed to ask for help at the polling station. People are there at the polling station to help out and if the voter doesn't take advantage of what is available that is their loss.
You didn't have to be that literate to understand the form, just punch the hole indicated by the d**n big arrow for your candidate. Both parties accepted the form layout before the election, so they should accept the result after the election. All elections have some spoiled votes, and it is only due to the closeness of the result that both parties are doing themselves no justice by squabbling over them.
As for getting the same number in two different counts forget it. Any two manual workers will disagree in small ways as to what constitutes a valid paper and what is a spoiled paper; no matter what system you use there will always be spoiled papers, sometimes done deliberately to indicate none of the above.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Put the election on the internet. Let it get hacked by forgien countries and let them decide our fate. We can't even keep the White House's web site safe. Also, I belive that anyone with dual citizenship should not be allowed to vote due to conflicting loyalties.
I think there is a strong case to be made for a more 'democratic' form of government based on the fact that technology now makes representative goverenment all but obsolete. Why be represented when you can participate directly? As the current U.S. system stands, it's not particularly democratic. Candidates say anything to get elected, often promising to deliver many things they have no control over. Ultimately one of them gets elected, and then gets wined and dined by big money -- special interests, corporations, etc.
In my view, the current political system pays lip service to 'democracy' while in fact to be represented you have to pony up $millions in various contributions (bribes). The only way, for example, some piece of 'important small business legislation' could ever be passed is if the small business owners got together, threw a bunch of money in a pot, and hired a professional lobbyist.
Whether we vote on punch cards, or computers, the basic political system itself will not change. I suspect that computerizing the election process would cause much more trouble than it cures. Have you ever voted? The people signing you in and operating the equipment are not exactly your typical computer literate crowd.
The implementation details are what kills this -- it's one thing to have a slashdot poll, but any election comes under a lot of scrutiny. By the time everyone has had their say in the system it's unlikely that it would ever work, and even if it did, it would cost 10-20 times what we pay now.
Disgruntled voter in New York -- the carpetbagger state!
"But actually trying to use m4 as a general-purpose langage would be deeply perverse" --ESR
Others have thought about it already, and despite my positive view of technology, I have to agree that we're not ready to vote in the home, and won't be for a long time. Where's all those people decrying SDMI for having the "trusted client" problem? This one is thousands of times worse! What if someone plants a lil' program on your computer that causes your vote to magically change from Democrat to Republican between the time you click "Vote" and the transmission of the results?
An excellent essay that has actual thought involved instead of just knee-jerf reaction is this study from the Voting Integrity Project, Is Internet Voting Safe? It's a great essay, it doesn't say "Yes" or "No", it says both and qualifies them.
Think, people, think! This is too importent to just throw technology at the problem and assume it will magically make the problems just go away!
But...
Scantron: papers move through an optical reader.
Punched card: Cards move through an optical reader.
I'm afraid I don't really see the great reduction in moving parts here. Card readers have been optical for quite some time.
In 1996, 16,000 Palm Beach County ballots were discarded. In 2000, of the 19,000 ballots, only a small percentage were discarded due to multiple presidential votes. As a resident of West Palm, I have yet to hear from ANY of my friends or family (Republican or Democrat) who found the election difficult. Long, yes. Mechanically difficult, no.
The people crying fraud out my friggin office window seem to be blissfully unaware that a Democrat designed and another Democrat approved the ballot. Where's the fraud?
On another topic, on Friday night, a whole bunch of us went down to the protest with signs like "Vote for J.R. "Bob" Dobbs", "fnord", "Garage Sale", and a blank, black poster board. You can see us behind the announcer on CNN and on Larry King Live. :) Tonight, I'm going to carry a "First Post" sign.
--
Evan (Long dark hair in a neat ponytail, dark trimmed beard, glasses. On Friday, we were on the Bush side of the street)
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
> Then you add in the 3r337 h4x0rz and you are in for a world of hurt
1337 v073 k1dd135 ?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> I asked myself why there why there were so many idiots who claimed that they voted wrong, and then didn't figure this out until they got home.
Does it take an idiot? There have been a number of times in my life that I took an exam and figured out about the time I got home that I had misunderstood a question and therefore gotten it wrong. Does that make me an idiot too?
Sure, knowing human nature, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if it turns out that lots of liars are stepping forward now. But are they all liars? There were plenty of complaints on election day -- before the polls closed -- and the double-punched ballots tell a tale that does not need human testimony for support.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> "Florida state officials stated...." This is the conclusion as to whether or not the ballot was invalid on the link you gave.
Florida state officials are saying lots of things this week. The more interesting question is, which of those things will hold up in court?
The page also gave a link to the actual text of the law, so Slashdot readers (and Florida's judges) can develop their own opinions about how well the sayings of the Florida state officials are supported by the laws of the State of Florida.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> The ballot followed the procedures outlined by law for laying out a ballor
Not. See this note on jurist, and read the part about allegations of a confusing ballot. IANAL, but it certainly sounds like the ballot does not conform to the requirements of Floridian state law.
> Instead, the dems us ed a telemarketing firm to stir the pot and get people to complain when it became apparent they they weren't going to win Florida.
Actually, the problem was reported long before the outcome of the election was clear. By 11:24 AM Florida time, there had already been enough complaints to prompt a FAX from the DNC to contact county officials, asking them to post a clarification. A note was then distributed by the county to the actual voting sites, arriving mostly between 1:00 and 2:00 PM. (I have seen at least once source claiming that the clarification never did reach all the sites.)
See th is Salon article for a pretty good review of the situation, including a link to a scan of the memo.
Also, now that a bit of information about the disqualified ballots is finally leaking out, it turns out that there was indeed a high fraction of Gore+Buchanan punches (over 2x the number of Gore+Bush punches, IIRC).
It is at best misleading for you to portray the current dispute as a post hoc attempt by the Democrats to throw a fair election.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Let's not confuse 'most technologically advanced' with 'most widely used'. They are not at all related, or the same thing.
tcp/ip is NOT the most technologically advanced, it is simply the most popular, and most widely used protocol out there.
Ironically, the state that has a reputation for being one of the most technologically backward states in the nation, my adopted home state of Louisiana, has one of the most technologically advanced voting systems.
In Louisiana, the voting is 100% digital. With the exception of absentee ballots, no vote ever touches a paper ballot, its all done electronically.
Here's how it works:
The voting machines contain an embedded computer and consist of a panel that is a programmable array of pushbuttons and LED's.
A PC software application programs the machine, assigning the buttons and LED's to certain functions, and the same application prints out a paper overlay, that they actually call a "ballot" that is placed over the button and LED array on the voting machine.
The paper overlay contains detailed instructions and the names of candidates. A black square is printed on the overlay above each active button. An arrow points from the candidates name to his/her assigned button. When the button is pressed, a green LED directly behind the arrow lights up. The LED shows through the paper at the arrow, and confirms the selection.
Any selection can be cleared and re-entered as many times as desired. When the voter is happy with his/her selections, he/she presses a "cast ballot" button that registers the selections in Flash EEPROM.
When the polls close, all the machines are taken to regional collection centers where their data ports are plugged into collection computers that spool the votes out of the machines and directly into an Oracle data base. With the exception of omitting an entire machine (or precinct!), no human error is possible, it's 100% electronic.
This is a far cry from that system in Florida where 19th century technology mechanical machines count punched holes using rotating wheels with mechanical metal feelers! Each time a ballot is run through one of these machines there is a risk that additional punch-outs will fall out, rendering that ballot invalid.
And hand counting, give me a break! Studies have shown that reasonably intelligent and diligent human beings can't even sort white marbles and black marbles from one another once they have been overcome with the monotony of sorting several thousand! It surely would be even worse staring at hundreds of thousands of ballots with little holes punched in them!
Louisiana's system is a huge step in the right direction and should be a model to the other states with more primitive systems. Throughout the 20th century, Louisiana was a national laughing stock due to continuous allegations of voter fraud. They've made it a priority to start out the next century with a robust solution. I think they're doing an excellent job in that regard.
I disagree with almost all this analysis. The problem in Florida is that the voting method is too high-tech, not too low-tech. The machines can't count valid ballots correctly because the chad wasn't always punched out fully.
In the UK, we vote with pen and paper, and they're all counted manually. The system is transparent, and so has public confidence. It only takes a few hours to count all the votes.
If you vote by computer, how can you ensure public confidence in the outcome? How can you refute allegations of 'hacking'? How can you recount if you need to?
I do agree about the need for electoral reform, but that's not likely to happen because of the difficulty of amending the Constitution. (The only change which could happen is states allocating electoral college votes in proportion to their popular votes, but even that's unlikely because states gain from being able to swing a large electoral college vote).
One other factor which I've not seen mentioned in the extensive coverage the last few days is, why are the electoral officials themselves elected? The electoral officials should be non-partisan civil servants, otherwise people won't have confidence in the impartiality of their decisions.
11.0010010000111111011010101000100010000101101000
I have posted this elsewhere, but there is a significant error reduction when these forms are read by HUMANS and not computers.
Lowmag.net
Pen/paper/punch ballots are the SIMPLEST form of voting out there. Could you imagine when everything is on computer, and the server goes down? watch complexity rise to a near-infinite level as they scramble to put back what was discarded.
Then you add in the 3r337 h4x0rz and you are in for a world of hurt, reliability issues with the outcome become of paramount concern.
The "complexity" of the WPB ballot came from ignorance on the part of the voters. And who said that those 19,000 ballots didn't include those who voted correctly after realising a mistake. And why would either side double-punch those ballots? Those are the questions, and they all too often come up this century..
Lowmag.net
Umm.. granted there's probably be some problems that would crop up in a digital voting scenario, but it can't be any more scary than the current system. I walked into my voting precint last week, and voted without showing any kind of id. All I needed was a name (which I could have easily looked on the list the officials had on the table in front of me), and an address. That's it -go vote for president now. That's pretty damn scary that there's no verification of identity.
I was reading the ballot procedure here for the municipal elections (that's Toronto, Ontario, Canada) and they said that once you mark your ballot, they scan it to ensure it is admissible. If it isn't they give you a new ballot.
This would have eliminated the multiple vote problem in Florida because each of those ballots wouldn't have been entered into the box until they were corrected. They idea is to use a machine to ensure the ballot is valid so that no other person has to look at the ballot.
News for UW students
No, that's the problem -- people see states that way, but in truth, the sovereignty remains with the states. The US is really more like the European Union than one big country. In the current system, each state votes for who it wants to see the leader of the Union of States. It just so happens that each state holds a popular vote to determine how it will vote.
The US has _way_ too much federal power as it is. Witness the recent lowering of the legal blood alcohol content limit. The Feds have absolutely _no_ power to set that, so they blackmail the states to change it themselves (literally, that's what they're doing). The issues of BAC isn't important here (I'm all for the BAC restriction), but the fact that the Federal government thinks that it can get away with that is absurd. It's kind of like Judges legislating from the bench -- it's not how things are supposed to work.
The states in this great Union are very important and aren't just a "convenient partitioning of land and people".
"Save the whales, feed the hungry, free the mallocs" -- author unknown
In many other countries you make a manual count
Easy to do if you can get 1/1000 people to work
as voting officials. These people (atleast one representative per party present) count the few thousand votes (with atleast one representative per party present) and report to the offical vitng headquarter.
You can easily count a few thousand votes in a few of hours.
It seems also like a very stupid system to punch holes in a box. Just simple choose a card with the name of yur candidate and put it into an anvelope.
Copyright 1998 arne Verbatim copying and distribution is permited as long as this message is preserved
I have a comment on why not making it a holiday (as it was around here).
First of all - when you aren't obligated to vote (as brazilians are) - people that don't care will just stay home - as a matter of fact, most people will just stay home, the voter turnout will be much lower than the already are (think about it, would you go out in the cold to vote for something that won't affect you). Second, not giving a holiday is good to keep vote herders to a minimum, I know it's legal but doesn't everybody hate to be harassed by some smuck (or smuckette) giving you stickers, pins and hats for their candidate?
I can't see the reason to make it a holiday, especially when it isn't a mandatory vote. Even for a mandatory vote, holidays are just an excuse to go travel and have a plausible cause to not vote.
--
All browsers' default homepage should read: Don't Panic...
All browsers' default homepage should read: Don't Panic...
Candidates qualify separately in each state. Each state can use various voting systems, and the winner in each state is used to select that state's electoral votes. But this system won't work interstate if different candidates are in each state, as the points can't be compared between states.
Not that I'd like to be forced to rank nine candidates. It would be quite enough work to rank the top four, as it involves finding out the issues of each of them and trying to compare various phrasing. "Okay, this one is totally in favor of bringing the dodo back from extinction, while that one is totally against it, but this one hasn't answered the question, and the last one is against it if it is found to be impossible do do it."
Brasil might indeed teach us something about electronic elections, particularly as U.S. laws which protect our elections don't apply to someone in another country. "Hello, I'm the Great Vote Robber of 2012, live on CNN from Sao Paulo."
in fact, the ballot was so simple and easy to use, amazon is now using it for its website:/ all-stores-ballot.html/102-0171378-63537 45>http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/subst/home/al l-stores-ballot.html/102-0171378-6353 745 </a>
<a href=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/subst/home
it's really funny. go check it out.
sorry! i am too dumb to post, let alone fill out the butterfly ballot.
s tores-ballot.html/102-0171378-6353745
here it is: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/subst/home/all-
I asked myself why there why there were so many idiots who claimed that they voted wrong, and then didn't figure this out until they got home. It hit me today when I was browsing through the AP stories that I missed (I got a long weekend for Veterans day).
This
Idiots every one.
-- Len
In The Netherlands most voting booths are now using electric voting machines. Simply a large panel with a number of buttons (1" x 3"), one for each of the candidates, with their names, and party affiliation printed on top, and a white one for those who do vote, but don't support any of the candidates. .NL that your vote goes to the winner).
Pushing the button for your choice lights the button you pushed, making it quite clear which you selected. To correct a mistake simply press another button, the previous selection is switched off, and now the new selection is switched on.
Your vote isn't finalised 'till you press the "VOTE" button, and the vote is successfully recorded on indendant recording devices. You can not press VOTE without having made a selection for either one of the candidates, or a "white" vote. (which means in
The advantages are of course are plenty
- The results are available nearly the minute the booths close.
- The voting machine is larger then you could ever conveniantly make ballot papaers, allowing for larger print.
- In contrast to using paper ballot forms, you can easily correct mistakes.
- The system makes incorrect votes impossible.
One disadvantage is the cost of the devices, especially since they will be used so rarely.If a trainstation is the place where trains stop, what is a workstation?
Mod me down, the Pim up. He's right.
However, "Condorcet" is not a descriptive name for a voting system. Call it "Instant Pairwise Runoff Voting". That way it sounds more palatable to IRV supporters. It also emphasizes that the two are related improvements on the current system.
Both are ranked ballot methods. Unlike the Borda count, neither one rewards partisan tactical voting (favoring your favorite candidate by lying about your less favored candidates). However, IRV rewards defensive tactical voting (disfavoring a hated candidate by lying about preferred candidates), whereas IPRV/Condorcet does not.
Also, IPRV can deal better with "spoiled" ballots and recounts. Each ballot can be counted in any pairwise race where it's unambiguous. The matrixes of pairwise preferences can be hand-counted and added precinct-by-precinct. Ballots with X's instead of numbers, or duplicate numbers, or indecipherable numbers can still be counted as a matrix, simply put a 0 wherever it's ambiguous. This is not so for IRV.
Preferential Voting: easy as 1-2-3
not only that, but then it would need to be ratified by 3/4 of the states, which *AIN'T* gonna happen (good)....!
("Mr Smith Goes to Washington" contains the sum of all political knowledge.)
Jeff
Always happy to help out one who is not a native speaker of English, I submit these to you these definitions:
- Native, n. One born in an area or country.
- Native, a. indigenous.
By the way, you have your New Amsterdam transactions mixed up. The Dutch were involved in the sale of the property, but only when they bought it from the (here's that word again) Native Americans. The English were not yet a nation of shopkeepers at the time they decided to acquire it from you, so, rather than allowing you to sell it to them, they simply took it."Al Gore is a native of Washington, D.C."
"Sitting Bull was a Native American leader."
Jeff
Jeff
It's not quite that simple unfortunately. Last time I voted in a UK general election (1997) I had 6 choices, and I made my X, and it was easy.
But in the US your vote for president is just one of an astounding number of votes you can cast, from the proverbial dogcatcher upwards. Consequently US ballot papers are lengthy, complex, and often confusing - even for intelligent, literate, educated people.
The problem is not really technological, it's ergonomic. Forget all the grand schemes for PKI/Smartcard/bioimplant auto-wireless megainstantvoting (TM), and just put in a nice simple kiosk with a touchscreen. No net connection or other fluff is needed, just simple hardcopy recording of votes.
It amazes me how far away from the real issue the debate has moved. What is that issue? How to ensure that every voter is presented with clear and unambiguous choices, so that they are sure to be satisfied in their own minds that they voted the way they intended, and that that vote will be counted. That is all.
(1) seems to conflict with (5). Perhaps there's some way with digital signatures and one-way keys to accomplish this? Perhaps the voter has a printed token that they can use to verify their vote is "as cast", without revealing what it was, and if they have significant doubt (like in the Palm Beach butterfly ballot) and don't mind revealing how they voted, they could combine their token with the Registrar of Voters' token to see how their vote was recorded; the same information as on the screen when they voted. You need both the token on the slip of paper the voter got and the Registrar token to get the individual vote information.
Absentee ballots definitely fail (1), but I don't see any help for that. (Guess why the Democrat operatives were carting the homeless down to the Registrar's office to pick up absentee ballots in exchange for cigarettes, rather than to the ballot box on election day?)
Unfortunately, any Internet voting scheme is also going to fail (1), because you can't verify that the voter is alone at his/her PC. Unless, perhaps, you make it possible for the voter to change his/her vote at any time before the polls close.
One of the critical concepts in the american voting system is anonymity. The current system, for all its flaws, achieves this. They know that I voted, but they don't know who I voted for. This was done because people in power (at any level: bosses, politicians, even husbands) were able to force people to vote one way or another by retaliating if someone voted "incorrectly."
A lot of the "vote on the internet" stuff that you see doesn't have this anonymity. Electronic booths to replace the levers and punchcards are a good idea. Voting booths that might permit traceable votes aren't. If we're worried about people making it to the polls, we need to look at the absentee ballot handling (Oregon has a fantastic system for this) and perhaps we should declare voting day a national holiday and strongly discourage businesses from remaining open.
--
Forward, retransmit, or republish anything I say here. Just don't misquote me.
There are many problems with election fraud that we don't see because we've developed voting methods that work to counteract them. These methods don't work with online voting. Do you really want to take the risk of huge amounts of voting fraud? I don't.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
The current ballot system is setup the way it is to protect the voter's anonymity. Period. While I'm proudly a Republican and voted that way, I do know a number of people out here in LA who'd prefer for professional reasons (related to the entertainment industry) to remain apolitical or appear apathetic.
/. get apoplectic every time the on-line ad agencies use a semi-anonymous cookie identifier. What would happen if Harris Poll or doubleclick started correlating voter electronic IDs with voting patterns. Imagine the market potential for the political parties, not to mention the SPAM!
It's interesting to hear
-scooter
Here's a more detailed map:
http://www.boortz.com/mandatemap.gif
Notice how much is red and how much is blue. Also notice where it is blue.
MarNuke
Come on!! The people in Plam Beach can't read a simple ballot, do you really think they can WRITE?!!
MarNuke
Shouldn't Americans be able to register from their computers at home or work...
Nope, not until there is a way to know who is who and be able to prove who is who, then they can register from thier homes or at work.
If Amazon can do it, can't the federal government?
If someone place a bad order to Amazon using a fake credit card and have it shipped to a HUD home, there are law to help Amazon get back the money and maybe the items.
If a voter cast a vote and elect someone, there is no way of ridding rid of the votes becuase once one vote is questioned, ALL VOTES ARE QUESTIONED.
MarNuke
Is Slosberg discribing an Acid trip? I had an experince like that before...
Ms. Berkowitz, the lifelong liberal who said she mistakenly voted for Mr. Buchanan - "I wanted to shoot myself"
So, do something good for the world and kill your stupid self Ms. Berkowitz.
MarNuke
Just as did Stalin, Lenin, Karl Marx, and all the other great Communist bastards of the world.
Just what I want, top 500 corps going to government, 100% tax on income ten times greater then minmal wage, end of freedom of speech... oh yeah...
So what part of The Communist Manifesto do you disagree with?
MarNuke
Sure, in other countries they may force people to vote, but that is not the American way. The fore fathers gave us the right to say "to hell with voting" if we choosed!
Amerca is a republic. We are not under mob rule. We can vote if we want to or not. The more mandates we put into place, the further we go away from the Constitution.
MarNuke
You moron, he was talking about BEFORE the election. Did you know the Gore camp HIRED A TELEMARKETING FIRM to call the old gizers to "chum the waters". You throw enough blood and guts into the water until it attracts sharks. Next all the gorons like you and other liberals bitch about a simple ballot being confusing!!! To doupt the election and get recounts UNTIL YOUR GUY WINS!!! It's fucking bullshit!!!
MarNuke
There is absolutely no reason not to use a simple scantron. In my district we used the "connect the arrow" ballot. Simple. Hole punching and loosely hanging chad is a recipie for disaster.
Unfortunately, there is a reason. It's called money. I live in Osceola County, Florida. I know that I had asked the elections office after an earlier election why they were using a punch card system. The response I recieved, same response a lot of the media has gotten, the county can not afford the couple of million dollars to upgrade the voting equipment.
Granted, Osceola is a small county compared to the others in this mess. I am not sure why Palm Beach county can't or won't change. However, Volusia county shows even the scantrons aren't infallible. One precicnt had a problem with the scanner and could not get through too the tech desk because of the volume of calls. They had an emergency bin that filled up, so she did the only thing she knew how, cycled power. Guess what, it last the records of the 300 or so ballots that had already been scanned. It would have been caught and corrected later; but even the scantrons are not perfect.
Money is probably the biggest issue to upgrading these systems. It always will be.
Size size size.
...
:) (elderly people squinting at ballots, then keeping count with the old "4 lines and a crosshatch" method).
