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Slashback: Election, Election, Election
No, because the punchline is: New Mexico still uses dead trees. The bug was in the software that counts paper ballots.
New Mexico was given to Gore on election night by 6,800 votes because of buggy computer software. That software "failed to read" straight-party votes (oops!), and worse, it "also chose at least one candidate from another party."
If computer flaws had thrown an electronic-vote election, you'd be reading about it on the front page of every newspaper across the country, and pundits would be telling us (sometimes in ways very funny) how foolish we were to trust our votes to those nasty computers.
How many presidential elections does our 19th-century technology have to nearly destroy before the alternatives get serious consideration?
A friend in Sweden tells me that the U.S.A. is now being referred to as the B.R.A., the Banana Republic of America. Maybe by the 21st century we can have 20th-century voting machines installed at our polling places, what do you think?
(New Mexico could decide the election if Florida's votes are thrown out, Oregon goes to Bush, and one or two more improbabilities occur.)
Voting, right here in River(side) County Riverside County, California, used touch-screen voting in this last election. This is very different from internet voting since there was no network to the outside world. I think this is an important step and certainly should be done first.
ABC News's report describes Riverside's system and shows a photo. Randall Gardner points out that the local paper has a great story with an overview of the system and reactions from voters -- glitches, yes; late tally, yes; but all in all it sounded like a positive experience.
With a capital V and that rhymes with C and that stands for Canberra Dracophile points out an article from the Fairfax IT News website, which:
reports that voters in the Australian Capital Territory (in which our nation's capital, Canberra, lies) "could be the first in the nation to trial electronic voting at next year's territory election", according to the territory's Chief Minister, Gary Humphries. They're hoping to pass legislation next month to bring this about. Sounds cool, but the article goes on to quote Humphries as saying, "You might as well be doing it from your own home." Is it just me, or does this raise the possibility of voters being coerced into a particular vote where this sort of thing can't be seen? I'd prefer to see electronic voting available only from polling booths.
No grunge typefaces please User-interface wonks should enjoy this pure-and-simple design contest. Web Memes, Inc. is asking you to design a ballot, preferably one as unconfusing as possible while still using (spit) paper. You also get to make up your own candidates and issues.
(If the competition were digital, instead of paper, it would be a tough call between Amazon.com's new user interface and AmIPresidentOrNot.)
Busily coding your next election... ...is Jason Kitcat, who says "I'm working really hard on the next release and haven't given it the PR time it deserves." Allow me.
FREE is "Free Referenda & Elections Electronically," "the first open source system for conducting electronic votes." We're now jumping from mere electronic tallying of votes in polling places to actual internet voting, so please keep your hands inside the browser at all times.
Originally an academic thesis, FREE is now GPL'd, written in Java, and its design background is available in whitepapers. I haven't tried running it. Someone let us know if the project could be useful.
See also thebell.net, which comments:
...the majority of paper punching systems used in the U.S. do not produce repeatable results when ballots are tallied more than once, which means that election officials lack the means to objectively distinguish between fraud and error under these circumstances. ...we should in fact be looking to Internet voting systems in order to try to reduce those faults and thus provide for more security than what is available today -- not less security.
The seriously skeptical view Let's end on a sobering note. Scoffing at The Bell's claim to have tackled the subject a mere six months ago, Rebecca Mercuri points out (on Dave Farber's IP list) that others have been thinking about internet voting for over a decade. She writes:
Internet systems indeed DO promise FAR LESS in the way of auditability (recounts) and anonymity (privacy) than do the paper and other manual systems presently in place. To promote the belief that Internet voting, in any way provides a SAFE VOTE, is wholly erroneous.
She has an intimidating collection of links to (mostly) academic papers on the subject on her Electronic Voting page.
And in conclusion The only viable form of government is perl-based: we need a bicamel legislature with an eclectoral college. Thank you and good night!
And now for something completely the same! A note from timothy: The next piece in our continuing Hellmouth Revisited series is online. Feel free to go read it.
They can't. There is much to be said for the idea that voters don't rationally choose candidates. (Why else was billions of dollars spent on the campaigns, to advertise candidates just like toothpaste?) But if you can't tell what voters intended, there is no way to make computer vote totals accurate either.
One big problem is that the "accuracy" depends on self-reports by voters of how they voted. But these reports might well be slanted to how the respondents think the listener wants to hear. For example