Compare the populations -- 275 million people vs. 260 for the entire UK. Land area, etc too. I bet there are parts of this country less accessable to a voting booth than the furthest stretch of the UK is from one (though convenience is hard to quanitify, and we could probably both come up with some mind-stretching hard-luck cases;))
If you've seen any shots of the florida recounters, I think you might be screaming for a greater involvement of electronics, actually!
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
warning, IANAPST (I am not a public school teacher), but I know a few at least somewhat. One is the mother of my housemate, who teaches at Centennial High school of Ellicott City, Md;) Sara (the housemate) says that her mom the teacher complains that in your average classroom's worth of scantron tests, at least a few are misread. I've even had a few misread when I attended that school, in fact! (Tedious down-the-line readings in class usually revealed a few kids whose answers were "interpreted" incorrectly.)
:) Scantron has no hanging chads, but it's not a highly reliable system, and it doesn't get rid of the ambiguities of the double-punching ballot; only better instructions can do that. (I've seen kids who marked multiple answers on one-answer scantrons, with good justifications for both answers -- whattaya gonna do when the analogous situation comes up on an election ballot?)
So you want to vote with *that*?
timothy
p.s. Check out the book The Tyranny of Testing for more revealing info. on multiple choice tests, too. Out of print, I'm sure, but a quick read and worth it if you're near a large library.
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
There is a VERY good reason, historically, why this isn't the case. When minorities (specifically blacks) were given the right to vote, areas of the country (mostly the south east, but elsewhere as well) started making laws like what you described above. Not tests, per se, but things like the ability to read, which were used to separate those who the establishment wanted to vote, and those who were not wanted. A test on the issues could easily be skewed to exclude certain peoples from voting, based on who is in power now.
I think in this time where people are reflecting on how the voting system works, we should spend at least equal time on why it is the way it is, before offering suggetions on how to fix it.
It would be rather simple to make some basic changes.
Whoever wins the entire state gets the 2 senate seat votes, and whoever wins each house district gets the appropriate vote... this is an automatic 3 for the small states, of course, but would break up the larger states such as NY, CA, FL, IL, MI, PA, etc... so that you wouldn't see that 55 vote swing. The two Senate seat votes give you that popular vote edge, but the others come down more locally. It would be interesting to calculate what that would have resulted in for this election...
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
Even if we were to allow the wheels of government to grind along slowly, and give them a few more elections to get technology in place, effective information design is not new.
The private sector occasionally knows the importance clearly presented information. Ask for a picture menu at McDonalds sometime. Of course the private sector counts ever $.69, government is currently content to ignore thousands and thousands of votes each year.
The Palm Beach ballots were not alone in their incompetence. Evidence from all over the US indicates many ballots were as easy to understand as a Tax form, which is not at all. The nature of English reading (and all other horizontally read languages) is to read down one verticle column and then move on to the next column. This reminds me of those silly high school tests where there was a long list of convoluted directions with the last item in the list saying "ignore all previous directions."
A whole lot of people on both sides of the party fence are having their careers skewered over this. I feel bad for the local Democrat woman who approved the ballot. Her job was not to redesign the voting system, her job was to make sure the names were spelled correctly. Florida law indicated the order of candidates on the ballot, maybe it should have put everyone in the middle. A whole lot of grief could have been avoided if the ballot design had "wasted" a bit of paper and left some space between the candidates names. There appeared to be plenty of unused space at the bottom of the ballot card.
Regardless of who wins this election, wouldn't it be nice if Florida could get the same number in two separate recounts?
Some of the protest signs have been rather disturbing. I don't believe the people who screwed up their votes were "stupid" as I've heard and seen them referred to. But even if they were, we are all free to be stupid, and to be frail, confused, illiterate. All votes are equal, no one voter has any more importance whether they have an MBA or never went to high school.
Laws from state to state vary significantly. Taxes, licensing methods, vehicle regestration, schooling. Technology might help bring some of them together but there is an underlying problem in the fact that so many little laws are different state to state, city to city. Voting differences are just a drop in the bucket. Besides we currently have the IRS that can't get things right so why would a national voting computer system work?
I am a student. .gov) I just don't care THAT much. I don't like waiting in lines. I think the candidate who wins is always most likely to be the one who appeals to people who don't mind waiting in lines.
I didn't vote for a few reasons the BIGGEST being that the process of voting is more prohibitive than any other process in my life (besides renewing my drivers liscence or other interactions with
The system is self perpetuating in a sense
this sig is deprecated
Take a look at the whole "soft money" issue, and how it came about; Congress passed laws to limit the size of donations to $1,000, whereupon those who wanted to donate more promptly developed systems by which they give - and spend - campaign money via proxies. There is no clear way to stop the giving to proxies, unless you want the government to approve each and every donation by any person to any organization that *might* have a political purpose. If there is any person out there who does not recognize the insanity and total loss of political freedom this would bring, please go away.
So you could stop the spending by proxies instead, right? Wrong again. For one thing, that just displaces the soft money problem one step further. And taken to the logical extreme - and you have to, if you don't want another layer of inscrutability regarding who is buying the loyalty of whome - this would mandate that every message with any political content of any kind be registered with the government. Sure, you say that you just went to Kinkos and printed up a bunch of "Nader rules" flyers, but how do I know that some political organization didn't pay you to do that in order to avoid the new campaign finance reform laws? I need you to write down all your political affiliations and check that with the state before I can let you use that copy machine, sir.
Campaign finance reform, however noble in intent, will not have the intended effect. That's why we have a first amendment, and why political speech deserves the highest protection; attempts to regulate speech, no matter how noble, always end up creating a political bias and pollute the openness of the process, eventually.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
Here in Illinois the same type of punch system is used. The card is inserted, you punch the holes, then pull out the card and put it in the ballot box. It is easy to check for 'chad' before putting it in the ballot box.
It is also pretty easy to make sure you punch the correct spot if you just pay attention to what you are doing.
The big thing this election is bringing to a greater light is the fact that these kinds of irregularities hanppen with EVERY election. It is just that they usually do not make enough of a difference to effect the outcome.
For example 2,000 ballots being thrown out is no big deal if one candidate is winning by 20,000 votes. It seems much more important when the margin is something like the 4 vote difference in New Mexico or the few hundred vote difference in Florida.
Dude, you need some Prozac.
--
Shaun Thomas: INN Programmer
Read: Rabbit Rue - Free serial nove
It seems a little strange to me that just becasue we have a close presidential race, there has to be a problem somewhere. I don't see how the vote count can be chalked up to not enough technological reform.
There was an election some time in the 1800's that took six months...SIX MONTHS...to decide. How's technology going to help absentee balots? Americans that live and work abroad have the right to vote, and if the vote is close enought that it comes down to those absentee balots, well, then that's how it's going to be.
Now, if people have a problem with the electoral college, then that's a separate thing. I'll admit that the system could use some reform, but it has worked well up to now. I think this is a matter that doesn't have a correlation to technology; we don't have to tie technology to every single issue in our lives. If anything, this illustrates the need for people to vote, not the need for technology. We saw one case in florida, where a confusing ballot machine (technology) may have caused people to vote incorrectly. Now, you can say, hey, that's how the cookie crumbles; we can't be held responsible for every person that votes incorrectly, or is confused by the ballot. But they're old people; cut them some slack. It's somewhat strange to have a platform that harps on social security reforem (something that the elderly are more concerned about than any other age group), and then be unsympathetic when your system confuses them. It's easy for Bush to say, "tough", cause he's ahead.
And then people bitch about people that voted for Nader, saying that their votes probably would have gone to Gore, and blah blah. Well...at least they voted!!! I don't see how we can complain about the voting system when a staggering percentage of our popultation doesn't even vote!
If we think that more technology in the voting sector is going to help, then we're way off the mark.
"Registrars could e-mail or snail-mail confirmation of registration, and of voting, in the same way many online commercial sites confirm that orders have been placed. If Amazon can do it, can't the federal government?"
hehe... probably not... I'm sure Amazon holds a patent on that!
The Constitution of the United States is not "my spin".
States still have the right to deny those liberties for matters of state security.
The basis for this assertion seems to be missing from my copy of the Constitution. It must be in one of those mysterious clauses that can only be read with the aid of the magic Penumbral Emanation Spectacles.
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Actually, it would be prudent to have a printout card listing the voter's choices drop into place behind a window (look but don't touch). If the voter confirms the vote, it drops into the locked ballot box. If the voter rejects the vote, it is marked "VOID" and dropped into the locked reject box (or maybe all dropped into the same box, if the VOID marker is sufficiently reliable and indelible), and the machine allows the voter to enter new choices.
That provides a printed confirmation as a double-check against machine error (or corrupted programming). The cards can be counted automatically or manually if the machine tally is called into question.
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
I don't think that issuing voter receipts is a good idea, precisely because of the coercion issue. Even if the receipt merely contained an ID number for the vote, someone could use it to verify that he voted "correctly".
IMO, providing a printout for final review behind a window (which could be marked VOID if the voter rejected it and started over, or dropped into the verification lockbox if the voter accepted it and entered the vote) is sufficient.
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
The states can do as they please.
When will people (especially /.ers) learn to read.???
Good question. Your reading test for today is:
And, from the advanced reading excersize:/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/subst/home/all-s tores-ballot.html/002-0994733-42 592 00
One of the gripes raised in Florida was that about 19k ballots in Palm Beach County (not Broward County, as Jon Katz stated) were thrown out because of a double-vote...someone punched a candidate, realized he made a mistake--and then failed to get a new ballot and proceeded to screw up his vote altogether by punching another candidate.
The electronic voting machines used here in Nevada (or at least in Clark County; I'm not sure about the rest of the state) since 1996 or so keep this from happening. When you step into the booth, an arrow shows up for each candidate/question for which you can vote (since one booth can serve multiple precincts). When you press a button for a candidate, the arrow moves to that candidate. If you then try to select another candidate, the machine won't allow it until you press the button for your first selection to deselect it. Double-voting is impossible with this system. Once all your choices are made, you hit a big "cast vote" button and your ballot is recorded in a memory cartridge. At the end of the vote, all of the cartridges are read into the tabulating system, which then spits out the vote. There's much less room for monkeying with the vote. About the only thing that can happen is an electronic or mechanical failure of the equipment, and that isn't as likely or as prone to fraud or manipulation as looking at a punchcard and determining if a bit of chad is or isn't punched out.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
While there are many problems with the balloting system, the idea that it "takes too long" is silly. This is not an instant-win scratch-off game, there are month-long delays between election day, the meeting of electors, and inauguration exactly so that problems can be dealt with.
Also, the suggestion that some people should be able to vote from their homes while those who can't afford, or choose not to own, computers have to wait in line raises serious "equal protection" issues - not to mention huge technical hurdles. Forget it.
Yes, we needd better tech at the voting booth and the counting centers. But the concern should be accuracy and usability (check out the Sun-Sentinel's virtual Palm Beach ballot and tell me we can't do better!), not speed of results.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
This technology is from the 70s.
When I first voted in 1980 in Delaware, they had mechanical voting machines. You pulled levers inside a booth and it advanced mechanical dials indicating who was voted for. At the end of the day, those results would be phoned in, the machines locked up, and the results later certified by officials checking the dials.
Now we have computerized voting machines. Loud audible tones are heard when a poll worker sets it up for a vote, the watchers hear this so they can be assured no one gets more than one vote, the voter goes inside a booth and presses buttons to indicate who to vote for. You can change your mind and unselect it, all candidates chosen are lit up by bright red LEDs and those races where you haven't voted have a reminder LED blinking.
The votes are recorded into a cartridge and also into the machine. At the end of the day, the cartridge is somehow uploaded to a central place and the machine itself folds down into a self-carrier that can be sealed for later reverification if needed.
From what I can gather, the system also advances analog counter dials as a backup if the electronic part fails. (I couldn't get near the rear of the machine at my polling place but at a friend's poll I tagged along to, I was actually able to wait for her by sitting behind one of the machines and checking it out visually!)
In a primary election this past September, the two Republican governors were within 44 votes of each other. A recount was quickly done and lo and behold, the result was again 44 votes.
These computerized machines have been in use for about 6 years. When is the rest of the country going to catch up?
That web page about the supposed VNS conspiracy as far as I can tell is a load of crap emperically from this election. VNS mis-called the election twice based on bad exit polls and incomplete information. The ultimate arbiter of the vote is the canvassing board which is an elected body and is open to public scrutiny.
Moron Party: I'm such a complete idiot that, although I meant to vote for Gore, I was baffled by this extremely simple ballot. I am clearly too stupid to be included in the process of electing a president."
Sigh.
1) A few people well experienced in UI design have all commented on the ballot and stated that it was designed very poorly.
2) When you're told it's been confusing people, then you'll look at it with figuring it out in mind. There's a difference between that, and just sitting down to vote and then being caught off guard with it.
3) The results speak for themselves. You can make fun of it all you want, but it's clear that it significantly affected the results. If the mechanism for voting affects the results, then the mechanism is faulty.
4) The better-than-thou attitude, the feelings of superiority, are a sign that nobody should take any of your opinions seriously since you're more interested in making yourself better than others than actually being concerned with any problems, the truth, etc.
---
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
Absolutely!
By calling for "standard ballots and recount processes", I was not counting for a single, Federally-mandated ballot/process.
Like I said in my first post - it's 51 state elections - each state should standardize its own process. My only concern is that 51 standards selected be uniform across each state.
I was certainly not calling for the abolition of the Electoral College. I guess I didn't make it clear that not only is "it's 51 elections" required by the Constitution, but that I believed the "51-ness" of the system is a feature, and not a bug.
Agreed -- but with the caveat that each county should have used the same method when voting, so that the errors introduced by the voting/counting methodology were evenly distributed across the population.
Unfortunately, that was not the case in this election. Some counties used the Optiscan system (not subject to "chad" error), and others used punch cards (which, as we're painfully aware, are).
So any inaccuracies introduced by the hand-count (or rather, by the original vote, and possibly corrected by the hand count) are not evenly distributed among counties.
Depending on how you vote, this either unfairly skewed the election to Bush on November 7th, or it will skew the election to Gore in the days ahead as the hand recounts progress.
The time to have decided this was before the vote, when one's political leanings wouldn't have entered into the equation. Sadly, it's too late for that, which is why we're in this mess.
Quoted from a Canadian commentary (albeit a highly partisan one in favor of Bush) on the subject:
If (if!) this report (I see no substantiation here, and the article is extremely partisan, so I'm still classifying it as "rumor" - I'm sure if there's evidence for it, a Bush partisan will substantiate it :-) about the changing
of the standard between three-point severance to "sunlight" or the
"dimpled chad" partway through the recount turns out to be
true, it raises questions about the impartiality of the hand recount.
Back to my "standards" thread - this Salon article points out that heavily-Republican counties use the Optiscan system, which isn't subject to the "chad" issue. If true, it appears that votes in Republican counties already "count" about 0.001% more than those in Democrat counties, and there's a legitimate argument that Gore's calling for a hand-recount evens the score.
IMHO both the National Post and Salon articles (and the post to which I'm replying) constitute evidence that we need both a standard ballot and a standard counting system.
(And that, Constitutionally, these standards should be set on a per-state basis, not the Federal level.)
Ballots: For reasons which should be obvious to all. Whether the Palm Beach County ballot was "simple" or "confusing" appears to be a matter of whose party you support.
By standardizing the ballot, we could ensure that these allegations are no longer an issue, and that if a usability issue becomes a problem, at least the effects are uniform across the state.
(I'd argue that if we go to an electronic system, the order in which the candidates are presented should be randomized on a per-voter basis.)
Process: The more important issue to me would be standardizing the process whereby votes are counted or recounted.
This election is likely to turn on chad - bits of paper from punch cards that either fall out of the card or remain attached by a corner.
That's bad. But at least chad affects both candidates identically. Or does it?
Ballots Again: An election in which voters in heavily-FOO counties vote with #2B pencils, and voters in heavily-BAR counties punch cards (with attendant risk of "chad" not being counted by the counting machines) will skew the results for FOO.
Indeed, even if we use the same technology (say, "fill in the dot with the pencil"), but FOO-county voters use #2B pencils, and BAR-county voters use #2H (hard) pencils, the lighter markings produced by the "hard" pencils will lead to a higher "uncounted" rate, and a skew to candidate FOO.
Process Again:Because the Bush team screwed up and didn't demand a recount in heavily-Republican counties (and the deadline passed on Friday), and Gore was smart enough to demand a recount in four heavily-Democratic counties, votes in those four counties count more than votes in other counties.
(Which is to say that while the "old farts" in Palm Beach may have been "stupid" if they couldn't tell Gore from Buchanan, the Bush team made an even dumber mistake - effectively giving the election away because they didn't understand how the mechanical technologies of the voting machines affected the results. The "old farts" can be excused. The guys who are being paid millions to run a campaign can't ;-)
But because our ballots aren't standard, it's possible that votes in heavily-Republican counties may not even have used a punch-card system. If that's the case, then votes in Republican counties count more (by about 0.001%), and Gore's just evening the score.
(Evidence: The fact that almost all counties show an "uptick", not a "downtick" in the number of votes cast, and that the hand recount in the four precincts last week showed a 33:14 advantage for Gore, in line with the ~2:1 ratio of Democrats to Republicans in that county.)
So because the laws call for recounts, but don't specify how the recount must be conducted on a statewide basis - it's up to each county to decide - both teams have the option of calling for recounts until they get the result they want, leading to a crisis of legitimacy (in the minds of the people, even if not in the eyes of the law) if the results differ.
Bottom line: How to make sure this never happens again.
If all voters in Florida used the same ballot and ballot-marking technology, there would be no controversy over whether "a misleading ballot in one county" could swing the result:
If all counties in Florida were required to use the same ballot-counting technology, there would be no controversy (the issue hasn't surfaced in the press, but it's clearly a possibility) over whether the counting technology could skew the results.
Finally, if all counties in Florida were required to use the same recounting technology, and agree to it in advance of the recount, we wouldn't be having the flurry of lawsuits we see today.
The voting technology, default counting process, and recounting process (including number of recounts) must be laid down in law, and must be laid down before the vote is taken.
(The reason for that should be obvious - it appears that old Republicans had no trouble with the Palm Beach County ballot, but old Democrats had trouble with it. It appears that Republicans think hand counts are a great idea in Texas, but fraught with inaccuracy in Florida. It appears that Democrats think that a machine recount is adequate for all counties in Florida except for the four most havily-Democratic ones.)
The only thing that's certain now is that all parties involved have lost sight of what's at issue - what constitutes a fair recount. "Fair" has ceased to be an issue of ensuring uniform error rates across the state and between candidates, and has been redefined by both sides as "that which may give our candidate the lead".
Just one question: how do you know your vote was correctly counted? With paper ballots, you can witness the whole vote tallying process, because it's physical. You can recount the paper ballots manually if there's a question about the machines. With electronic voting, it's all in invisible bits that can very easily and undetectably get lost, modified, misinterpreted, or drowned in fake votes.
I like the idea of electronic voting, but I'd want a few things before I trusted it:
--
"HORSE."
"HORSE."
-Flaming Carrot
Voter registration could require appearing in person, at which time you would be issued your smartcard containing your encrypted token, and set your pin. You would then be required to bring the smartcard with you to the poll, use it to sign your vote, and turn it in. Technology would definitely help, not to mention increase accuracy and speed of the count.
1) Our whole political system is arranged to make it convenient for the two-party system. Ever tried to run as a third-party or independent candidate? Good luck even getting your name on the ballot.
2) The solution is simple. Groups of people should NEVER have the same rights (speech, political contributions, etc.) as individuals. The corporation as a legal entity should be banned.
3) Voting over a whole weekend (two days) would be better.
The bigger problem here is a social one- ignorance and stupidity. If you can't figure out the ballot (and the Florida ballot was NOT hard) then quite frankly, I don't WANT your vote to count. I don't care how many voters turn out; I only care about the thoughtfulness that went into the decision of the person voting.
I'd like to see a two-part ballot- the first part would either be the citizenship test given to people who naturalize, or at the very least would be a "match-the-candidate-with-the-party". If you don't get above a minimum score (scored by the machine counting the votes) then it doesn't count your vote. The voter never has to know. Perhaps the citizenship test or equivalent (match the amendment with the right) should also be given to anyone running for office.
Finally, we need to remove all party affiliation from the ballot- people should vote for the person, not the party, in a representative government.
My point is, voting should NOT be easy. It should require thought and consideration, and yes, knowledge.
Why would having a prequalification screen out illiterates? The ballot is completely text based already- I assume that someone who cannot read currently just brings a friend or family member to read it to him or her, and would continue to do so. I have not proposed screening out anyone by any criteria other than basic knowledge required to make an informed decision.
I stand by my original assertion: if you have not educated yourself enough to know the candidates and the issues, and if you don't have a basic knowledge of the Constitution and U.S. Government (which is taught in U.S. History and/or Government, mandatory courses in the public education system), then you have no business voting.
I'm not at all suggesting that anyone's right to organize be restricted, only that any contributions, etc., cannot be funneled through an organization, which would drastically reduce the lobbying power of both corporations and unions.
The NRA and NEA would still be free to endorse whomever they wanted, but they couldn't buy a candidate with PAC money- the best they could do is ask their members to each contribute.
I voted in Alameda county in California, where we have punch card voting. The punch card slides into a holder, and there are two pegs on which it sits to make sure it is in the correct position. Each ~1x2mm rectangular hole on the card is covered by a circular metal hole. The puncher is a slim metal cylinder about the same width as a paperclip. The puncher clearly goes through the card, and there is an audible "pop" as it does. Interestingly, nowhere does it say that you should check your ballot to make sure all of the holes are completely punched. I certainly didn't check, and none of the polling place workers told me to either. Of course, there were maybe 6 oor 7 people in line the whole time I was there, so possibly they were trying not to slow down the process too much.
Walt
Not having voted with the metal poking object, I don't know for sure, but I'm not sure if you can check for chads after you vote or not. Anyone from a hanging-chad-county here to fill us in? And being in a hurry can also mean being considerate to the people who may be waiting in line behind you . . .
I grew up in an area that used the exact same system that's used in Palm Beach. It wasn't difficult, nor was it confusing. When you finish voting, you simply pull your card out, check the back side to make sure your punches were all complete (at least, I always did), and turn it in. When you're finished, you have a card with some random-looking holes punched in it. I grew up in a small town in south-central Indiana, plenty of rubes, nobody ever had trouble voting.
I find it really odd that most of the people who had trouble in Palm Beach also voted for Gore. Are his supporters down there a bunch of morons? I ask this honestly. Intuition says that problems with incomplete punches and hanging chads should be evenly spread across the spectrum (except for Buchanan supporters, but I digress), yet the hand count suspiciously digs up hundreds of new votes for Gore.
Very strange, statistically unlikely.
Michael
PS - I'm not a Bush supporter, don't bother. If you must know, I voted for the Tennessean in the election. If you're still confused, Al Gore is a native and resident of Washington, D.C.
Do you have ESP?
The only thing 'suspicious' regarding the 'hundreds of new votes for Gore' may have something to do with the fact that a block of *400* votes FOR GORE never even made it into the initial count.
Take off your partisan blinders. Consider that your block of 400 votes suddenly appeared after the official count. Your assumption is that they were left out of the original count, I have no evidence that they existed when that count took place.
Michael
Do you have ESP?
Throwing heads or tails 256 million times is bound to show up a bigger difference:-)
This isn't about throwing coins, it's about counting marks on pieces of paper, marks that haven't changed from one count to the next.
Heh? Last time I looked TV he looked pretty much like a whiteboy to me? Native American? Cool.
Brush up on your English, visit "dictionary.com" and look up "native". Al Gore was raised in DC.
Michael
Do you have ESP?
It's like saying that a car got in an accident because the wipers were broken & the driver couldn't see, then replying that it wouldn't have been a problem if the car had been a diesel or LP engine or something -- the engine has nothing to do with matters here, the broken interface is the true culprit.
It's not resisting change, it's refusing to accept it blindly. Consider: a lot of these proposals surround the idea of online voting, on grounds that [1] encryption is strong these days, [2] online transactions are pretty secure now, and [3] results would be fast. Consider each of those points more carefully though:On the server end, what about a DOS attack that brings down the polling server in a district where one candidate has too much of an edge, or some kind of DNS or IP spoofing attack that siphons off all the would be votes for that district into some digital circular file somewhere, lost in the great bit bucket in the sky. And nevermind attacks that actually breach the server somehow, corrupting whatever database tables or installing whatever worms or trojans or what have you. Suffice to say, there's all kinds of fun ways to violate the integrity of the polling system.
Then there all the fun out-or-band attacks that could be done. When my legit absentee ballot arrives in the mail, will they invalidate it if voter records show I already voted online? Which, if either, would count? To turn it around, could someone covertly submit absentee ballots for every person that is known to support an opponent & will vote online, thus invalidating their votes & turning the election to the other side? How about a distributed Perl script cracking tool to vote online for every registered voter in a district, trying each password against each voter, in an attempt to stuff or invalidate ballots? When pressed, it would be relatively easy to product paper documentation of the forged results, no matter which side of the attacks you may be trying to press. Again, there are lots of ways to overwhelm the system.
I'm not totally against using computers as a tool in elections, but I see some huge problems with the idea and no clean solutions to them any time soon. Proposals that fix a non-problem while exacerbating the real problems will not win approval. Any proposal that dismisses with the idea of on-site, accountable, secure elections will win my disgust, because you're scrapping what's good about the current system & replacing it with something that can never be trusted.
If you really want to see digital elections happen, then hey go for it, but you had better come up with a clear, safe, and fair system that thinks through the sorts of problems with what you've described thus far. Choosing national leadership is far too important for anything less.
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
1a) No
...] and scrap the idea of registration before voting day.
1b) Yes
1c) No
2) No
3) Third party alternative
1[a]) The notion of voter registration is quaintly arranged to make voting more convenient for the government and the parties in power, not more convenient for the voters.
Registration is that difficult for a reason: To make the election more accurately model a civil war. Registration is about as hard as enlisting in a militia. Throughout the history of the U.S., the vote has been extended to various subgroups of the population only after they had proven capable of organizing war-style violence.
By modeling a civil war, the elections serve, not fairness, but stability: As long as the losers believe it is a good model and a reasonably valid count they don't try to reverse it by violence, because they believe they'd lose THAT battle, too. (And they HAVE reversed very heavily and publicly corrupted elections by violence, repeatedly.)
[1b)] Let's figure out a more efficient way to check the validity of a voter's identify at the polls,
Yes. Failure to check lets corrupt politicians rig the elections. Just don't create a national ID card usable for other purposes - like tracking, and then oppressing, the population. Otherwise people who would fight might also refuse to vote out of principle - or even go to war RIGHT THEN. (In addition to people concerned about privacy and oppression there is a major religious faction that is fanatically opposed to hanging numbers on the people on religious grounds.)
[1c)
Same as 1[a]). If they're not interested enough to take the trouble to register they certainly won't take the trouble to fight. So if the civil-war model is to hold they shouldn't vote.
2) If campaign money is speech (Buckley vs Valejo!) then my voice is being drowned out by the roar of corporate cash. Let's investigate public financing so that we know in advance who has bought the candidates - us!
Forget it!
In addition to the problems with limiting free speech (which will cause the courts to CONTINUE to strike down your efforts), that puts the people in power in charge of handing out the ONLY money that can be spent by their oppostion.
Do you want the same people that have kept Nader and Browne out of the debates chosing who will be able to buy TV and newspaper ads, or even print pamphlets, posters, bumper stickers, and campaign buttons?
3) Just exactly why isn't voting day a national holiday?!?
Because when they STARTED only the landowners voted, and most of those could take the day off and ride into town.
There is already a law on the books to guarantee time off to vote. A holiday would be better, but not perfect. (Some jobs have to keep running even on holidays.)
Better yet: Just keep the polls open for 24 hours, closing them all simultaneously about the start of TV primetime at the population centroid.
That would also eliminate the problem of the networks influencing the election by calling the results before everybody has voted - causing voters to give up prematurely and usually making the prophecies self-fulfilling.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The problem with the punched card system is NOT that it is low-tech. The problem is that it buries the processing behind a wall, where cheating can take place and be undetectable.
It already WAS a "high-tek" replacement for paper ballots. And the problems we see now are exactly the problems we'd see in spades with a more electronified solution.
Katz says you don't have to ram a new system down people's throats. But you DO ram the results down their throats. That's the nature of elections. They'll only swallow them if they believe in the system. But they've seen how computers can go wrong, and now they've seen how punched cards can go wrong. So don't bet on them EVER accepting a netified election.
"Pay the Two Dollars!" Count the bloody ballots.
(It's a LOT better than counting the bloody bodies after the people stop trusting the elections and go back to pre-election methods of conflict resolution.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The Electoral College is there for a reason: To keep a few states with large populations from running roughshod over the bulk of the states.
Go to any news site and look at the election map. (Here for instance.) This election is EXACTLY what the electoral college is INTENDED to address.
Further: The partitioning of the vote into states limits the ability of a corrupt political machine in one big state to swing the election. With it a cheater can only capture the electors of his state - which MIGHT swing the election, but only if the other states split just right. Without it his fake votes could swamp the genuine voters any time the election is at all close. And we'd be recounting the WHOLE COUNTRY, not just a few counties or a couple states.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Technology is an handy baton to wave, but I don't think the most severe problems in our electoral system are technological. Even if every voter in this country had a trusted-ASIC smartcard reader and a token shipped to them (which they manifestly don't), you would still have to cope with issues like the inconvenience of registration, human duplicity, and collusion/coercion.
Rather than try to graft cryptography on top of the voting process, I would rather see human reforms. For example:
1) The notion of voter registration is quaintly arranged to make voting more convenient for the government and the parties in power, not more convenient for the voters. Let's figure out a more efficient way to check the validity of a voter's identify at the polls, and scrap the idea of registration before voting day.
2) If campaign money is speech (Buckley vs Valejo!) then my voice is being drowned out by the roar of corporate cash. Let's investigate public financing so that we know in advance who has bought the candidates - us!
3) Just exactly why isn't voting day a national holiday?!?
Technology can help us solve our problems, but it's important to realize that voting in America is defective in ways that go far beyond mere ballot mechanics.
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
You're just being absurd. He wasn't talking about voting online or even connecting the booths to the Internet (which would be an astoundingly stupid idea). He was talking about computerized voting booths, which would allow you to clearly see who you're voting for. Those would be much MORE difficult to "crack" than sabotaging a hole-punched ballot counter.
Believe it or not, it is possible for something to be electronic without being a computer or being networked.
--
Obfuscated e-mail addresses won't stop sadistic 12-year-old ACs.
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
Much better would be Instant Runoff Voting, which still can be manipulated by strategic voting, but not nearly as much as the Borda Count or a simple majority. The best solution would theoretically be Condorcet voting, but remember that this is America. Not so many Americans would be able to grasp the concept of how a Condorcet vote is tallied. Then again, CNN could make a killing making pretty illustrations of the results.
The other system Katz recommends is approval voting, which is simply dumbed-down IRV. And someone who doesn't grasp the concept of ranking candidates in order of preference is probably voting for the candidate whose hair they like best.
--
Obfuscated e-mail addresses won't stop sadistic 12-year-old ACs.
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
Audit Trail. Each ballot can (in theory) be tracked from the polling place to the final re(re-re-re-re...)count
Security. It's very difficult to h4x0r a paper ballot (punch card or otherwise)
What happens when we go to internet voting, and J. Random Script Kiddie steps up and announces: "1 4M 50 31337! 1 h4x0r3d the v073!!!" How can we prove or disprove his claim?
Where is the audit trail?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Presumably, the argument here is that people DID ask for help, and were told, essentially, to fuck off by the staffers.
See http://partners.nytimes.com/2000/11/13/politics/13 TOCK.html
--
Excuse me? Surely the word "helped" suggests that more than one country was involved? So the wording should have been "One of the countries that helped ...".
Look at this as either a small pedantry or a point about US-centrism, whichever you prefer. I'm not quite sure which it is myself.
If there were 16K ballots cast in 1996 that were disqualified, that to me is a strong signal of a poorly designed ballot.
If there is a history of disqualified votes being cast in Palm Beach, then the system needs to be changed.
My county does not have problems with so many votes being disqualified. Want me to send you a copy of our ballot?
Actually it was Wyoming not Montana... he grew up and went to college there, and as I understand it, there was still family property there.
-- Point? None! Cob.
I find it so fascinating that so many people think Bush is an idiot.
From his web site: "He received a bachelor's degree from Yale University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He served as an F-102 pilot for the Texas Air National Guard."
Obviously he used political connections to do all of that.
Duh.
Failure is not an option.
Failure is not an option.
It comes bundled with Windows.
Uhm... I'm not sure how to do this without actually plugging the company I'm working for.
But, you are aware that there are companies with technology in place that allow for secure, automated, enforceable online transactions?
http://www.ilumin.com is where I've worked the past couple weeks. I don't know enough about the technology yet (I just provide servers and workstations for the developers), but this enforceable stuff is what we need to make this sort of thing secure, right?
Failure is not an option.
Failure is not an option.
It comes bundled with Windows.
The only reason that Cheney got away with this is that he does maintain an address in Montana. It's pretty much his vacation cabin, but he does have a valid residence there by state standards. I suppose that 10,000 Texans might get away with claiming that they had a time-share in Florida, but probably not.
_____________
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
I'm not in anyway saying that I think the Electoral College is a completely fair system. It's just that no one has suggested a different system that is less unfair in every way.
_____________
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
ooops... you're right. Sorry about that.
_____________
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
the average age of a U.S. Gov't official is around
60 yrs of age, I don't think we will be moving to e-ballots just yet. The generation that has grown up with the internet has about ooohhh 30 years before they will hold seats in Congress or any other high ranking political position that might make a difference. I know they have advisors, but
in this day and age of political accountability (finally we have a little here in the US), would you vote for something you don't or can't understand?
K
In that case, the kids were told SPECIFICALLY to punch one and only once. As well, the arrows on the ballot were larged and lined up nicely with the holes.
_completely_ different situtation.
Sen.-Elect Clinton has, if memory serves, already publicly stated that she would support the elimination of the EC.
I wouldn't be too surprised to learn that birth rates were at least somewhat correlated with political affiliation, incidentally.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
The less-well-educated are, historically, likely to have more children; and they're more likely to be poor, who are less likely to vote for the GOP I'd think -- compared to the middle and upper classes, which are more evenly split. So it's probably not off the mark.
In fact, my NYT almanac notes that black and Hispanic (especially the latter) have a significantly higher birth rate than that for whites. Blacks are a reliable Democratic voting block; Hispanics, depending on origin, often are (major exception: Cubans, who generally swing GOP. ) So it really would not surprise me at all that the demographics would favor the Democrats over time, although to be fair one would also have to take into account mortality rates...
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
That ballot design is not a new one, if memory serves; it's also been used in Chicago, as Mr. Daley is no doubt aware. In addition, 4-5% isn't that high of a discard rate, for PBC or elsewhere...
And, FWIW, Gore only called for hand counts in certain Democratic counties. That introduces additional inaccuracies in the margin, which is what matters, since hand counting is biased towards finding additional votes. The ONLY fair hand-recount is a statewide hand recount with uniform standards (e.g. standards for dealing with chad), and where each ballot is handled a minimum number of times (because this can loosen chad).
It's analogous to rolling 200 fair six-sided dice, rerolling all the dice that showed 1 or 2, then re-rolling those that still show 1 or 2, and then reporting that the dice have an average of 4.8 or whatever instead of 3.5. Any self-respecting statistician would die of laughter.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
I think you're mistaken. The problem isn't with the format of the ballot at all. Pencil and paper might work in your society, but here, some people would get confused and, rather than admit their mistakes or ask someone for help, they'd blame it on the lack of pencil sharpeners.
I actually worked our last local council (Australia/NSW) elections (all council elections are held at the same time, every 4 years). We use a simple pen and pencil system, with a preferential system (Number all candiates from 1 to whatever, with 1 being your first preference , 2 your second , and so on).
We do get a lot of informal votes , but this may nor be because of the preferential voting system. (Informal means invalid). I do not know if the informal are from problems with the system, or a form of protest (since voting is compulsory in all elections in Australia). The "F*CK all politicians" scrawed on the ballot was one that we where not ambigous about, but putting a X next to a name is less so.
Looking at the Jon's rant, I do believe he is full of shit on the topic. Any system can work, from casting pebbles in an urn , to show of hands, to automated systems. The net is not the promise land for all of societies ills, and especially for voting, I know I would pefer physical evidence when counting the votes, than looking at a lone of data.
1. It allows scrutiny in the count from all involved.
2. It allows disputes on iregularities to be checked (any balor paper has to be marked before issue, for security. How can you do that for a data packet?
The American system may need an overhaul, but it should be the concepts of the vote, not how it is collected.
Darryl
>>>>>
Think there's a problem with people buying/selling votes now? Just wait until people can do so in the privacy of their own home. As it stands, there is no way for a vote buyer to ensure that the seller did, in fact, vote according to the agreement -- only one person in a booth at a time. The same security cannot be had in a non-seclusioned voting environment.
Katz argues that people shouldn't have to drive long distances to vote, so they should be able to vote in their own homes, electronically. There just isn't enough security this way. I guess, IMHO, the ideal voting scheme is electronically, in a private booth, where you may have to drive a long distance.
sig: sauer
- Corporations are people under the law, and thus have most of the rights of people by default, including freedom of speech. Corporations became people in the US about a hundred years ago (brain lock, case reference missing). This was a big mistake which is going to be hell to correct.
- Political campaigns need big money to buy media time. Broadcast media is expensive, but it is essentially impossible to win any major office without it
... today.
One possible way out is the medium you are using right now. The Internet can have arbitrarily wide reach, and is unbelievably cheap for its reach compared to broadcast media. With any luck, a few years from now when everyone is connected, someone will conduct a Net-only campaign with the following two major platform planks:- I communicate with you voters via the Net; I don't need an enormous campaign fund.
- My sleazy opponents use expensive, deceptive media ads, and are owned by the people who donate to them.
The only problem with this is that people might start questioning the validity of any expensive media operation designed to influence them. Death of advertising, anyone?To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
According to Google:
http://www.tourolaw.edu/patch/CaseSummary.html
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Right on. 16-19K is between 3 and 5 percent, big enough to be significant in many elections. But I wonder what the rates are in other counties and in other states? Does everyone end up throwing out up to 5% of their votes, or is PBC unique?
Regarding election technology...
- ---
3 3)
The question becomes, do we prefer expediency over democracy,
or would we rather have an accurate count of votes and thus
uphold the "will" of the voters? The current discussion puts too high of a premium on expediencey and convenience, too much credence into the self-serving claims of both campaigns, and too little on upholding the principle tenets of democracy.
First of all, expediency is the only reason to connect the
polling stations over the Internet. It is not yet the case
that the Internet is mature enough that all things should
be done using it as the communication medium. The security
holes present in current Internet transactions are too
severe to warrant the risk in order to obtain a benefit,
vote count expediency, which is only somewhat important.
(It is important for foreign relations reasons to maintain
our image of strength and cohesion, but that could easily
be resolved if both campaigns simply stated that they are
in full support of accurate vote counting, are preparing
their transitions strategies, and will work with the other
party to maintain national unity since in a close election
it is clear that neither party has a strong mandate to
power - these issues are human issues, machines can not
fix them.)
Leaving the Internet out of it, things become easier.
First off, the interface:
I suggest a system somewhat similar to the one in
Riverside California.
To maintain privacy, voters should still sign in manually
in front of a polling station worker who will check their
signature against the one from their voter registration
card, and perhaps picture ID (though this is not done in
NY city where I vote unless, I suppose, your signature
has changed too much - though I am not certain... not
checking picture ID does mean that poor people who may
not have any use for a driver's license or passport can
vote more easily, but does increase chances of fraud).
Signing in manually leaves a book of signatures against
which the number of votes can be checked to make sure
there are not more or fewer votes in the system than in
the signature book - to help guard against poll workers
giving multiple votes to people.
The voter should then be given a card with a magnetic
stripe. These cards should be pre-"printed" and contain
no information about the voter. Since there is no way
to know the order in which voters will arrive, you can
trust your card is random if they just pull one off the
top of a stack for each voter. On the card should be
a code which releases the electronic voting station for
use by the voter - and nothing else. The code might
contain an encrypted string on information such as the
county, state, and polling center location, but need
also involve a unique integer which is the differentiator
for which vote is being made. The code should also be
printed on the card, so that humans can later read it if
needed. This would be computed using the public keys
of keypairs held by the state and federal election
commissions.
The pre-printed cards would be produced centrally, by
the state election commission.
(As an aside, to avoid "running out of ballots", there
should be enough cards at each polling station for 100%
voter turnout - and since the cards are reusable, unlike
most ballots, the cost over time should become minimal.)
Insertion of this card should cause it to be read, the
voting machine "unlocked" for use, and the card to be
deposited in a strongbox similar to those used in ATM
machines for money deposits. No card may be reused in
a single election, and the polling station workers
should NOT have the keys to the strongbox (only the
canvassing board memebers who verify votes should have
this access).
Once the card is read, a user interface should appear
which lists the candidates in the following manner:
Party Name Candidate 1 Name(s) Photo
Party Name Candidate 2 Name(s) Photo
...
The voter should be able to select a candidate by
touching (using a touch screen) the party name,
candidate name, or photo. A confirmation screen
should then appear saying
"You have selected so-and-so from the such-and-such
party"
With the photo of the candidate(s) below, and
"confirm" and "change my vote" icons to touch.
Confirm commits the vote and moves on to the
choices for the next office up for election, and
"change my vote" should clear the choice and return
to the selections for that office.
This should occur for each election in your district.
At the end of the process, a list should appear as
such:
Your Choices:
-----------------------------------------------
Office 1 Party Name Candidate Name(s) Photo
Office 2 Party Name Candidate Name(s) Photo
...
With "confirm" and "change my vote" icons to touch.
Touching "change my vote" will bring up a screen
with the list of offices to touch to change the
vote for that office, and then to bring the voter
back to the "your choices" list after each re-vote.
(An aside on photos, to respond to some cynicism
about this:
Contrary to arrogant belief of cynical intelligentsia,
illiterate people may actually be quite intelligent
otherwise and able to understand the issues involved in
electing a president. Oral communcation can transfer a
lot of information, and many people who can't read can
do a lot of other things. Photos of the candidates at
the polling station are only a benefit, even though
illiteracy to the point of being unable to read even a
name is now rather rare - except among immigrants whose
native languages are not roman alphabet based, and who
may have read about the candidates in their native
language. Finally, if people choose not to vote for a
candidate because they're unattractive - they deserve
the governance they get...)
Touching "confirm" commits all votes. The vote ID
from the card that was inserted is the key into the
DB where the votes are stored. This DB should be
written to more than one disk: either two or more
mirrored servers, or to HD and removable media, or
some combination thereof.
In confirming the votes, public keys corresponding
to private keys held by the state, federal, and
local election commissions should be used to
encrypt a copy of the vote which will be stored
in one or more DBs, one copy for each key, and
one copy superencrypted with all 3 keys.
However, now what should also happen is that, using
a stack of special paper (with a state hologram on
it or whatever one's favorite anti-counterfieting
device is) that is stored inside the ATM-like voting
machine, a "reciept" is printed which contains the
following:
The unique keycode
Human-readable candidate selections
A machine readable (barcode, perhaps) encoding of
this information
Date and Time
One copy of the receipt should go into a lockbox
inside the machine, just like the magnetic stripe
cards. Another could go to the voter, who can
immediately notify the staff if the machine "made
a mistake" and their vote needs to be invalidated
and they must vote again, but this brings up the
possiblity of fraudulent receipts and probably
should not occur. To guard against this, any
action triggered by a voter receipt would have to
start with insertion of the receipt into a reader
which would match the receipt against the ones
stored in the voting machines. This is the most
uncertain aspect of this system, other than the
unavoidable issues of voter coercion, and
unlikely issues like massive conspiracies.
The database of votes could be made public, with
each vote paired with the card number that was
used to make the vote. Privacy is ensured since
no one knows which card number corresponds with
which voter except for each voter knowing their
own number. Any voter could then check his or
her physical receipt against the entry in the
public database online (it would be provided by
copying the DB after the polling stations close,
and moving the drive with the copied info OFF
of the polling LAN to another, online system).
A mismatch would be indication of election
fraud or error. Counterfeit receipts could be
prevented if the encrypted version of the
information printed on the receipt is encrypted
with the 3 public keys corresponding to federal,
state, and local authorities. In this way, a
receipt could only be counterfeited with a
mass-conspiracy involving cooperation of
all three of these entities. Receipts submitted
could then be checked by all 3 entities. The
"public" keys for encrypting vote information
would only be inside the polling machines, and
the private keys only on the secure systems of
the agencies in question.
Now, the first pass of the vote count is quite
simple: count the # votes in the DB for each
candidate. However, there are avenues for
multiple recounts, which is necessary to
maintain a fair system:
count the votes on the backup DB(s)
take the receipts and run them through
a counter based on barcode scanning
manually recount using the information
printed on the receipts
The reporting of results to the central state
agency would occur as follows:
each voting machine would count the
votes in the DB AND confirm against cards and
receipts in its internal lockboxes, so a
triple-verified count is automatic
a report would be printed on special
paper, and encoded on to a magnetic stripe
card, and written to removable media along
with a copy of the original DB - all this
would be sent to the central state voting
office; this would occur on a station set up
just for this process, on the LAN, but also
ATM-like to prevent tampering
All voting machines and tabulators would be
alarmed, with a loud audible alarm, and only
auditors granted access under applicable
state law would have the keys.
For recounts, the state appointed auditors
(presumably under police escort) would go to
the polling stations, open the voting
machines, and retrieve the chambers
containing the cards, the receipts, and all
but one copy of the DB (one copy should
remain on a drive which can not easily be
removed from the machine, the others would
be on HDs in slide-out trays or removable
media disks). Once the auditor unlocked
the door, he or she would insert a special
card into a special reader inside the
machine. The internal computer system of
the polling station would write all it's
state logs to all disks, "print" the auditor
ID on all disks and in an EEPROM, shut-down
to protect the data, seal the slots through
which the cards and receipts drop into their
receptacles, and a light would come on
meaning "ok, take the data now". Only the
auditor's card could restart that station at
this point.
The preferable method of recounting is to
bring the retrieved media to the state
election offices and recount the votes on
a centralized system which performs the DB
counting, and verifies the votes by checking
the count in the DB, receipts, and encrypted
DB - and confirming against the mag cards
in the card cartridges. The state authorities
can also check the magnetic cards against the
entries in the issuance DB to make sure all
the inserted cards were indeed issued by the
state and are thus valid.
Local recounts could be done with a similar
setup locally - but could not check the
cards against the state DB. Of course, a
first recount locally could be just to
re-run the first verification in the
original voting machines, in case a n
on-repeating bug had occurred. A lot of
possible combinations of how to run the
recount exist, but it is best if machines
are used until the last recount to avoid
an extra chance of fraud.
To provide for hand-recounts, it may be that
a change in the process by which the printed
receipts are left in the machines unless
needed for hand-recount locally, is put in
place. This would make the state computers
rely on checking the DB against the encryped
DB, and making sure each key corresponds to
a mag stripe card, meaning only one rather
than two verifications against a physical
object.
To defraud the vote, you would need to do the
following:
change the entry in all copies of the DB
create a new magnetic stripe card with
a corresponding key, which could be difficult if
the keys are generated using a clever enough
algorithm
print a proper receipt
put your receipt and magnetic card into
the lockboxes (or introduce them during a manual
recount)
change the DB which tracks which magnetic
cards have been issued (which could be in a
central, offline, secure location at the state
printing office)
Clearly, trusted workers could defraud any system
with enough cooperation and concerted effort by
people in positions of authority over the process.
But this system is designed to require a lot of
effort to avoid the multiple verifications that
the machines can do before any humans even get
involved in the process. With a federal key for
encrypted votes, even the FEC could check votes.
Tampering with the machines to write votes for
one candidate to another, by altering the
software that controls all these processes, is
the most serious threat to the system. However,
in this way the system is no worse than the
ballot machines used in many states, and indeed
by having the federal and state election
commissions have digitally signed copies of
the system code in their secure storage centers
they can check against such alterations if it
becomes an issue.
Obviously this system leaves room for a lot of
oversight in a recount, including the fact that
the card keys are stored somewhere not accessible
to most people. And, in very extreme cases,
voters could be asked to bring in THEIR
receipts and votes which did not have a pair of
receipts associated with them could be more
carefully scrutinized in terms of attempting to
detect fraud.
Of course, the system has holes, any system does,
but this is a nice compromise between computer
convenience and accuracy, and oversight and
fairness.
Now, why not let people vote from home or work?
A few reasons:
minimal oversight and protection against
coercion by other people in the home or office
the authentication process could be more
easily compromised technologically, even if the
transmission process is relatively secure, since
users are notorious for bad security practices
like writing down passwords, leaving accounts
which host certificats and keys logged in, etc.
no witnesses if there is a problem, and
no reliable way to allow someone to invalidate
an entire vote if accidentially or through some
malicious attack, they confirm the wrong final
selection list
voting is a public activity, and going
out into public, joining a voting queue, and
casting your vote is a symbol of democracy,
plus you get to see other people supporting this
process and feel included
Of course, there is room for coercion at the
polling station, but this system does nothing
to increase or decrease that - and no technical
fix is available for this issue.
Finally...
Why so complicated? Many might think "hey, this
system is at least as complicated as the current
system, shouldn't it be simpler?" It is simpler
for the voter, actually, but more complex in
terms of ways to verify results because the
governmetn should spare no expense in such an
important issue. Democracy is at stake. At some
point, our society must value SOMETHING over
convenience and frugality. This process is not
intended to be trivially simple, it is intended
to be fair, secure, private, and accurate.
I would hope that our basic principles of fair
democracy are more valuable than convenience,
expediency, cost-cutting, and even the "cool
factor" of the Internet.
Of course, since I just came up with this system
today over lunch, with some input from my friend
Mike, it may have some things we overlooked, but
most major problems with previously proposed
systems seem to be addressed in this.
(This was also posted in reply to Friday's article: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/10/00112
o/~ we are pissed, we are pissed, we have to resist... o/~ - ec8or
One thing that might be a help in Katz's model would be a standardized voting kiosk that would replace the current polling booths. Big letters, boxes that are very obvious, touch screen technology, etc. When the voter finishes the last page, s/he is presented with a list of the choices s/he made on the ballot. The voter could then review the ballot or click OK. After that, a last chance "Are you sure?" just to get it right, and then the vote is processed.
Processing, I think, should involve a variety of online and offline methods. Prints of the vote should be kept locally at precincts--at least in the near term while the technology gains acceptance--as an integrity check mechanism. Votes or vote stubs would be printed for the voters to take home. The vote would be sent directly to tape as an additional record. And in terms of online storage, copies of the vote could be migrated to multiple locations.
By keeping the same data in many places, I think that would give people who are non-technical some warm fuzzies about their vote being handled well. And I think that perceived assurance is possibly more important than reality right now. People who are already technical may express concerns about security, but they will at least appreciate the concept and can build on it moving forward.
Learning and moving forward. If we can achieve this from the 2000 election, then it will have been worthwhile. Please spare me these same partisan accusations the next time around.
I have not done a cost analysis of this approach, but it sure would be nice to move away from the arcane pencil/pen/stylus and paper/chad/connect-the-dots methods we have now. (That's right--connect-the-dots was the method used at my polling place in Redwood City, CA. On second thought, I might miss that--it was kind of fun...)
It seems to me that a good, old-fashioned duel is in order for this election. I suggest swords, or possibly flintlocks.
I built voting protocols and voting engine for online elections in 1996. Subsequently, CA Gov. Pete Wilson enacted legislation to outlaw online elections. Unique to our protocol is privacy protections to eliminate the possibility of matching for whom a person voted back to the voter. It is robust enough to publicize the protocol, sources and remain secure. It does so by not relying for security upon strong encryption. The voting engine instead uses a sequence of communication channels, the timing of which precludes outside attack.
.vs. 1000000).
The ensuing 5 years have not changed the CA law to allow digital elections. There has not been a digital election anywhere in the US for one reason. Politicians know how to work the system now in-place. There is no incentive for them to open the electoral process up to a new system which could change the political balance of power.
Voter.com and other sites are too closely allied to the political establishment to support digital democacry. I've talked to any and every organization to whom digital voting could prove uselful. All are distrustful of the technology and its implications for the business of politics as its currently practiced.
It is too revolutionary. It disintermediates the layer of politicians, brokers, lobbyists and organizations in our capitals. It connects citizens directly to the political process. That is too much power in the hands of people.
A Sacramento legislator explained it this way. It only takes a million votes to win the governorship of the worlds 6th largest economy. Any system which encourages more voter participation, aggregation or organization, politicians view as a threat to the current system. Election2000 has lowered that bar a thousand fold (ie. 1000
Lastly, there does not exist a business plan to compete for funding against the likes of eBusiness, B2B and the political system.
I have the engine built, prototype running and voting protocols proven. What digital voting needs is a grassroots support, groundswell movement to force the will of the people to open the election process to digital voting.
I could hold an election tommorrow over the Internet. The technology, software and protocols exist. It is the will of the people and funding to scale it up to serve the election process that is missing.
rr6013@netscape.net
i'm going to decide who gets meta-moderated in slashdot... then I'm going to buy some books on amazon... then i'm going to vote online for the President of the leader of the free world... then i'm going to order lunch online...
yea, all could be done without leaving our comfortable hermann miller chair through the web with a simple web form. but should they be? i tend to be of the mind that voting for the Prez is an action that should have a little more importance and should demand a little more attention than any of the above mentioned activities. we SHOULD go down to a local gathering center to stand in line with others to vote. atleast there we get a little bit of the feeling that we're doing something important and recognize the gravity of our choice.
this might be a bit out there, but if anyone's read Signal to Noice by Nylund... there's an interesting idea that we should be allowed to vote unless we've passed tests that are administred that demonstrate that we're responsible enough to vote, have studied the issues, have formulated true opinions and not just those that the media has spoon-fed us, and that we EARNED the right to vote, that it wasn't just given to us.
of course, this sets up a class of those that are able to vote and those that aren't... but considering the way the media is being said to control us (and especially the less intelligent), then maybe it's a worthwhile idea. not like it would ever happen here... but something to think about.
Here's a web page that discusses the Palm Beach County ballot from the standpoint of information design.
It has a graphic showing that it would have been possible to use exactly the same graphic elements at exactly the same size, that they would all fit on one page, and that the result is more legible and usable than the original .
So why the "butterfly ballot" in the first place?
I think for now on a slashdot poll should take the place of the electoral college. Sure their would be some ballot stuffing and that damn third party hemos the hamster would take votes from Al Gore.... But overall I think it is a good alternative.
Fisics
You're absolutely right, we don't have national votes for anything at all. Here we are (well, those of us in the US, anyway) citizens of what all the politicians love to call "The Most Powerful Country on Earth", and we have no direct say in how it's run.
Should we think about changing that?
AJ
It's sad how bad our voting system is - gives you great confidence in the democratic process, right? Between the dead voting and the living not getting a chance, it really makes you feel important. So now I need to take elected officials to lunch in order to make a difference...
lf.o
lf.o
well, sorta. it is true that with the electoral college, a candidate needs to take more states than if it were a straight popular vote. but remember, the argument that "a candidate would only need to take 4 or 5 states" to get enough popular votes assumes that he/she take every vote in those states.
A better way of putting it is that if one of the two major candidates wants to win the popular vote, they can campaign heavilly in 4 or 5 states and just a little elsewhere. It's pretty likely that just on name recognition and party afilliation they'll get say 20% of the vote from each state. If they can pull 75% or so from the major 5 and do better than 20% in a few others, they'll have the popular vote while effectively ignoring most of the country.
-
Addlepated - punk & metal
Yes, but supporting the interests of the people of those states will give them unfair advantage over the people of the other states, and will be bad overall for the country. Human nature is to egocentric for people to vote against someone who will give them something even when it isn't in the best interest of those a state away.
-
Addlepated - punk & metal
I have to admit, the thing which startled me (an Australian) about the current US election was discovering that every state and every county organises the election process separately. This completely shocked me, as I had no idea that things were that backward and awkward in a country which prides itself on being up-to-date and technologically aware.
In Australia, there is *one* federally funded organisation (the Australian Electoral Commission) which handles *everything* election related, from voter registration and electoral district boundaries to organising, conducting and counting an electoral ballot. They do this for federal elections, state elections, and even for local council elections. This one organisation standardises ballot design and educates voters on how to fill out their ballot (with advertising on television and radio, in newspapers and magazines, and on the internet, as well as a brochure about how to fill in the ballot being delivered to every house). They deal with the mechanics of the way that an election is conducted, and it is a full-time government department (which recruits a lot of temporary staff during election years on ballot night) rather than being a temporary gathering of a few volunteers. They have well-publicised rules as to what is and isn't a valid ballot.
Just this *one* small organisation prevents the Australian electoral system from having events like those in Florida. We still have close elections (our current PM has been elected on less than 50% of the popular vote, but on a majority of seats), but we don't have anywhere *near* the amount of legal wrangles over them.
Perkin's Postulate: Online tech support is designed to provide everything short of actual help.
You know what, a lot of people claim that those 19000 ballots that were disqualified were simply punched by stupid people. I might agree with that if it weren't for one simple fact. All 19000 of those ballots were in ONE county! I don't care if it was a county of 20000 or two million, thats WRONG. 19000 state wide in florida I could understand, but all in one county? Someone fucked up, pure and simple, and it wasn't the people who cast the ballots.
/.ers who believes they are infallable, I can't wait until you get into a car accident and the law declares you are at fault when you thought you did everything right.
And heaven forbid YOU (you meaning those of you who have blasted people as being stupid for making this kind of mistake) ever make a mistake that you can't reverse. Sheesh if 19000 people can make a mistake like this than so can you! If you are one of the arrogant
In any case, I think all ballots in broward county need to be thrown out and then the county recast. Its the only fair thing to do.
He's also right that we need a standardized election method. Every state/county/district needs a voting booth with levers. They are simply, easy, effective, and you can fix mistakes easily. You can't fix mistakes on punchcards.
The present method is both quick and easy, however, and a paper method is far less prone to tampering with all the controls we've established now.
finally, what most people are failing to realize is that the difference between who voted for gore and who voted for bush is statistically insignificant!!!!! We are split down the middle and at this point it doesn't matter who gets elected because it won't reflect a majority of voters. It will matter economically and socially in that I believe one candidate is better on that than the other but I won't say who.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
You seem to be implying that Liberals have lots more sex and generate more progeny. Although this suggestion is a nasty troll, from another angle I have been thinking about the maps shown on the news that are a sea of red (for Bush) with a few small splashes of blue (for Gore) and yet the blue equal or outweigh the red.
Just for discussion's sake, I would think that the main driver of population levels in various locations is not birthrate but rather (surprise) location. People like to be near certain types of places, things or other people, so they naturally tend to gravitate to "likeable" places, regardless of where they were birthed.
Hence the high population concentrations on the US coasts and around cultural or economic centers. And higher density urban populations tend to be more immediately benefited by Democrat populist policies, to the detriment of other more conservative population segments like the small-town (non-union) worker or the independent business owner. But since they are fewer and more spread out, they don't count as much :-)
A general election is called when the Monarch dissolves Parliament.
She essentially does this because (and when) the Prime Minister tells her to. Theroetically she could do this at any time against his will; effecitvely "firing" him; this is a safeguard against a corrupt Prime Minister clinging to power. We are unsure of how it would work if we ever had to do it.
The ruling party then can choose when to have an election at any time up to five years after gaining power. And choose they do, planning the vote to happen at the best possible time for them. This does make us a little suceptible to being bribed before elections. ;-)
The idea is that all our power is supposed to be formally invested in the Crown, and officially in Parlaiment, so Parliament decides when to hold an election.
At the moment though Tony Blair seems to be moving more power to the Government and away from Parliament. Not good.
We have 2 majors who exchang epower occasionally, a third party that is unlikely to gain power but could in principle form a coalition with one of the 2 main parties, and various regional parties that score highly in their locations.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
I've just returned from voting in my local municipal election. To vote for a candidate one simply has to fill in the middle of an arrow that points to a candidates name. What I found interesting though was after I had handed in my ballot, but before I was allowed to leave, the ballot was put through a scanner to make sure I had filled it in correctly. If I had accidentally spoilt my ballot (ie. filled in two arrows for mayor) I would have been given another one to redo. I was dumbstruck wondering why such a simple yet effective use of technology is not in place everywhere.
Thanks for the link! I used to be a proponent of IRV, but I'd never thought through any possible shortcomings. I just knew it was simpler for the electorate to grasp than Borda, and more expressive than Approval. Condorcet seems to have the best of everything.
Constitutionally Correct
I think it's a great idea to computerize the whole voting system. It eliminates the need for recounts (the polls would close, the winner would be announced a half hour later (or less!)). One problem. All of the seniors and anyone who knows NOTHING about computers would get all panicky about other people knowing who you voted for. The problem with these people is that they actualy believe things they see in movies like War Games and the like and believe that all computers are the spawn of the devil (no, they aren't spawn of the devil, they are our spawn :)). People trust that piece of paper or that worker. What shocks me is that they don't even check (in our county) your ID when you go vote. All they do is ask your name and ask you to sign your name. THAT'S IT! What if my grandpa died and I could sign his name well enough to fool the women at the booth (being that the average poll worker age is 65-70, that would be easy enough)? That would get me two votes (if we lived in two different locations and we did). With computers, I know it would eliminate that, but those seniors can't get hollywoods image of computers out of their head. People trust what they know (and get complacent with it.). Until we can get people to feel comfortable with computers, they won't trust them with their votes. What's funny is that they trust computers with something much more valuable...their money. Computers keep track of your checking account. The only reason you keep track of it is in case there's a HUMAN error (computers, when programmed right, are infallible as long as there are no hardware faliures (I know there's no "perfect" os or software, but most bank errors are HUMAN related and not computer related)).
Gorkman
Wow, and I'm sure that Nader's anti-corporate beliefs would be fairly discussed at all of the large corporations!!
Give me a break, the government shouldn't regulate a dang thing about voting because they'll only screw it up
-- Freedom means letting other people do things you don't like.
It's not the people, but the Prime Minister who can dissolve Parliament and thus cause a general election (in fact, it's theoretically the Queen).
I'm not sure what you mean by "proper credibility" for political parties-- AFAIK whether Members belong to a given party is not taken into account in the original design (any more than it is under the US electoral college system), though there are organisations that keep tabs on what parties are doing.
You might have meant that the people respect political parties in the UK more than they do in the US, and since I haven't lived in the US, it's difficult to say. Anyone know? Do bear in mind that we're still not under a multi-party system, though; even though the centre party have grown in the last few decades, we're still in a first-past the post system, mainly a race between the other two.
GROGGS: alive and well and living in
We all know electing the president via the internet won't be happening any time soon, even if the man who invented it gets into office.
Maybe we could start trying it though. What's the harm in trying to run a secure internet election poll that doesn't count? Maybe the government could do it. Results should be compared to those of real election, for research purposes. There are many factors to consider, maybe we'll find online citizens are more likely to vote for some party, etc. If we start now, we might have 20 or 30 years of meaningful data for when the country is really ready to consider an Internet election. A faux election would never be the same as a real election, but it may provide us with some insights.
I thought that was the case, too, but then I read this interview with Gore, and I have a newfound respect for his ability to understand technical issues. I don't think he was briefed for this interview ... too much stuff going on. I really do think he understands distributed computing.
This post is very good, I do think that voting needs to stay at designated polling places. But it also needs to be electronic and we need a national closing time.
To elaborate on the idea:
If we had electronic voting in the poling places (and keep in mind that we don't need full computers, but mearly some kind of voting terminal) and a national closing time we could know the results within minutes of closing.
the terminals can also keep their own voting records and such to prevent failures from losing votes and to allow recounts (however pointless). In a really close election it may take a day to get all the data into the system, but otherwise we
would have the results without the caos of this election.
"When buying and selling things is controlled by the legislature, the first things that get bought and sold are legislators." -- P.J. O'Rourke
We don't need the Incumbent Insurance type of campaign reform touted by the politicos. Instead we need Real Campaign Reform.
The IPCC has purposely engineered a massive scientific fraud.
The Canadian system mandates that employers allow employees significant time to vote. I think that the law is that 4 contiguous hours must be provided for each employee during the time that the polls are open. Since the polls are open to mid-evening, this is only a minor inconvenience to most employers. (eg, I get to leave at 4PM instead of my normal 5:30. Afternoon / evening shift workers get their hours in the morning.)
I see. The central committee determines who is allowed to speak during campaigns. A world power tried a similar system for much of the twentieth century and faded from view about a decade ago. I don't think that this is a good system.
I think the opposite. I think that he was saying that the opportunity to vote for "this guy" was already present in the most recent election.
Lets see how complicated a simple procedure can be made... should we add machines with levers to pull and switches to set, votomatic machines which you put the card in, then punch through the circle the little arrow points to? Too many things to break down or confuse people in my opinion. Pencil and paper offers a couple of big advantages: people are used to using these devices, and there's no hidden machinery going wrong in the background. Adding more technology (whether computers or mechanical machines) at the moment of voting seems like asking for trouble.
260 people in the UK? Last time I looked it was nearer 56 million. Anyway, that aside, what I reckon would work best is a dead simple voter-facing system (pencil. paper. tick the box) and a mechanical count with proper quality control. Routinely manually recount batches of machine-counted voting papers, and perform more than one machine count, so the machines are checked by each other and human inspectors.
sounds like a good idea...except that almost every single election worker is 80 years old. I don't think that they would enjoy working at a root prompt.
also, elections are run by counties and states. not the federal govt. hence, it'll be next to impossible to centralize anything election related.
Well, anybody without a computer would just have to go to a public computer polling place and vote...
Wait a minute....then we'd have long lines, stupid mistakes, logon problems, incompetent technicians screwing things up, badly designed online forms,....
oh...
and amen to the electoral college. the purpose it serves is to give people in less populous states some semblance of participation and enfranchisement. that way, the people participate to decide who their state votes for; the state electors cast their votes, and voila!, the magic of the founders' attempts to balance regional, individual and national interests takes place.
- "If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything" -Mark Twain
- "If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything" -Mark Twain
If Bush becomes president without all of the Florida votes being counted, it will be the biggest voter fraud in U.S. history!
TWR, Torrance, CA
I think it's attrocious that our country still uses the Electoral College. It's not fair for someone in one state with fewer electoral votes to have less of a voice in the election. We need major electoral reform. We the people, need to start working at moving towards an approval based system, and eliminate the Electoral College all together.
With more direct voting, like an approval based system, more people would turn out to vote. The level of apathy among voters, especially young voters, is sad. I'm 24, and the only connection I feel towards politics is helping a third party get federal funding. But I know that my vote for them didn't help at all... and plenty of other people must feel the same way.
Is it any wonder why only 50% of our population turned out to vote in the last election? People need more interaction with government, and that has to start with a fair, modern election system!
"Being alive is a crock of shit." --Kilgore Trout
I think this should be obvious. If you actually reformed the election process, how could they manipulate the system?
we have in our posession 5000 virgin Florida overseas absentee ballots with forged postal date stamps.
Bids can be mailed to abacus@warez.phantom.com
Yours Sincerely,
Count Til Urblue
Postal Minister of La Republica de las Bananas
________________________________
If encryption is outlawed, only
________________________________
If encryption is outlawed, only
YIE565$FF DSDNE4!MJK XMY7*fRBVM.
The Florida goverment invested a lot of money on computers for the Florida Lotto system, and it's been working with no mistakes for years now.
I have never heard of any missed bet or fucked up entry so far.
So, why can't they invest some money in a computerized voting system?
The answer is simple, they don't really care about voters, they DO care about stealing your money with a lotery system that's very lopsided. But hey, it's our fault for not kicking their collective asses to hell.
~~~Please pass the salt, I hate unsalted MD5s
It's called the Florida Lotto.
The Florida goverment invested a lot of money on computers for the Florida Lotto system, and it's been working with no mistakes for years and I have never heard of any missed bet or fucked up entry so far.
So, why can't they invest some money in a computerized voting system?
The answer is simple, they don't really care about voters, they DO care about stealing your money with a lotery system that's very lopsided. But hey, it's our fault for not kicking their collective asses to hell.
~~~Please pass the salt, I hate unsalted MD5s
No mater the complexity or simplicity of any given system, a certain percentage of the population will always manage to screw it up. The problem with trying to make something "fool proof," is that one so often underestimates the resourcefulness of fools. Technology is neither the problem or the solution, it just helps to amplify problems and solutions.
"I'm making perfect sense, you're just not keeping up."
The problem is that no one ever accounted for margin of error. A known margin of error could be determined for the mechanical system, as well as for a hand-tallied system. In either case, I'll bet that the margin of error completely swallows the tiny lead Dubya has over Gore.
So, the problem isn't with HOW votes are tallied, its with how much faith we put in those tallies. There is a margin of error in every system. Both candidates are arguing about variances that fall within that margin of error.
We need to account for error and decide what to do when the decision is within the error. Do we throw out the whole state? Use an alternative voting method? Have a 100 yard race?
Figure out how to make your :CueCat work with a ballot, and you've got it made!
Potential problem: requiring voters to go to Radio Shack.
Maine's system isn't perfect either. They have four electoral votes and two congressional districts. Once vote goes to the winner of the first congressional district, one goes to the winner of the other, and the remaining two votes go the the statewide winner.
So far so good, but consider this: Suppose there are 100 people in each district. In district one, 51 people vote for Bush and 49 people vote for Buchanan. In district two, 51 people vote for Gore, and 49 people vote for Buchanan. Buchanan didn't win either district, yet he gets two electoral votes while Bush and Gore each get one.
The electoral college has a lot of advantages (can you imagine a nationwide had recount?), but it is also rife with ways to lose the election by not having exact change.
By most measures, a 2-to-1 vote is a very strong mandate; the people in each district have told Buchanan to take his Nazi arsch back to the beer hall. Yet Buchanan gets to take 50% of the electoral votes to the White House.
The problem is more likely to occur when, as in my example, people are clearly voting against someone rather than for someone. It would also be far less likely to happen in states that had just a couple more electoral votes than Maine does.
Who would have thought that Gore would beat Bush in a popularity contest, or that Bush would beat Gore in a college?
--
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
Whom would you like to vote for?
Bush
Gore
Buchanan
Ok my karma is maxed out. When do I become Enlightened?
I hope to god we don't to see:
first vote!
at any elections.
You know all those product warnings like 'do not stop chainsaw blades with fingers' that we all say, "well, obviously" to? Well obviously it's not so obvious to somebody. I know that a certain percentage of people do not vote because the never have before and are afraid they'll get things wrong. And a certain percentage are illiterate. And a certain percentage panic when asked to operate an unfamiliar device. And an overwhelming percentage of people are afraid/unconfident in asking for assisstance.
Keep voting procedures simple, and always, always, design them for the lowest common denominator.
And Mr. Katz, try explaining how to vote online to my 80 year old, phoneless grandmother.
"A goldfish was his muse, eternally amused"
Vs lbh pna ernq guvf, ybt bss abj. Tb bhgfvqr. Syl n xvgr.
By definition, anybody who actually runs for public office is probably one of the least eligable, or desirable, people to have in that office.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
"The country that helped invent the most technologically advanced information network in world history can't eliminate bureaucratic lines, create simple ballots, or tally up the votes that will determine the future of its own government."
Could this have anything to do with the fact that the country has nothing to do with it, it's up to the individual states? Don't tread on me...
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
It's not that they have THAT MUCH influence by themselves, but the do have more than their population should hold. The idea that 'one person = one vote' doesn't hold up in the current election process for President. California has something like 60 times the population of Idaho, but only 18 times the electoral votes. So a voter in Idaho gets 3.3 times as many votes as a person in California. Does that sound fair to anyone?
e x p e c t d e l a y . c o m
I think there are two segments to this discussion about overhauling the electoral college and addressing this may make it acceptable to both small and big states. The process of assigning the electors by a states representation in congress favors small states. However, the assigning of all of the electors to the winner of a state regardless of the popular division of votes in that state also skews the voting away from a popular representation. A compromise could include keeping the small state bias in number of electors, but have states divide up electors by popular vote percentage. This method would also allow third party candidates to be involved in the election of the president. Also, those who say that the small states will vote against reforming the electoral college because of the bonus that they get may not be right. Lets assume (or hope) that the people of this great country can actually see the validity of the greater good, see beyond their own benefit and make a choice to better the country.
e x p e c t d e l a y . c o m
...would not allow you to vote for 2 candidates for the same slot.
... could not be tampered remotely
... was simple enough there was no place to hide gimmicks in code.
Here in Dane County, Wisconsin, (Madison and environs,) they were abandoned after the 1992 election, because of breakdowns in campus area wards. But read on...
Turns out the spools of paper in the Write-In windows had not been changed in 26 years, and become brittle. When torn, the roll did not advance. As I was waging an active Write-In campaign for Sheriff, the 1st serious write-in effort in a generation, this weakness was exposed.
A $400 investment in new paper would have left us with a better system than the $600,000 spent on a closed source counter of Felt-tip marked ballots subject to ANALOG ambiguities.
Ben Masel: 51,282 votes for US Senate in the Wisconsin Democratic Primary
The comp.risks digest issue 21.12 has a well-written essay by Lauren Weinstein and Peter G. Neumann (both affiliated with PFIR and ACM). They refer to some position papers which address some of the risks associated with various computerized solutions to the voting mess.
Personally, I have plenty of reasons to be skeptical about digital voting systems. Paper ballots can be verified after the fact. As creaky as the security systems are in our current system, the citizens who are our poll workers are less likely (IMHO) to defraud their neighbors than impersonal vote-hackers living in other states. It's the integrity of the poll workers which helps to keep our system honest.
One specific concern about the glib comparison between anti-fraud provisions in e-commerce and those in the polling stations: e-commerce transactions have no requirement for anonymity. In fact, the anti-fraud provisions require that one examine his credit card statement to verify that it contains only legitimate charges. How would the anonymity of votes be protected? I'm not saying it's impossible, I just can't see an obvious way to do it which has parallels to e-commerce.
Now, to a proposal: after this election and the legal challenges are over, and we have sworn in the new Congress and a new President, the partisan divisions are likely to be more bitter than ever. One way to try to bring the two parties together would be for them to cooperate early in the session on an appropriation to the states, for a nationwide upgrade of the voting infrastructure. This could include a research phase, to identify or invent the best solution[s] and possibly to have NIST create some sort of standards (not technology standards, but "shall" requirements on security features, etc). After the research phase, the second appropriation would go to the states to deploy new infrastructure. Finally, some of the anecdotal evidence suggests that better training of poll workers is desirable.
By cooperating on such uncontroversial measures, the new Congress might be able to move on to other matters important to the nation. In the process, our Congress might elevate their public image above the current low, so that they might be seen as the moral equals of, say, Chimpanzees instead of Baboons. (apologies to primates).
Katz will pay for it all!!
Hip Hip Horray!!
Validatiing online voter identity without compromising the secret ballot is also problematic
I didnt mean to knock Louisiana, It could have just as well been back country utah, or back country illinois, or back country main, the point is not everybody has access to the technology that we may assume is standard.
my apologies
Technology has to be perfected before it can be put to use in something like our voting system.
I mean when they invented the printing press they didnt immediatly start making ballots and have everyone vote by paper.
Think about some back country voting booth in Louisiana where they dont know jack about computers, it would be hard to get a computer out there and tell people to use it to vote. I know thats not what he meant but if we are going to have any use of technology it should be sponsored by the government and you know how they fuck things up.
Give computers 8 - 12 more years and they should be more widely accepted and maybe by then we can use them to aid in the voting process.
We are taking several days to figure out who our new president is.... So what??? We are still running fine (besides the pussies who are selling on the stock market). We will have a president eventually. Imagine the potential for corruption if we used electronic voting, whole new system would need to be developed, hacking, electronic fraud, computer crashes, OS compatibility, etc.. okay enough ranting on my behalf
A system in which strategic voting is really hard is Condorcet voting. In Condorcet voting, strategy is only possible when the public prefers A to B, B to C, and C to A, and even then, it's tricky. Condorcet also satisfies many rigorous fairness criteria that instant runoff (and other methods) fail.
While it is important to realize the problems with simple majority voting, it is also important not to fall into another, less obvious, snare, like Borda or instant runoff. Instead, look at the results of hard logical and mathematical analysis. People who study this generally agree on Condorcet. (There are some variations, so to be precise, they agree on the basic idea.) See electionmethods.com or other sites
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.
That's a rather bigoted opinion. There are significant populations of poor, undereducated individuals of black, latino, and white backgrounds. Asians seem to be less well represented among them but I'm sure there are some. Your 'observation' also seems to fly in the face of the well-heeled, reasonably educated plaintiffs in Florida.
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
Moderators, if you get the joke, please moderate this post's parent FUNNY!
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
Within the federal system, the electoral college is fair, and makes sense. Be aware that deciding the president by popular vote heads us toward a form of government with all sovereignty vested at the national level. If you want that, you might as well suggest proportional representation in the Senate too.
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
If I am mentally incapable of understanding the ballot, even after asking questions, then my vote should not be counted in this election, or any other election for that matter.
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
on Saturday Night Live (paraphrased from memory):
"Some people claim that voting over the internet would prevent the kind of confusion we have had in this election.
Oh, yeah, that's great. These old folks who can't even work a punch machine are just gonna love the internet. Hey, my grandfather can't even program a VCR."
---
Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment.
One major problem with preferential and other alternative voting methods is that they are more complicated than the current "vote for the best guy" method. We could implement these voting methods in the polls that are on so many web pages these days, and in this way people would get more exposure to them. This is one simple way, that we could help to bring about this voting reform.
Computers don't make mistakes. What they do, they do on purpose.
I don't know about anyone else, but I'm voting for this guy, he makes some damn good points.
Mike
"I would kill everyone in this room for a drop of sweet beer."
DISCLAIMER: These are my immediate thoughts, feel free to point out any problems with my ideas, propose alternate solutions, etc. I'm open to intriguing political discussion.
Anyhow, on with the show:
Campaign funding sucks. Given enough money, one person could do just about anything they wanted within the laws of physics.
Campaign funding should be a static amount allocated by the government and *every* Presidential canidate should receive equal amounts. There should be no campaign spending that does not come from this alotment. This will ensure that each canidate gets equal opportunity finances. How you apply your alotted finances to your campaign is up to you.
All presidential canidates should participate in debates and be given equal opportunities to speak, grill the other canidates, etc, etc.
Basically, we need civil rights for the government. It's political racism, it's segregation of the parties. The people need to understand that the democratic and republican parties are not the only two parties, nor are they neccessarily the two best parties. The only reason the democratic and republican parties control the election is because they have the money and they have the popularity.
Slander should be forbidden. Even discussing another canidate in advertisement should be forbidden. Commercials that proclaim "mr. doe says he is against an income tax, but look, he signed this pledge to institute a 47857% income tax in 97 states" should be forbidden. To run such a commercial would disqualify you from the race. Advertising should proclaim only what the canidate believes and stands for, his stance on the issue, not anyone else's.
The electoral college is a hassle. Abolish it or change it. The president should be chosen by popular vote, directly or indirectly. If not abolition, electoral votes should be split according to state popular vote.
Anyhow, these are just a few of the things I see wrong with the US republic, oh, excuse me, "democracy."
Mike
"I would kill everyone in this room for a drop of sweet beer."
Yeah, I tried to invent a completely impartial committee that had lots of power over an election.
Maybe the committee could be made of a panel of judges or something, some type of system that maintains checks and balances.
Or perhaps the judicial branch could review committee decisions if they were made in bad faith. And make it an expedited process. No one wants to sit in court because some damn committee said you couldn't run a commericial.
Sigh, I just don't know. I can't think of a system that ensures general fairness.
Mike
"I would kill everyone in this room for a drop of sweet beer."
"On November 10, Florida state officials stated that the Palm Beach ballot did not violate any provisions of Florida law."
This is the conclusion as to whether or not the ballot was invalid on the link you gave. Perhaps you should read your own evidence before making your case.
Refrag
I have a website. It's about Macs.
Alright, so what if I could vote online. Will that suddenly change voting patterns? I wouldnt bet on it. Personally, we need to explore other forms of voting. I'd like to see us ditch the whole just plain one vote system. I like the Borda count, but I'd prefer a ranked style system in which instant runoffs become possible. Simply eliminate the lowest vote getter, and place that persons vote for the next highest ranked person on the list. I havent done the math, it may end up the same as a simple borda count. Still, this sort of setup prevents the Nader-Gore dilemma, and allows me to vote for my 3rd party of choice but still influence the main party choice. It also prevents the problem with the vote for whoever is qualified setup, that being, you cant choose between the kinda qualified, and the nowhere near qualified. I couldn't say that I even though I dont like any of them, I'd still prefer bush or gore to Buchanan.
"My head hurts, My feet stink, and I dont love Jesus." -Jimmy Buffett
1-- The Electoral College Stays!
The Founding Fathers (FFs) knew enough to ensure against Mob Rule and or Stupid People. In the day of the FFs a group of people could rise up get guns and MAKE people do what they wanted (See Also the The Am. Revolution) Stupid People have plauged not only this country but the whole world for eons, the FFs knew they needed good folk of hearty stock who:
A--Could not be bought for a penny (ie were wealthy, land owner types)
B--Could read (not dirt eating types)
C--Were not confused by shiny objects and or anything called chad.
Hence the Electoral College. A good idea that 3 times in US History has said, "What're you people idiots? We're electing this guy because you people couldn't be trusted with dull sticks."
2-- Voting On The Web?
Are you frigging insane? The Yankees can't keep their site safe, and they're NYers!
However, I have this idea. (Here's the idea part)
You still having voting centers BUT you have machines that are hooked together via LAN. Every voter gets a credit card thingy. You slip the CC into the voting KIOSK. They are just computers w/ 17" monitors and a button pad and in 640X480 you choose your candidates and when you hit vote you get a screen that says "IS THIS WHO YOU WANT?" and lists out your choices and it sits there for 40 seconds or so and THEN you can hit yes or no. A big "DING!" goes off and you're out of there.
It doesn't "transmit" anything until the polls close and then it "Blips" everything over in one shot to some central server who then "blips it all to DC (or wherever). To keep the intercepting down to a minimum.
Obviously the whole thing runs on Linux with Perl, MySQL, PHP and Apache. With some wicked huge encryption.
This
Don't take it personally your state is nice and all, but seeing as how you're not even done counting yet I would have to say that your states system is fairly flawed. More to the point since your state's EC vote has never really meant much I'll bet OR has NEVER finished counting their votes since forver.
The mail is a bad thing
This
So in other words, a very human problem creates a technical problem that creates another human problem .. you get the idea ..
Recall that originally, senators were chosen by the state legislatures. direct election of senators is provided for in the 17th amendment to the constitution. in other words, direct election can happen. you just need to want it to happen.
"I've come to the conclusion that revolutions aren't profitable." -kevin kelly
however, even if we admit that the EC protects small geographical constituencies, what it doesn't do is protect ideological minorities.
the constitution is all about restraining change. thus, the bicameral legislature, the arduous amendment process, and the electoral college. it forces minorities to try to wheedle concessions out of larger parties, while the larger parties do their best to bring on the smaller parties/constituencies (faction, in the parlance of the framers). we can say this is wise, but like it or not, the ec is conservative, like the constitution itself and its framers. the framers (as a group) were not radicals, except insofar as they'd rather have power in the hands of landholders than royalty. they produced a constitution designed to protect those interests.
what's nice about first-past-the-poll or ranking systems is that both allow greater participation for smaller parties without relegating them to (alleged) spoiler roles.
"I've come to the conclusion that revolutions aren't profitable." -kevin kelly
I voted for Cthulhu, which seems to have been the right choice. It's nice to see a third party candidate win by such an overwhelming margin. I'm sure that as the President he will keep all of his promises, unlike the other two twits. Sure he will eventually consume the world in darkness and despair, but at least he isn't claiming 'it's for the children'. He will eat them first. Of course with the layout of the ballot, I can't remember if it was Cthulhu or Buchanan that I picked. Same difference I suppose...
Remember... Chaos is your fiend...
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What if the election weren't as close? Then there would have been seen no problem with the way America goes to the polls. Could it just have been the candidates themselves that can't let go and have sparked this controversy? I have not yet heard a story where someone in Florida did complain about the ballots and was heard. Shouldn't we try to improve the 'tech support' first? Think about it. Even if we move to a state of the art system, if someone realizes that the eBallot is confusing and is not heard, would it not cause the same problem? We also have to consider that if there are seniors who are pensive about the using computers then they will not feel comfortable with the new technology. It sounds cruel, but we'd have to wait for them to die out.
Also consider that even tho' it (online voting and voting registration schemes) seems better, state governments will wait until the method is cheaper to implement. Until then they will choose a legislation for newer, better roads, over that type of system.
So what do we have to do? We have to recommend a cheap reliable system, where it is garanteed that confusion can be spotted early and minimized. It is not required that the system is electronic.
The events in Florida have raised questions about the best way to ensure that your vote is counted for the candidate you intend and how, if results were invalidated, we could re-poll only the affected voters.
I think this could be accomplished by issuing receipts to voters that showed their choices along with a randomly generated ID number that would also be assigned to their ballot--as is currently done with blood donation.
In this way, we could avoid some of the current confusion, while still protecting privacy. This solution could be applied both to voting live and in person, or to voting electronically.
States' rights notwithstanding, I think we need more consistency in polling methods for national elections.
I'm (mostly) repeating a post that I've already made, since the same mistake was made in this post.
According to this salon.co m article, the number of discarded ballots this year was 29,000 compared to about 15,000 in 1996. The 19,000 number is for votes that were discarded due only to overvoting. The difference? This year there were much more double-punched ballots than 1996. Something like 4.1% of the presidential vote was overvotes, compared to about .82% for Senate. Also, the 3400 votes for Buchanan were way out of line from what they were in other counties (no, that's not proof that there's a problem, there may be a concentration of Buchanan voters in Palm Beach County, but which explanation do you believe?)
At any rate, it's clear that there was a significant problem with the ballots in Palm Beach County that may change the election. The fact that the Bush campaign is try to thwart a hand recount is ridiculous given that Bush signed a Texas law stating that a hand recount is the preferable method to recount!
Ever wonder what would have happened if Microsoft designed voting booth software?
Maybe that pencil and paper idea isn't so bad after all!
...Constitution, Article II, clause II
Clause 2: Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
So the states get to figure out how they want to appoint electors, unless you want to amend the Constitution, which is no picnic. Though, after this mess, we may have a mandate in the country to do that.
Still I don't find the fraud angle compelling. Doesn't it seem to you that we could find a technical solution to fraud that would at least cut down the incidence of fraud AND mistakes by an order of magnitude?
karl
The second derivative of the space-luck curve is infinite at my nexus, at least on the pong axis.
Butterfly ballots, like those used in Cook county, IL, Fulton county, GA, and Palm Beach county, FL, are not at all difficult to use. Take the ballot card, slide it in the slot and hook the alignment pins into the holes at the top of the ballot. Flip all ballot pages to the right, like you're about to read a book. Then carefully read each page of the entire ballot to make sure you understand what's going on. Finally, go back through the ballot and mark your choices after giving serious contemplation as to what you're doing.
Worried about "hanging chad?" Take your ballot out of the slot, and flip it over, viewing it from the back side. See anything that shouldn't be there? Pull it off.
There's nothing wrong with the voting method; the problem lies in the laziness of the voters.
The answer is this: hold voting in higher regard and make time for it. Rushing through the voting booth is no excuse for voting errors. If voters can't be bothered to take their time and use caution and care, they get what they deserve. It's the voter's responsibility to ensure they understand their ballot and properly mark it, whether they're drawing an 'X,' completing an arrow, filling in a bubble or punching a hole. I've used several different ballots, but in each case I took the time to understand them. Should I not expect the same of others? Should we as a society not expect dilligence and care from voters?
Secondly, we do not live in a direct democracy. And thank God for that! Mob rule does not sound like a fair or equatible way to govern.
Finally, even smart, intelligent people can behave in foolish ways. I never said that they were stupid. I said their actions were stupid. It is the hight of foolishness to rush through the voting process. Even a PhD could behave this way, and it would be just as foolish and stupid if a moron did. Perhaps more; the PhD should know better!
I never said stupid people shouldn't vote! I said people shouldn't vote stupidly!
Dad gum it!! It looked FINE when I previewed it! Is Slashcode eating my posts AGAIN?
so there!
I've also consistantly checked the box for +1 bonus, too.
The problem is with these slothful and unthinking voters that do one of the following things:
- Do not double-check their ballot before depositing it in the ballot box. Voters finding errors on their ballot are supposed to call the attention of a poll supervisor, and the supervisor will provide the voter a fresh ballot. When the voter is happy with the condition of his votes on the new ballot he can deposit it with pride; his vote went how he wanted and will be counted.
- Finding they marked the wrong candidtate, they do not call a poll supervisor and instead just mark their indended candidate. This is even dumber than not checking your ballot, since the voter leave the voting booth with the full knowledge that their ballot is invalid.
- After voting the way they intended, they leave the poll to go to their victory parties. At the parties they note that their candidate isn't doing as well as they had anticipated. They walk across the room to their local representitave and tell Mr. Wexler that they "accidently" voted for the wrong guy! Mr. Wexler takes the ball and runs with it. They also . Meanwhile, Mr. Wexler repays the voter's allegience by saying that his constituents are all but complete idiots.
In any case, the responsibility lies entirely with the voter to mark his ballot properly. If the voter makes a mistake, it is his responsibility to get a fresh ballot to correct his mistake. Once the voter is satisfied with his choices, he must personally place his ballot in the box. No one can do it for him.As far as voter confusion, if a voter doesn't understand the ballot, it is again his responsibility to find a poll supervisor to explain it.
We just have some new "ingredients" to count on:
My final comment: you americans complicate your selfes to much and your image associated with democracy is at the highest risk: if Bush is declarated president elected you will not have the right to say you honor democracy, but the right to say your lawyers are good or bad.
Just imagine what you would have saved if just used a pen and old-fashioned ballots!
I'm sick of hearing that using more techical advanced procedures would make the change... I think that using them just will make thing worst.
Carlos Niebla
Carlos Niebla
If you recall Jon, in the States we don't hold federal elections but instead elections run primarily by the state apparatus. Each state has laws-different laws-I might add, about balloting, voter registration guidelines, office holder eligibility, etc. Even though I might disagree with some of these laws (like the one that allowed a convict in a Massachusetts prison to run for governor of Vermont), I'm completely wary of increasing federal intervention in this instance. Plus, I'd even argue that making this a federal responsibility would disenfranchise the smaller/less populated/rural states like mine. (We don't have as much influence in Congress other states, etc.)
And about those 19K ballots that were thrown out of the election in PBC, I just have to wonder what are the statistics for spoilt ballots in other states....(I voted on Tuesday with a marker and a scan tron sheet, it would have been easy to spoil my ballot if I hadn't paid attention).
This is another view of the world.
The rumors, allegations, and half truths continue even after the election.
amar
... forget about the crackers, hackers and script kiddies ... just figure that some plain ol ballot stuffing of the electronic kind ... there is no way now to tie a ballot to the person voting - there is a list of registered voters, but the ballot itself has no mark or registration or serial number or id or etc. that ties it back to the original voter ... and without that, what is to stop an election official from just tapping a button, or a unbiased program glitch from just making the whole event a travesty?
I'm not saying that the present system is perfect - it is far from it - but the presence of a filled in paper ballot is a lot harder to cheat with (though it is still possible and probally occurs ...) ... just that a person's right to choose and vote and not reveal it would have to change - I am not sure if America is ready for that - Americans are funny about privacy, as I think a lot are going to learn ...
AZspot
Don't forget the piece of string that the pencil is tied to!
I can vote for members of 5 different bodies, parish council, district council, county council, parliament and Eurpean parliament. I also onced voted in a local referendum, on council policy too boring to bring up here. Sometimes elections for more than one body fall on the same day. Council elections usually occurr in May.
in say the past 50 years. Once now granted the Nixon/Kennedy thing was close but was not this close and Ford/Carter was also close but not this close. This was a one off in which some spoiled ballots in a place that happens to make a difference this time came to light. To give you another example. There are thousands of spoiled ballots here it Utah discarded because they can't run through the machines. Guess what no one cares. Why? Because they are not going to matter. Guess what there are thousands of spoiled ballots everywhere in the country that do not matter this time around. Then there are the spoiled ballots that happen to matter this time around and everyone talks about how the system is broken. The system is not broken. It is working how it should we have a very close vote in which spoiled ballots may play a role. So it is going to be looked at my everyone involved depending on what is decided by the people who decide such things it will all work out. Think about it when was the last time you did not know who was the next president by about 7 or 8 in the evening local time. For most of us this is the first time. It is very intersting that all the news shows are talking about "how every vote counts this time" because you know what they like everyone else know that in the past every vote did not count. This is true even if you don't want to deal with it. So what are we left with? The system is working like it has worked and I for one see no real reason to try to reform it. I mean look at Brazil with their online voting and they are just really stable and have not problems with elections. yea right.....
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
BAH. What we need is less technology gumming up the process. Some people can not even handle punchcards.
NO. What we need is to go back to something simpler. Something fool-proof.
We need to go back to the one way to make sure we all get our voice heard. Let's run elections from here on out by a show of hands!
Cheers,
Tom
Reality does not happen until you analyze the dots. -Don DeLillo (Underworld)
Sorry for not reading All the other posts, but...
It is and should remain up to the state to decide how to cast their ballot for a national figure, as well as (obviously) for one of their own. Yes, there are technical solutions to the ballot-counting problem, but they may not be implemented nation-wide, just suggested. Polling places must remain public vis a vis, the 'gun to the head' problem. Only in public can you reasonably be assured that votes weren't coerced.
I think Gore has a legitimate claim, but, more importantly, the state of Florida Must find it in their best interests to assure the rest of the nation that their method of choosing their electorate is fair and trustworthy.
I am so damn close to entering into flamebait about so-called 'stolen elections' that I will stop now and go have lunch. This is an extremely heated topic right now. Lemme just say this: I hope both gentlemen stand back and let the Florida legislature, in full view of the entire nation, establish the legality and restore the integrity of its state electoral process. Anything less might (should?) incite rioting in the streets.
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
The problem is that FEDERAL elections are being overseen by local election boards. Republicans may bitch, but Presidential elections should be overseen by a FEDERAL election board. Bugger the local electiion boards. Let them run the elections for local congressman, senator, county boards, sheriff, dog catcher, whatever. Presidential elections are too important to be left to the vagaries of Matilda Foggybottom, the county registrar. Have all the political parties pony up the cash every four years to pay for a fleet of federal election officials to tally the presidential vote. Make it a federal offense (25 yrs... no parole, no questions asked) for local officials to even TOUCH the presidential ballots. Additionally, put a gag order on the candidates if an election is called into question. The first one to break the order is automatically disqualified. (In other words, STFU and count the votes!)
I like the idea of the Borda system,too. Consider this, however: It would help independents (like John McCain) and third parties at the expense of the "mainstream" Democrats and Republicans. Therefore, it won't ever get passed. Another reality: Small states get a (however slight) boost in per-capita voting power from the electoral college. Since the number of small states outweighs the number of large ones, I don't expect them to ratify the constitutional amendement needed to abolish the electoral collge.
-- "On second thought, let's not go there. Camelot is a silly place."
Buchanan once got more than twice as many votes from that same district during the GOP primaries (and much fewer people normally vote in a primary). He has ALWAYS done better in that district than in the rest of Florida. I'm not going to pretend that I have any idea why, but it is true. As difficult as it may be for you to accept, there are a lot of Jews in America that agree with Buchanan's brand of hard-core religious conservatism. (Several can be found writing for the Jewish World Review... I'm not providing a link to it because "Dr. Laura" annoys the hell out of me. Find it yourself if you care.)
Nice to see George Junior already violating his campaign promises of tort reform and local governance by suing the state government of Florida.
I don't remember him ever promising to never file an injunction against anybody. That said, it was a very stupid move to stoop to Gore's level. Now they both come away looking like whiney bitches.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Election history in the US teaches us that a hand-count means
1. A longer, more expensive counting process.
2. More opportunities for human error to effect the count.
3. More opportunities for ballot fraud, especially in the late stages of counting a close race.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Secondly, all this talk about thousands of people claiming they were confused is a fraud. It has just been discovered today that Al Gore's people hired a telemarketing firm to call thousands of Gore-friendly voters (in those close Florida districts we are hearing about) on election night, asking them to complain about confusing ballots. Over 5,000 people were called by that firm in the first 45 minutes, once the decision was made to start making a stink about the election.
All these "disenfranchized" voters picketing the streets in Florida is a total lie. Every one of those people is a Gore activist trying to reverse the loss of their favorite candidate, regardless of the legitimate outcome.
The democrats now claim to have somehwere around 8,000 sworn statements from people who think they accidentally voted for Buchannan, even though he only got about 3,500 votes in the disputed district.
The ballot that Jesse Jackson is waiving around and calling unfair is the same style as was used to elect his son in Chicago.
This ain't about a poor election system, folks. It is about a PR campaign to undermine the nations confidence in the process which left Al Gore on the losing side.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Nobody complained to Wexler until Gore's people had a telemarketing firm call 5000 Democrats in that district, asking them to put up a fuss. This is not a groundswell we are seeing, but the spin of a Politcal Action Committee. (...and I'm sure Senator Wexler knew it, too.)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Also: use biros to put a tick beside the one you want, count the result by hand. Humans are far better at this than machines but slower, but then you've got until next year to do the count so you've got plenty of time to sort it out and get the right answer, rather than getting the fast answer for Dan Rather. Never going to happen.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
So how would this make things better? We'd still have the old '18th-century' systems in place!
all rather unbelievable, and disturbing.
My main concern is the scalability of the various voting solutions. and the need to have a method to properly validate results. Thus original documents seem to be vital, in order to at least be maintain in unaltered form the original actions of the voters. While there is no doubt that small electronic communities can handle the voting process well, in large communities those with vested interests have too great a temptation to try and monkey with the system. I believe that the technology will take a generation or two to become viable, probably via a quantum security system.
In the meantime, there are too many scary scenarios possible, many that play into the hands of the lunatic fringe, and many that justify paranoia, protected by the shear audacity and unbelievableness of the scheme.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
If you take this ability to vote online, and if there were ever a binding "None of the Above Vote" on the ballot, there would be no excuse for apathy...
Sarcasm is the recourse of a weak mind...
--
Score:5, insightful????? Please! This is flamebait, pure and simple. There are no original ideas here, hell, there arent even any plagiarized ideas here, Dictator just rips on Katz. Im not defending the article, and should be moded down as Offtopic, but since when is the only criteria for an interesting or insightful post that someone have the ability to type more than 100 words?
The ivory tower has never had to reach so h
In a popular vote, every vote counts
WRONG! go back and read the article at Discover (and re-read Katz's article above) If you elect your president by a purely popular vote every vote DOES NOT count - only the people who vote for the (eventual) winner count, everyone elses' vote means nothing. This is the basic problem with plurality voting (as you propose).
There will certainly be allot of debate take place about how to change the present electoral system in the USA as a result of this mess. Please dont let this opportunity for REAL change pass you by, send a letter to your elected officials demanding the following 3 things (if your Canadian, just #1 & #2):
1) Stop electing people using Plurality and switch to Borda Voting - which is best suited to reaching consensus, which is what we want isnt it?
2) All 3rd party money should be stripped from all politics - arent you people tired of watching your politicians selling legislation and accepting bribes, money for your campaign in exchange for favour is nothing more than a bribe, what the hell are we thinking...
3) Toss out this silly EC idea* - allow each state to split its electoral college votes based on 'ridings' where each vote comes from, ie. divide Florida up in 25 'ridings' and allow each small area to elect the candidate that best speaks to that smaller region, maybe the candidate will have something that appeals to them more specifically. This smaller region can have a greater say in what is relevant specifically to them.
REAL-BASIC CHANGES ARE NECESSARY and with this mess, some changes are going to take place - PLEASE make the right choices and REALLY fix the problems...
*and for every person who is now going to say "we live in a Republic not a Democracy - because Democracy doesnt work - blah blah" give your head a shake... you had a Republic in a time when it took 3 weeks to send a letter to someone in Washington it wasnt technically feasible to govern such a large area with a democratic system... CHANGE IS GOOD stop thinking of your 'Forefathers' as infallible Gods and your 'Constitution' as their bible... BUILD A BETTER SYSTEM - RAISE YOUR EXPECTATIONS - CONTINUOUS IMPROVMENT SHOULD BE THE GOAL
I was personally disappointed in Gore's sudden lack of trust in technology. Gore has a long history of supporting the development and use of technology, (to say nothing of the Internet) and suddenly his campaign decides that the counting machines are not accurate enough. We need to count them manually to be fair?
I cannot comment on the accuracy rate of hanging chads and mechanical punch card readers, but at least we can be certain that their counts are not politically motivated. Does Gore honestly expect the same unbiased count from election volunteers?
To the contrary, he is positively depending on their bias.
Today's Chicago Tribune has a story ("Chicago certifies vote") that gives the number of "ballots cast ... in which a vote for president was not counted." Due to both undervotes and overvotes (the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners doesn't differentiate), the number was 72,093 or seven percent.
If we had a system where the president would be elected by a plurality of the national popular vote, surely the Bush people would be challenging this, trying to gain additional votes through a recount. Just two more cities with situations like this and -- under an election by national popular vote -- that's enough to change the outcome.
I found this paragraph particularly interesting,
The Electoral College -- or, more precisely, an electoral system where each State has a given number of votes for president -- does have at least one major advantage in a close election. It serves to contain disputes and demands for recounts and actually makes it easier to determine the winner; it serves as a buffer that protects against a Florida fiasco on the national level.
Nationally, out of the 98,303,931 votes cast (and unofficially counted so far) for the two major-party candidates, Gore leads Bush by only 216,291 votes, a fraction of one percent. (You can get these numbers from any number of places; I've taken them from http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/poli tic s/.)
If it weren't for the Electoral College, I think you'd be seeing challenges to the results and demands for recounts or revotes even in those areas where everyone agrees that one candidate or the other won comfortably. In Chicago, for example, Gore got 769317 votes to Bush's 164919 (http://www.chicagoelecti ons .com/CHI1100ReportPage5.html), but I wouldn't be surprised if there somewhere around a third as many spoiled ballots (50,000 in Cook County, IL in the 1996 election rings a bell) as there were votes for Bush, but there's no need for a recount because everybody agrees that Gore won Illinois, and it isn't the nation-wide popular vote that matters. The two sides would be trying to squeeze every last vote out of every last precinct in the whole country if it weren't for the Electoral College limiting that nightmare to Florida and a few counties elsewhere.
Of course this doesn't necessarily mean that the Electoral College should be retained in its present form, but it certainly does suggest that we shouldn't be so quick to discard the balance it provides between national and federal elements in the American system of electing presidents.
Digital Signatures are legal now. There is no need mail paper to back up the election. A voter could potentially print a signed copy of his ballot. Signed by the election authority at the time he votes. This could then be compared to his online ballot at any time.
Yes, there is always the potential that a site could be Hijacked. But, as the author says, few would risk federal penalties for tampering with an election when they would be so relatively easy to track down.
The question of the electoral college and this mechanisms ability to represent sparsely populated states is another wank. In an Australian style voting system with built-in runoffs rural areas would gain added representation by third, fourth, etc. party candidates. When it becomes possible to vote for the candidate you prefer without the possibility of sacrificing your vote every viewpoint can be represented fairly. Imagine being able to vote for a pro-choice fiscal conservative!
Strange to think that even the majority viewpoint can't be adequately represented by our current pathetic two party system.
The current outcome of this election is a timely blessing. It emphasizes the dire need to reform our election process. Thank god the founding fathers realized that our government would need the ability to evolve. It is not overstating the case to say that our ability to adapt and fix this situation now could easily determine whether we remain the preeminant world power in the 22nd century. It may not be a matter of the election process itsself but merely the fact that we are unable to change to correct something that is so obviously broken. If we can't fix this we will ultimately strangle on our own democracy.
I think it is also useful to view this in the light of another major issue; Campaign Finance Reform. Interesting to note that a well conceived fix would also reduce the power of special interests and diminish the need for huge contributions. Maybe these problems were just the undiagnosed symtoms of our diseased electoral process? Is there a doctor in the house?
Is there anything that Jesse Jackson DOESN'T try to stifle???
An example would be the people running for sherriff. If you are unaware of the candidates for that office, you may vote for someone who is being paid off by drug dealers and such. It's hard to know all the candidates that you want to elect. Some people do research before they vote, but the majority do not, and simply vote for names by political party, or even randomly. I once voted for someone because he had a funny name (Dick Wood or something like that) but I knew nothing of the guy and can't remember what office he was running for.
A misinformed vote is a bad thing. What you propose is that we not only continue with how the system works now (picking by who has a better haircut, nicer looking kids, etc.) but making it worse, so that we have people voting that don't know and don't care, and only vote because they are forced to. I do agree that there is something wrong with not caring. I hate Republicans and Democrats so I always vote 3rd party. Even though I don't agree with them 100% I do think they are a lot more honest than the two main parties and if they can win some smaller offices then they can do some good there to make things better locally.
Now...to go on another subject about mandatory voting, some places are very exclusive about who they let vote. I moved recently to Georgia. Now, they have the motor voter registration, so when I got my driver's license they let me register to vote. That was in September. When the day came for me to vote, I went to the place I was told to go, and prepared to make my vote. The problem is that Georgia is worse than Florida. When you register to vote, they might lose your paperwork, they might forget to process it, etc. Basically, I was told that I was not in the books, and therefore could not vote. I was pissed. I was shocked to learn that I was not the only person with that problem, and that it had happened to a lot of people. At least 2 others in the 5 minutes I was there. So how can you make voting mandatory, when they don't even want us to vote in the first place?
Well, those are my two arguements against it...feel free to agree or disagree.
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech...
/.ers) learn to read.???
The states can do as they please.
When will people (especially
What the electoral college does is require the winner to have received a broad base of support across the whole country. Whoever wins, we can be sure that lots of people in lots of different places voted for him.
We do not live in a democracy, we live in a constitutional republic. Were we to live in a democracy, this nation would be called The State, not The United States. The Constitution exists to limit the powers of the national government that binds the individual states; each of which have their own state constitution, laws, government, and militia.
Democracies do not scale. The centralized infrastructure to support them cannot be guarded from corruption via peer review because the central government by nature has no peers. The viability of the US lies in the republic. States and counties are given autonomy over much of their actions with expicit regard to voting.
Cook County, Illinois, was a mess in the 1960 election. The US can absord and survive such corruption because it cannot proceed beyond that level. Voting handled on a national level is subject to fraud on a national level without the inclusion of excessive collaborators. History has plenty of democratically elected tyrants.
Since when does my state represent my voice, though? I'd kind of like having my own.
- Justin
I'm just going to respond to one of your points because I don't have time to respond to the others.
"Third, and this is something people often don't think about, voting isn't SUPPOSED to be easy."
Uh...no.
The preparation for voting, researching the candidates and issues, isn't SUPPOSED to be easy. The actual vote should be a matter of flipping a switch or pressing a key. The fact that my ballot (an SAT fill-in-the-blob type) might have been invalidated because the machine didn't like the way I filled in the blobs (and yes, I was careful, but I have no idea if my vote was recorded accurately) REALLY bothers me. As does the fact that I had to wait 45 minutes in line to vote. I was lucky that I was only 15 minutes late to work and that my employer doesn't really care when I come in as long as I get my work done. But what about those people who are unfortunate enough to work at places that will fire you or dock your pay if you come in five minutes late?
There is no excuse for one of the most powerful, wealthy and technologically advanced nations in the world relying on crap like punch ballots and fill-in-the-blob ballots to record the vote of its citizenry. We deserve an accurate and easy-to-use voting system.
Tigris
I'll tell you why. Because Americans are fucking stupid.. Not all of you, like artdodge, who ovbiously is quite intelligent. But for the most part, Americans as a people are fucking idiots.. Seriously, how the hell can't you figure out how to punch a hole in a box with a bloody arrow next to it?!
-TimmyC, Tech Guru
Also the ability to affect the outcome of a national popular vote by a "corrupt political machine" is smaller! Look at it now, if some corrupt Florida official has managed to change even just a 1000 votes this could decide the presidency (or stopped 1000 people from voting, or invalidated 1000 ballot papers). I think it would be very difficult to change 200,000 votes on a national level (and these numbers seem typical for close elections)! Either it would be obvious because it all came from the same place or you would need a very large criminal organisation which hopefully could get caught.
And what makes you think you'd have to recount the whole country??? If a party thinks something is wrong in a certain area they can ask for a recount there. Preferably you'd have representatives from all parties observing the vote/count in the first instance.
Incidentally, is there any explanation why Palm beach thinks it will take them 6 (!) working days for a manual count??? Most countries round the world count manually and the result is out by the next morning.... have they thought about having more than two officials counting? 400,000 votes/1000 workers: 4000 each counting 4 a minute -> 1000 minutes = less than a day!
In a popular vote, every vote counts. Anywhere in the country. Whether you're a democrat in Alasca or a Republican in Washington, you have the same influence as everyone else. You do NOT let the whole election be decided by a couple of pensioners in Palm Beach (I'm not saying they should have no say, but not more than people in other states!)
random question: As Dick Cheney managed to quickly change his voter registration to be allowed to be VP despite coming from the same state as Bush, has any party thought about having a bunch of their members change their voter registration from a "safe" or "lost" state to a "swing" state? If the Republicans had got 10000 Texans to quickly register in Florida, it wouldn't even be close now!
Anyway, my view: Where you live should have nothing to do with how important your vote is!!!
I don't disagree with you about the improvement involved in flipping a switch. That would improve accuracy and that's a good thing. You still have to show some initiative to vote, and that implies (though not necessarily accurately) that you showed some initiative to have a reason to vote the way you did.
As for anybodies job... the polls are open from 7 am to 7 pm. Very few people work all of those hours, and if you do, get an absentee ballot! They are easy to obtain (I don't know about your state, but here in Florida they send you a form well in advance of the election, all you have to do is send it back, you get an absentee ballot). I wouldn't mind seeing PDF files of absentee ballots on the net, since they still have to be matched up against voter records at the counting stage and duplicates could be eliminated then.
I do not believe (as Katz apparently does) that we should be voting from the comfort of our homes. We may be the laziest nation in the world, but that would be extreme.
Second, Slashdot is a geek haven, yet even Slashdot was hacked recently. You honestly expect the Government to do a better job securing their Internet voting system than Slashdot does securing their web server and ensuring no abuse of the Moderation system? If the geeks here can't do it, why would anybody assume it can be done somewhere else, and on a much larger scale? Maybe nobody has hacked Brazilian elections, but they are hardly the target US Elections would be, are they?
Third, and this is something people often don't think about, voting isn't SUPPOSED to be easy. Without creating an Elitist slant (which is not my intent), it's important to realize that making voting at least a little inconvenient serves the purpose of eliminating those voters who have absolutely no initiative. If they can't expend the effort to get to the polls (usually a 5 minute drive), they probably also didn't expend the initiative to consider the candidates and the issues. They might have some opinion spoon-fed to them by last nights news, but they are hardly qualified voters.
Fourth, ballots are supposed to be secret. Internet voting cannot be secret. You have to be identified to the system and tracked to prevent spoofing. If you separate the logon from the actual vote, then we've still got to cover what happens if someone votes on the Internet AND votes in the polling station. You have no idea who they voted for in either place, but they've been allowed to vote twice (and trivially at that).
I'm not opposed to improving the system, I just don't think we are ready to go full-bore into hi-tech, Internet voting, without a lot more effort being spent to solve the myriad technical and human problems involved. We don't really need the most technical solution possible, we need the most reliable and effective. If simply redesigning the ballots cures the problems, we don't have to scrap the whole system, we can just redesign the ballots.
The infrastructure for all these wonderful things is not in place, and as far as I know, is not being considered.
To start, how about replacing those old paper SS cards with mangetic cards? I don't know about everybody else out there, but when I go to vote, they have a LARGE book with everybodies signature on it for the county, so that it may be compared when you sign in. I'm sure those simple voting machines cost a pretty penny just because they are for government purposes. How much extra would it really cost to add a magnetic scanner to it.
Verification does not need to be done in realtime when they scan the card. Scan it and just log the ID and the vote. Then when voting is done, let the machines connect to a central tabulation server. If there are more than one transaction by any individual, keep the first one and eliminate the rest, as well as flag it for something the FBI should take a look at.
"There seems to be a need for social and technological reforms, not merely political ones. Government has failed to use technology to deal with civic information in the Information Age, and citizens are paying the price."
Is this a surprise? The government is rarely an agent for reform or change of any kind. It should be no surprise that we don't get leadership from the federal government. Government generates followers, not leaders.
Citizens always pay the price when they depend on the government to make any societal, technological, or political change.
Imagine the ad campaign:
Use our card and get a 10% return on your vote. Vote in 10 different individual elections and get an extra vote for your favorite candidate, ABSOLUTELY FREE!!!
When this happens, Corporate America will OWN politics....
Unless of course we can PayPal our vote :)
See 1st steps at: http://www.ss.ca.gov/executive/ivote/final_report. htm
C'est une monde triste qui ne prend pas le temps de savoir tout ce qu'on peut faire.
I think you're mistaken. The problem isn't with the format of the ballot at all. Pencil and paper might work in your society, but here, some people would get confused and, rather than admit their mistakes or ask someone for help, they'd blame it on the lack of pencil sharpeners.
As far as I'm concerned, they shouldn't change a thing; if it is so much complexity that some of the voters revert to the "Hey, it's not my fault" kind of mentality, then is it really that mentality we want deciding a president?
Otherwise, how would we know which hacker with 10^23 votes is the real winner?
I have Unix underpants.
and another thing -- i really think bush is hurting himself by taking legal action to stop the recounts. if he is so confident of his victory, then he should feel confident that recounts would only serve to reinforce and LEGITIMIZE his victory. otherwise, he will forever serve with an asterisk next to his name, and prove completely inneffective.
pezpunk
Internet killed the video star,
i could live a little longer in this prison
The problem is that if you were that stupid and wanted to vote for Bush, you wouldn't have made that mistake, and your vote would be counted.
So what exactly are you arguing? That stupid people should be allowed to vote for Bush, but not Gore?
That Gore should be punished for the stupidity of his voters?
Saari advocates an election method called the Borda count election, in which each voter ranks all of the candidates from top to bottom. If there are five candidates, then a voter's leading candidate gets 5 points, his second-ranked candidate gets 4, etc. In the end, the points are added up to determine the winner. The Borda count, once used in the Roman Senate, was named after a French physicist and American Revolutionary War hero named Jean-Charles deBorda. This method is used to rank college football and basketball teams.
Tell me, if this was used by the Roman Senate, why is it named after someone in the Revolutionary War? Did the Romans not have a name? Or is this just some sort of cultural imperialism? And if the Roman system differed, in what particulars did it differ?
Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.
There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.
Aris
As Microsoft has proven so well in the past few weeks, no one is completely secure while connected to a network or the Internet.
While the possibility for fraud exists in any free public election, the amount of damage a single person can do is relatively limited. It would be quite hard for one person to tamper with votes outside of a geographically limited area.
With online voting, a single security flaw could be exploited to allow a single person or radical group to push their agenda down the throats of the rest of our country.
While we may not ready to move our entire election process online, I would definately see some government funded research done to explore the feasability and possible implementations of such a system.
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
I saw a picture of the computers used to count the Florida ballot. It ran on Windows 3.1!
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
As I see it, the main problem is that balloting is controlled by each individual county. Lacking a common standard to which to conform, counties are free to invest as little as they can get away with. For many, this means that they end up using decades-old machines employing a century-old technology. For others, it means hand-marked paper ballots. Another factor is bureaucratic inertia ("we've always done it this way and it works fine"). I don't favor a national law forcing a uniform method (it would probably not be constitutional anyway), but it would be a great start to have each state come up with a modern standard, and have each county conform. It would cost money, but the present mess makes it clear that it would be money well spent.
"If I have seen further than other men, it is by stepping on their glasses." - Michael Swaine
The polling location is public place where you go to cast a secret ballot.
I have to have a little bit of doubt that the *entire* country of Brazil has something that easy to work with. How precisely is it accomplished?
Respond to s
we need online balloting, it would just need to be secure, It could do wonders for elections...
How Jaded Are You?
The only thing 'suspicious' regarding the 'hundreds of new votes for Gore' may have something to do with the fact that a block of *400* votes FOR GORE never even made it into the initial count.
We are talking about a block of *400* votes, not spead amongst the candidates, but 400 specifically meant for Gore. And that is one of MANY irregularities.
Fish anyone?
Right! So the whiny Bush child should pack it in, then, eh?
Huh? At last count, Bush was leading in Florida. Maybe the whiny gore child should pack it in.
in Brazil, the elections in every level are a smooth automated process. Maybe we can teach something about electronic elections to the most powerful country of the planet.
Considering the candidates and the stereotypical view of all Americans allegedly understand...
Stand the politicians up, hand the voters a gun and say "Shoot the ones you don't want." 96 million votes later, you'll be so much better off.
WOO! LOOK OUT FOR THE HACKERS. THEY WILL RUIN THE ELECTION JUST FOR GOOD FUN.
seriously, man, there's not a lot stopping someone from walking into a polling booth and claiming to be someone else, dropping down their signature, and placing a vote -- all you need (at least where i vote) was an address -- they didn't even ask for picture ID. voting fraud is already an easy prospect -- what would make it e-voting-fraud appealing is that geography and numbers would no longer be an issue (ie, you wouldn't necessary need to go to several polling places, or leave and come back after you put on a beanie, and you might not even need to live in the US! HOO-RAY!)
is there an UNBREAKABLE SYSTEM that we can e-vote on?
i'm not well informed, but i'm guessing not.
is voting, as we know it now, incredibly secure?
that's also a big no.
fishguvner.
i say we just let the "BIG BAD MEDIA" decide the outcome of every race from now on, since it seems they already have their fat inbred hand in it. corporations have the power of citizenry? let's have them vote -- best for the economy, no doubt, and that's all that really chaddamn matters, re-ight?
er.
yeah. i post anyways.
I reckon that, just as it doesn't take much thought to figure out how the form works, it doesn't take much to figure out that it's a bad design.
;) ). The US spent millions on developing a pen that would work reliably in zero gravity.
The box for any one candidate lines up with THREE holes. Yes, I know there's an arrow. It also makes sense to go for the middle one, and further by looking at the top and bottom boxes it's patently obvious what to do.
BUT mistakes can happen, and people can get confused. We all do the stupidest things on occasion, and a good design is one that does it's best to stop us from doing so at that one crucial moment. It would be a simple thing to have only one hole that corresponds in any way to each candidate. How could a good design offer anything else? What possible justification is there to have three holes that line up - even if only 50% - to each candidate?
It's clear that the design is the way it is for technical reasons - a classic case of expecting people to work the machines do, rather than getting the machines to work the way people do. This is such a well known pitfall that anything that exhibits such a flaw has got to be considered bad design (think "BLINK" tags - so terrible Slashdot won't even let me stick one in Plain Old Text, which is a shame cause "think {BLINK}" had a ring to it).
Despite all that - the form was approved. You can't change your mind afterwards, otherwise the whole process becomes open to question. In fact, a system that allowed for such changes of mind would also be a bad design, so the Democrats are trying to make a right from two wrongs there.
By the way, regarding technological solutions, I am reminded of the space race (it's a bit of a stretch, but I'm going to bring Russia into a discussion on democracy
The Russians just used pencils.
true, true. then again, i stood in line for like 2 hours (and didn't get any time off work for it) to vote, basically gobbling up my lunch break and then some. lucky for me, i have a job where i can disappear for an hour or so and nobody notices. but some people aren't so lucky and might have a bit of trouble waiting so long. i saw some elderly people who did not like standing in line for an hour or so, and a lot of other people were a bit pissed when, after waiting in line for a while to get their yellow ticket, were told they had to wait in a whole other line to vote. what a system!
easy fix is, make election day a federal holiday, and make it a speedier process, so people won't be so damn impatient.
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Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
As regards just the mechanics of voting systems, there is a voting system in existence which is IMHO better than approval or Borda voting (and way better than the current system in the U.S.). It's called proportional representation, and in the case where there is only one position being voted for, that's a special case called instant runoff voting.
A ballot consists of a list of candidates, except instead of voting for one candidate, all the candidates are ranked in order of preference (this much is like the Borda system). All the ballots are collected, and put into piles corresponding to the #1 choice. All ballots marked with Candidate A as #1 are put in pile A, all ballots marked with candidate B as #1 choice are put in pile B, etc. If one pile has more than 50% of the ballots, that candidate wins and the count is over. Otherwise, all the ballots from the smallest pile are taken, the #1 preference is crossed off the top of each ballot and it gets put on the pile of the #2 preference. So if there is no winner and candidate D has the smallest number of votes, then ballots marked D #1 and A #2 are put in pile A, ballots marked D #1 B #2 are put in pile B, etc. If someone now has over 50% of the votes, that person is elected. If not, the smallest pile is taken and redistributed again. If B is eliminated, then ballots marked B #1 A #2 go to pile A, ballots marked B #1 C #2 go to pile C, ballots marked D #1 B #2 A #3 go to pile A (because D is already eliminated), ballots marked D #1 B #2 C #3 go to pile C, etc.
This has two distinct advantages over the current system - a voter can never complain 'I don't want to waste my vote', because the only way to waste a vote is by choosing to not rank every candidate, and a voter can never complain 'A vote for candidate X is a vote for candidate Y' because every vote goes where it does the most good in reflecting the wishes of the voter.
This has one distinct advantage over every other voting system that I am aware of - if there are more people who rank Daffy above Goofy than there are people who rank Goofy over Daffy, then Goofy will never beat Daffy. Think about that for a minute. Goofy can get elected even though more people have ranked Daffy above Goofy. I don't know about anyone else, but this seems to me to be a fatal flaw, that exists in some form in all the other voting systems. The flaw can be eliminated with another way of casting and counting votes.
Don't strain your eyes too much; hole 4 reads:
"Moron Party: I'm such a complete idiot that, although I meant to vote for Gore, I was baffled by this extremely simple ballot. I am clearly too stupid to be included in the process of electing a president."
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Also don't forget the current situation in Florida - where the Democrats have repeatedly stated that HUMANS are more accurate in counting the ballots than machines. Online voting? Not any time soon, not without some social changes first.
"Property is theft, therefore theft must be property, right?"
What would be MUCH better would be for all the states to split their EC votes ala Maine. Then the smaller states would get to keep their unfair influence over the election, but the EC votes would much more accurately reflect the popular vote. Not completely fair, true, but vastly more likely to happen (especially after this year's fiasco).
Since the person reading over my shoulder is having so much problem with this paragraph, I'm going to rephrase it for the faint of thought.
For states with more than 3 EC votes (i.e., more than one Representative), divide all but two EC votes into the same districts that the Representatives have, with each district selecting its Elector based off of the results of the vote for that district.
The two 'Senatorial' Electors would go to whoever won the state.
For states with only one Representative, the Senatorial Electors would be the ones split up, with the Representative Elector going to whoever wins the state.
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
Which would produce 'statewide' totals of:
Buchanan: 98 votes / 49%
Gore: 51 votes / 25.5%
Bush: 51 votes / 25.5%
So the guy with almost 50% of the votes get 50% of the electors, whereas the two with 25% of the vote get one elector each...
What's wrong with that? Or am I missing something?
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
Unfortunately it's NOT a pencil and paper in Florida. You have to use an ancient metal poking device to poke a hole through the circle next to your candidate's name. You run the risk of not knowing if you poked the hole properly or if you left a "hanging chad" - especially if you're in a hurry. How crappy is that? MY state had a pencil and paper ballot, and I have to wonder why Florida didn't use that. It's not mechanical I guess, but it is pretty archaic and difficult to use.
Here's what I picture - you vote on a computer, perhaps with a touchscreen, at the present polling site. You go through, and vote for all your choices, then at the end you can go through and check to make sure you voted for all the right people. After this, I'm torn as to what should happen next. I'm thinking either you print out the ballot and turn it in and counting goes much like it does now, but with no hanging chads to trip you up or they get sent over a LAN (ok this is a little online, but not on the internet) and are automatically, electronically counted. Either way I think there should be a federally mandated ballot system, so we can at least blame the fed. gov't if something goes wrong!!
Not having voted with the metal poking object, I don't know for sure, but I'm not sure if you can check for chads after you vote or not. Anyone from a hanging-chad-county here to fill us in? And being in a hurry can also mean being considerate to the people who may be waiting in line behind you . . . >
And yet other states and/or counties still use the stupid punching system . . . we can read pencil ballots with computers now people, how hard is that to implement?? I go in, get my ballot, grab the official "ballot pencil" fill in the ovals ala ACT or SAT and I'm done. All candidates are in one column, no hanging chads . . . no wonder my state isn't being recounted!! Originally I thought it was because Bush won 65%-30% but now I know it's because our technology is vastly superior! And to think people think we don't have electricity up here. Gah!
OK, maybe we don't have a direct democracy, but we have a form of government that allows everyone (over age 18 and resident of a state or DC) to vote. This being said, we cannot discriminate between votes of equally qualified (under the law) people. Just because one maybe voted unwisely or stupidly doesn't make his vote less than someone else's. And one thing about mob rule, at least it's rule
I thought we were talking about ballots that were valid (ie not double punched) but maybe had some holes not fully punched (hanging, pregnant, dimpled chads, whatever you want to call them). Now it's pretty obvious if you see one hole and/or indentation in a section that that is who the person was hoping to vote for, but for whatever reason (it doesn't truly matter) didn't check to see if their chad was hanging or not. Well, stuff does happen I imagine.
We should strive to make even stupid and lazy peoples' votes count the same as intelligent, non-lazy peoples'. This is a basic principle (or at least should be) of our democracy.
BOOM
Instant, accurate results. No more worrying about if a "chad" has been fully punched. No more screwing around with making sure that the little oval has been completely filled with #2 pencil lead. No more pulling levers or hand-counting ballots. You get an instant snapshot with 100% accuracy every time.
Now there are going to be issues, such as how do precincts get funding to upgrade their existing systems. Friends, let me predict that as a result of this current fiasco, there are going to be plenty of Congresscritters on both sides of the aisle that are going to be more than willing to issue some funding to make sure that something like this does not happen again. There will also be concerns about the integrity of the data and making sure that "Democratic or Republican hackers" don't intercede and modify the results. But these issues can be addressed.
Thoughts?
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The New World Order is upon us, and it's about damned time.
Poppycock. You can't "steal" something away from somebody who never had it to begin with. (Hint: The networks calling the race for Bush at 2:00 AM has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the actual winner of the race, just as their 7:00 PM calling of Florida for Gore has no particular bearing on who wins that state.) Shrub might be putting together photo ops with his "future Cabinet" even though the outcome of the election is in doubt, but if you believe that the election is somehow his by default, you are a buffoon.
The real issue here is that Vice President Gore received more votes in Florida than Shrub did, and his Republican co-conspirators are desparate to do whatever they possibly can to prevent this from being revealed. You had an incredibly close initial count followed by a state-mandated recount, and
Of course, if it had been Bush that was down by 2,000 and then only 200 after the initial recount, they would have been all over Florida's manual recount procedures. But since they know they have lost this election, they instead are required to go on the offensive and try to move the goalposts; they're trying to pull off one of the greatest swindles in American history by attempting to make this about "stealing an election" instead of about who actually won the darn thing. Tragically for them, the sentiment of the American people is on the side of getting it right, not getting it quick.
In the final analysis, if George W. Bush is elected president, he will have the distinct (dis)honor of being the first American president to be elected completely by accident. (Perhaps His Accidency could be his official title!) This, coupled with the fact that he was defeated in the popular vote, will render him effectively powerless.
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The New World Order is upon us, and it's about damned time.
The source of the problem is the fact that the candidates were very similar, so similar that people voted 50/50. Even if the votes were counted by a super-fast technologically advanced crypto based system you would have the same accusations of fraud, double and triple checking, lawsuits etc. when the difference is so small and the stake is so high. This is human and I don't think any reform can easily change that.
I heard this on SNL: "Some people think that on-line voting would solve the re-count problems. Yeah, old people love the Internet. My grandfather is affraid of his answering machine."
More importantly, if you can't trust a machine-counted vote, do you trust a hand-counted one? If so, how would an SQL query make general citizens feel any better. Dan Rather says, "Omnibot5000 says that the winner is Voltron!" Florida voters would still demand an SQLdump printout and hand-counted rows.
ridiculopathy.com
Living in Oregon, we just did our first vote by mail presidential election. What is great about this is that there is no "voting day", there is just a deadline. You get a few weeks to actually vote. To me this is just as good as doing it on the web--I can do it at home on my own time. And I get a chance to vote before a "winner" has been declared from the exit polls in earlier time zones. Locally it has made elections much quieter since it doesn't pay to do last minute advertising. And it has increased voter turn out. Who has already voted is a matter of public record which gives organizations a tool to target those who might not vote and try to convince them to vote.
More than one problem exists with the idea of a national voter registry. The major problem? As with changing the Electoral College, it would require a Constitutional Amendment to set up a national registry, since the running of elections is currently reserved in the constitution to the states.
Specifically, Art icl e II, Section 1 states "Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress". This was amended by Amendment XII, but this amendment does not change the Constitution's specified method of choosing electors - namely, none.
What does this mean? Well, for one thing, it means that states don't actually have to let the people vote for president! If a state could pass it into law without riots, it would be perfetly legal for the choice of electors to be made by the Governor, the Legislature, or anyone in the state who's first name contains the letter Q.
Additionally, creating a national voting registry, and a standardized method of voting, would impose huge costs on the states and counties, who would have to upgrade their entire voting infrastructure. Since there are still a number of counties who use paper ballots, number 2 pencils, and hand counting of votes, this could be a huge debacle of it's own righr in the making.
If individual states choose to upgrade their election mechanisms, more power to them. But, I don't believe that changing the Constitution in this way would be either timely, or politically possible. Just imagine the outcry from some states about these imposed costs, when "Our election process works quite well, thank you very much!"
We are the Music Makers, and We are the Dreamers of Dreams...
No, many of his supporters in Palm Beach are old. You know, those people you might have called Grandparents at one point. Being old, many suffer from poor eyesite. In addition, they changed the format of the ballot against the explicit laws of the State of Florida. Taking a look at the ballot it's pretty easy to see how people can make mistakes and less than 100% are going to catch them. So there are a few legitimate problems when you consider the actual constituency of Palm Beach.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
On making it a speedier process: Ever notice that most of the elecion volunteers are extremely elderly? At least where I voted (Oakland, CA), the people manning the lines were among the oldest people I had ever seen. Maybe what we need is incentive for younger people to volunteer so that the lines could move a little faster. What does everyone think?
Incompetence is not to be tolerated. Ignorance is not to be ignored. Failure is not an option.
I don't know why everyone thinks voting digitally has to be done from home. To make it fair for those that don't have access to the internet, and to make it more secure, why not vote digitally at the polling place?
Sure, it would mean either moving equipment in and taking it back out or dedicated polling places, but couldn't it be done. Security would be better because the equipment could be dedicated, with nothing else running but what is required for voting. Hell, where I am all the polling places are schools. Is it that hard to use their existing wiring and connections to hook up some digital voting booths? You would show up, prove your identity (unlike now), and vote.
For the voter, it could be simple. Press a, b, or c, or 1, 2, or 3. Then, a la Regis, make sure it's your final answer with a simple prompt ensuring that was the intended choice, and your vote gets transmitted securely (hopefully). It seems to me, it would be harder to mess with the system if all the voting was done at designated polling places.
Just remember, no solution will please everyone or be perfect.
-N
True, there are better alternatives to voting than the simple one person one vote, as you metion; as long is it is still conducted on a state by state basis. With all of the recent news coverage concering the 'antiquated' electoral college system currently in use, I'd like to point out that just as any good developer knows; you don't change what you don't fully understand. I think there has been an overwhelming rush to jugdement on the electoral college, based soley on it's shortcomings, and no consideration for what benifits it may provide. I must admit that until I read the recent /. article link Math against Tyranny, I too had fallen victim to the hype. I have since left the bandwagon and would hope others as well would first understand what the current system provides for prior to asking for change.
Whip that horse Jon! It may be dead, but I'm sure you can make it keep working if you just whip it a little harder.
Only Jon Katz can find something that the rest of us are totally bored with, mention every possible solution we have come up with for it, and still think he has something original and insightful enough to post a pages long essay on the matter. God forbid the dumbass actually comes up with something orginal.
Sorry, this may sound like flamebait, but isn't anyone else tired of Katz's whining about how technology will save us all, yet at the same time will be the downfall of all that is holy? I can't be the only one.
Slow moving marsupials and the women that love them
Slow moving marsupials and the women that love them
Next time, on Geraldo...
Regardless of the technology (or lack thereof) used, every precinct of every state should use the exact same algorithms and tools to carry on democracy. That way, even if the system is not fool-proof, it will fail consistently and predictably. This non-uniform occurrance of difficulty is the biggest problem and because of the lack of uniformity, the only way to be sure would be to do a hand count of every vote in every state. Who knows what happened elsewhere...
And electronic ballots are probably easier to fake.
Changing the system on a frequent basis could easily cause more problems than it solves (not to mention the cost). I myself work in an office that has local government heritage, and rolling out new systems can cause more negative issues than you would think.
You and I may be technologically aware and enjoy getting our hands on new software/hardware, but a large number of people out there just don't think like this.
-- Hob - Java Spectrum Emulator
If everyone in the country used the same voting system then any statistical bias in that system affects every vote. You are voting via web page? It could come down to the instruction wording; page colors, fonts, graphics, background... who knows what could have a statistical effect. For the same reason there should not be a Starbucks on every street corner in the world. Because if they start using a "special sauce" that causes cancer or the like, the whole world gets hammered. The strength resulting from our non-centralized and locally varied government should not be overlooked. --comewhatmay
but the postal service could be a problem.
I don't know about you, but where I'm from the postal service is the definition of "problem".
If I ever meet you, I'll Ctrl-Alt-Delete you.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
If I ever meet you, I'll Ctrl-Alt-Delete you.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
The same people that shouldn't be "in a hurry" either?
If I ever meet you, I'll Ctrl-Alt-Delete you.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
How about a "friendly helpdesk person" that can assist? Shouldn't be too expensive, now should it? Or is that illegal as that friendly person might influence the voters?
If I ever meet you, I'll Ctrl-Alt-Delete you.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Very strange, statistically unlikely.
Throwing heads or tails 256 million times is bound to show up a bigger difference:-)
Al Gore is a native and resident of Washington, D.C.
Heh? Last time I looked TV he looked pretty much like a whiteboy to me? Native American? Cool. Ah well, we (the Dutch) never should have sold New Amsterdam anyway...that would have changed everything...
If I ever meet you, I'll Ctrl-Alt-Delete you.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Today's sig brought to you by http://www.swankypimp.com
Why not just use touch screens where you would just touch the name (or even the picture) of the candidate that they wanted. At the end of the voting screen a person could touch a button that said, "submit" and if the person voted for two candidates for president (or any other office) they'd get an error message and the opportunity to correct their mistake. That would pretty idiot-proof and not near as many votes would need to be disqualified.
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- After an election like the one we are - amazingly - still in the midst of nearly a week after the voting booths were closed up, their curtains at half-mast, it has never been so apparent that change to the election process is necessary. After focusing so much attention of the prior stages (ie. campaign reforms and campaigning tactics), it is now clear that the voting procedure must be updated as well. Certainly a system run electronically would be the way to go, but it will be.....
Tough to ImplementO P E N___S O U R C E___H U M O R
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KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
There is no
Yes, I know, you'd expect me to say something about his style of writing, but not this article.
Basically, he's right in that we drastically need to improve our method of voting, but he's wrong in his exact solution.
A PC-based method inherently discriminates against low-tech areas or non-wired rural areas. If we were to ensure that polling places held Electronic Voting Boxes, this might not be such a bad idea, however.
I dreamed last Friday night that I had voted electronically. I went into my polling place (or library) even though I was allowed to vote from home, because I like to meet my neighbors and had heard rumors of GOP script-kiddies hacking the absentee ballots of Democrats with viral Bush-voting scripts that made you think you voted for Pat Buchanan if you checked Gore.
In the dream, I used a stylus to vote for all the issues, wrote in my name for Precinct Committee Officer (since they forgot to take my filing fee of $1), and then reviewed on screen my choices. After a quick comparison with my sample ballot, I clicked on Submit, clicked on OK, clicked on Yes, I Am Really Sure, clicked on Yes, Give $2 Matching Funds To Allow Third Parties To Run For President, and it confirmed my vote and spit out an election receipt which showed my name, precinct, and a voting ident to prove my ballot had been cast. In the event of a system crash of my ballot place, I could use the voting ident to get a replacement vote within 72 hours (hey, it's happened, major power outage when Westside.com went live with it's server farms and took down Fremont, Center of the Universe).
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
The first amendment holds that the free exercise of speech shall not be abridged. No where does it regulate the free exercise of nonspeech.
Countries like Belgium and Australia already have mandatory voting: don't vote and you get a small criminal sanction. Voting is no less intrinsic to proper civic participation than paying taxes.
If you're worried about how mandatory voting would remove an important means of demonstrating dissatisfaction with the system, then allow for a final option of "none of the above". Every year in Australia, a significant portion of ballots are (legally) mutilated in protest.
-- Anne Marie
NOTICE OF REVOCATION OF INDEPENDENCE To the citizens of the United States of America, In the light of your failure to elect a President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective today. Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories. Except Utah, which she does not fancy. Your new prime minister (The rt. hon. Tony Blair, MP for the 97.85% of you who have until now been unaware that there is a world outside your borders) will appoint a minister for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire will be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed. To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect: 1. You should look up "revocation" in the Oxford English Dictionary. Then look up "aluminium". Check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it. Generally, you should raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. Look up "vocabulary". Using the same twenty seven words interspersed with filler noises such as "like" and "you know" is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. Look up "interspersed". 2. There is no such thing as "US English". We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. 3. You should learn to distinguish the English and Australian accents. It really isn't that hard. 4. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as the good guys. 5. You should relearn your original national anthem, "God Save The Queen", but only after fully carrying out task 1. We would not want you to get confused and give up half way through. 6. You should stop playing American "football". There is only one kind of football. What you refer to as American "football" is not a very good game. The 2.15% of you who are aware that there is a world outside your borders may have noticed that no one else plays "American" football. You will no longer be allowed to play it, and should instead play proper football. Initially, it would be best if you played with the girls. It is a difficult game. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which is similar to American "football", but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like nancies). We are hoping to get together at least a US rugby sevens side by 2005. 7. You should declare war on Quebec and France, using nuclear weapons if they give you any merde. The 98.85% of you who were not aware that there is a world outside your borders should count yourselves lucky. The Russians have never been the bad guys. "Merde" is French for "sh*t". 8. July 4th is no longer a public holiday. November 8th will be a new national holiday, but only in England. It will be called "Indecisive Day". 9.All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and it is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean. 10. Please tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us crazy. Thank you for your cooperation.
Make a man a fire and he will be warm for a day, set a man on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life
We here in OR have gone to vote-by-mail for all elections, including this one. Ballots arrive two or three weeks before election day and they are simple color-in-the-spaces documents. They are due at 8:00 PM election day and postmarks don't count. State law prohibits any counting before 8:00 but clerks can get them organized prior to feeding them into the counting machines. The problems our state experienced were due entirely to the closeness of this election, as well as the presence of 26(!) ballot measures on this ballot. Thousands of people swarmed their county elections offices just before closing and this overwhelmed the process temporarily. Past elections were conducted much more smoothly. The key to our success is the 8:00PM drop dead time. This business of allowing postmarks to determine timeliness is ridiculous. Washington state had well over one half million absentee ballots and it will be several more weeks for them to be counted, leaving their Senate race hanging.
I don't know if it can be done with the current system, but I do believe that votes can be counted to better than Poisson statistics (where the variance is equal to SQRT(N).)
However, I do not, and will not, believe any count of millions of votes is ever going to be truly accurate to a few votes, or even a few hundred votes. I am convinced that in both Florida, and the national popular election, the election was, as well as we are able to measure it, exactly a tie.
I wish we'd just pick one of the two guys and get on with it. All this talk about the "will of the People of (Florida | the USA)" is just so much hot air. Either guy has just under 50% of either population behind him. Both got more than half again as many votes as Bill Clinton did in 1992. I don't think we are capable of knowing which of the two guys "really" did slightly better than the other.
The only reason the system hasn't completely broken down before is becasue it was never this close. In cases where the popular vote was this close, the electoral vote was balance far enough one way to indicate a clear winner (e.g. Kennedy in 1960). We will be better off if we accept it was a tie, quickly pick one of the two guys on whichever technicality we want to, and move on. A lot of hemming and hawing about how to best count millions of votes down to the last vote is going to lead nowhere.
-Rob
Hello, this is the central scroooootinizer!!!! -Frank Zappa, Joe's Garage
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
For one thing, they do not constitute a coherent (electoral) voting bloc as such. Vermont's 3 votes cancel Arkansas 3 votes, Maine's 4 votes cancels Indiana's 4 votes and so on. The influence of the small states is limited to whatever the net difference of small state votes happens to come to.
For another thing, the winner take all aspect favors the big states. If Delaware casts all 3 of its votes one way instead of 2 and 1 that is only a differnce of 1 electoral vote while if California casts all 54 votes for one side instead of 28 and 26 it makes a 28 vote difference. If you were competitive in both states where would you do your campaigning?
Finally, even in small states the interests of voters varies. At best, given winner take all, it is only the majority interest in the state that is represented, (and over represented). That is a distortion of the authentic, fragmented, state interest - if the state can even be said to have an interest apart from the interests of the voters.
All in all, the size of the small state advantage is probably too small to really matter and to the extent it even exists it is by no means clear exactly who the real beneficiaires are or whether their benefit is deserved.
"Obtuse Anger is that which is greater than Right Anger" - Lewis Carroll
The Bill of rights is considered to protect two different categories of rights: those enjoyed by the States and those enjoyed by the people. Since the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, no one of the fundamental rights of life, liberty or property, recognized and guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, can be denied or abridged by a State in respect to any person within its jurisdiction. This is known as the "incorporation doctrine." Since freedom of speech is a right held by the people States are not free to violate it.
"Obtuse Anger is that which is greater than Right Anger" - Lewis Carroll
The voting machines in my county in New Mexico, which does not require any sort of recount, allow editing. Every selection button is lighted and you can change selection at any time until you press a big 'commit' button which finalizes and ends your voting. We do not handle the ballot cards or whatever before or after the voting. All is automatic.
I'm sure these machines are costly. What is generally needed are terminals or thin clients in each voting booth that are connected to a local Linux precinct server. The stations would allow a clear presentation of the candidates and/or issues, one per one-or-more screens, and would allow editing and confirmation as should all well designed software. And because everything would be done in software the cost would be drastically reduced. The precinct server would be connected via dial-up or wireless to a master server that would act as backup to it should it fail. In addition to a record of votes maintained on disk, it would write a paper tape or punch card copy of each voters selections immediately after they finish voting.
The closed system should NOT be connected to the Internet.
Absentee votes could easily be handled online through the Internet or a dial-up BBS.
Well, the ballots may be ludicrous, but I thought it was interesting that a bunch of kids were able to do the voting correctly. http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewPolitics.asp?Page=\Poli tics\archive\200011\POL20001110o.html
Its 19,000 ballots that are invalid, its not 19,000 votes lost. Quit with liberal lie by omission fest.
Al Gore is out to steal the election. The DNC has found Padora's Box, defined as a court decided election, and they show no fear in using it.
Explain to me Jon, how in the hell can we have a secure and accurate system (that I agree we need) when the DNC DEMANDS A HAND-COUNT on the basis a computer is inaccurate?
TELL ME!
Whats wrong the system is that one group has decided that an election is no longer satisfactory unless they win it.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I just read your post, needless to say I had to get off the floor as I fell out of my chair from laughing so hard.
I am amazed you are not so effing ignorant to claim Jeb Bush as to having authored the ballots. I guess you realized you libelous suppositions could only get so far before even stupid people would laugh.
Let me give you some facts, though from your message its obvious you don't like facts.
Palm Beach county is majority Democrat.
The Ballot was created by a Democrat.
The ballot was approved by the Democratic party (and Republican too!)
The DNC/Gore Reps/Etc have managed call the county officials idiots, the person who drew up the ballot an idiot, and all the voters who screwed up idiots.
What do they all have in common?
THEY'RE DEMOCRATS.
Face the facts, the DNC is going to have as many recounts as possible until they can void enough non-Gore ballots to make him win. Repeated handling of ballots is a common tactic to institute fraud. They will simply accidently bend, twist, and tear ballots until they must be replaced with freshly punched ballots (which accidently appear to all be for their candidate)
Anyway you slice it, Gore and his cronies are trying to steal an election. You lay all your claims about Jeb Bush and such yet apparently you are very content that a hand-count is more accurate than a computer count.
Go away.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I must say that this time I am disappointed in the negativity coming out of so many smart people.
Computer based voting could be made a reality, hell the internet was someone's idea at first, and none of the technology was in place to unleash the daemon (ha ha) that the internet has become.
It was developed.
That's the whole point.
Don't bother flexing your brain to show us how hard it is, we can all figure that one out on our own.
Let's here about ideas, technologies, topographies, workarounds, etc, etc.
In the words of the master -- "Do, or do not, there is no try"
Flex your brain to show how it can be done, now that would be the most useful thing to come out of a Katz thread since, um, well, .....I'll get back to you on that one.
---------- You are not the contents of your sig.:-p
We are a REPUBLIC of STATES. Once you realize the difference you will realize that the EC serves an important purpose. HOWEVER, I would like to change it so each state gets 2 electors and the rest are won via the popular vote nationwide.
There was nothing complicated about the ballot design.
Especially if you read the following instructions on the cover of the ballot:
punch the ballot card in the hole next to the number of that canidate
Could you imagine every voting machine in every precint networked and processing all the votes together!
Could we really make a Beowolf Cluster of these?!!
I know that at least one town in NJ that uses computers in the voting booth. Everything is done via touch screen. There are boxes next to each candidates name. If you touch the box, an "X" is placed in the box. If you touch it again, the "X" goes away. The results are saved to tape (and printed out), which are later sent to the state via phone line when the polls close. If the machine goes down while your voting (which I don't think has ever happened), you let someone know and you go to a different machine. Since your first attempt was not complete, it's not counted.
:)
My point is electronic ballots do work, even for senior citizens (which NJ has a lot of). Then again maybe it only works in NJ because people are use to video poker/slots at Atlantic City
Writing the results to tape may not be the best choice of media but look at where using paper has gotten us.
Lets see, to vote for Gore do I punch the hole next to the big arrow pointing from Buchanon or do I punch the hole next to the big arrow pointing from Gore. This is so confusing!
- "If all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail."
Well, Jon has his hammer (technology), and he's whacking the biggest, most visible, most recent problem (the US election) with it. While it's probably really hard for those of us who are tech-savvy, somehow we have to step back and ask, "Is that REALLY the way to solve it?"I'll tell ya this - my grandmother probably wouldn't be all that pleased if she had to use a computer, mouse, and keyboard to vote instead of pencil and paper (as we do it here in Ontario). Maybe the solution is as simple as standarizing the federal ballot (with allowances for different numbers of candidates). If you want computer counting, maybe use markers or black bingo dabbers instead of pencil. Heck, use custom ink in the dabbers that are both visually AND electronically opaque.
Point is that not every solution SHOULD be solved with technology. Sure, at times like this it seems like anything new is a better idea, but how often has such a basic system failed before? It's worked perfectly well for the past century.
"There's a party," she said,
"We'll sing and we'll dance,
It's come as you are."
"Tampering with elections is a felony with serious jail time."
I'm told the punishment for murder in the state of Texas is rather severe. Yet murders still occur.
To suggest that these hypothetical systems would not be craked because the punishment would be severe is absurd. Of course it would be cracked. Particularly if it is networked. Say GE moves a few crakers to Christmas Island...then what?
- Dan I.
WASHINGTON D.C., Nov. 13, 2000 - Associated Press:
Following an emergency meeting Monday morning, Congress unanimously voted to excise Florida from the United States of America. The move was a reaction to the confusion and irregularities in the state's voting numbers that have totally disrupted the 2000 Presidential election. 'This is the last straw,' said Utah senator Orin Hatch. 'First Elian Gonzales, now this.' Several congressmen told reporters the decision has been a long time in coming. 'We're all pretty much sick of Florida,' said representative Barney Frank. 'They've been a constant embarrassment for too long now.' Added Frank, 'They had Dan Marino for a while, but what have they done lately? Oh that's right, screw up our entire democracy. I forgot'
In a speech on the Senate floor, Massachusetts senator Ted Kennedy commented that the loss of Florida's sizable elderly population will free up billions of dollars in social security funds. 'These are valuable funds which can now be redirected toward national defense. We can finally rebuild our demoralized, weakened military,' said the Senator to roaring applause.
Please email all complaints to root@127.0.0.1 and the issue will be dealt with in due time.
Florida? more like skwull.com
http://www.skwull.com Learn it. Live it. Love it.
I think one of the biggest problems with "paper and pencil" ballots is that it's easy to submit an invalid ballot. With an electronic ballot, there would be zero ballots with no holes or more than one hole punched.
For the die-hards, there probably should still be a "None of the above" option. But, with computer checking, invalid forms won't be what decides elections.
it is easy to conceive of a system that could be built from bottom up (it would not need to be a sophisticated system so it could be completely incompatable with public computers) that would give a much more accurate reading of how people voted; but what would this accomplish. if a techno savvy /. public has its doubts in such a system then how could the technophobes of america ever have confidence in the number.
ultimately confidence is more important than accuracy or efficiency. all the system needs is a people that has an understanding of statistics. then people would have greater confidence in these numbers that are already there. although the lead seems very insignicant the possible error due to improppery plugged cards -which is found through a hand vote- is even more insignificant. (that is if you assume that plugging incompitance has 0 correlation with party affiliation). If you do the math and did a full manual recount across florida (using numbers from the hand recount that has already been done) then people would realize that there is a less than 1% chance that the lead would change by more than 300 votes. math wins again - when all things are equal error tends to cancel error.
How about using licenses and IDs in a sort of automatic teller type thing. Everyone has a magnetic strip on the back of their ID these days, right? Any thoughts?
eleven plus two / twelve plus one
it's your mouth, loser
--
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
yeah? I thought it was a random arse talking out of Jon Katz. Hard to tell the difference I know...
--
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
How about a small, detatched (existing only inside the polling place), dedicated network?
I think that we need to forget about using the Internet to vote, for at least the short term. There are many, many issues that are a long way off from being resolved with Internet voting.
What I propose is to simply move to electronic machines to tabulate votes. A box, with a paper voting book attached to it, with a row of lighted buttons down one side. The button lights up when a selection is made. When one is finished, one could press a "Cast vote" button. The vote is sent to a portable server, located on the premesis. You could make this server as fault tolerant as you wished, and voting tallies could be encrypted and digitally signed to preserve integrity. Put it on zip disk, jaz, floppy, CD-R, CompactFlash, whatever you want. The trick in preserving integrity that the polling place network isnt connected to anything else.
All the precincts could then send the data media to the commissioner, or wherever the ballots generally go.
This would give you the benefit of not having paper media to individually count (or dispute). No "chad" to deal with, no ballots to get mutilated in the card readers (sheesh, sounds like I'm talking about old minframes here).
An electronic on-site polling system would eliminate the need for recounts. If you vote, $CANDIDATE_TOTAL_VOTE gets incremented.
You wouldn't get the snazzy instant tabulation that some people want from the internet voting system, but you would get security, the removal of ambiguity, and less opporunity for ballot fraud.
Like I said in opening, perhaps one day we could manage a remote voting system over an open network like the Internet, but that time is yet far away, I believe. However, I think that electronic on-site voting is an idea whose time is long overdue.
This space for rent.
I was thinking about this issue and I was like dang foo, i'm not a monkey or what? and then A light flashed on in my head and it was a neon light that said this is the answere
Voters are not necessarily voting FOR someone, sometimes they are aiding the enemy of, or whatever. Sometimes they might want to burn a vote like people burn flags.
For example. `We're going to replace Linux with DOS, which DOS do you want? (a) PC-DOS, (b) MS-DOS.' One of them is going to win. So Linux gets replaced by DOS under the guise of popular vote! And since the Linuxers can't vote for Linux, ooh, God, I love democracy!! I mean they can stay away in their droves and a DOS will win.
This happened over here. `We're damming the Gordon River, do you want it (a) above, (b) below, the Franklin.'
Over here, we have compulsory voting, and even the invalid votes are tabulated and published (as informals). So there is a general awareness of the people who don't want to vote, or have difficulty with the system.
The `no dam' people ran a successful case that pushed this informal vote through the roof, and as a result, the wish of the people became known by rejecting all on offer.
Once running, one can guage the background scrap vote, and then decide what fraction of the vote needs to be informal to seriously rethink the issue.
For this to work, you need:
- Some means to mark a vote as spent
- Some threshold to cause a rethink of questions.
My 2d. worthOS/2 for ever!
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
Our electral system has compulsory voting, and the number of invalid (called `informal') votes are tracked as well. Normally, these consist of people who made accidents on their cards, but there is a percentage of deliberate `No thanks' votes.
The No Dam people used this method to send a clear message that NONE of the options were welcome.
An electronic system should
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
1. You don't register to vote, you receive your voting card to your home address
2. This is not a big problem
3. Voting is always on a Sunday
The voting process in itself is amazingly manual in this hi-tech age:
You select pre-printed voting sheets (about the size of an A6 paper) with party name and a candidate list. You can select a candidate from the list, otherwise you accept the party's nomination order.
If your party doesn't have pre-printed sheets (all major parties have, the printing is free if you register a couple of thousand people) in your area, you can write the party name with a pen on an empty sheet. There are always a couple of hundred votes for Donald Duck-party every time.
Go into a booth, put one sheet for state, one for region and one for city government into their envelopes, glue them up, stand in the line, show your voting card and ID and vote.
OK, we're a small country so we can have voting districts with a couple of thousand people in each.
Preliminary results are often ready within about 4 hours, complete in two-three days.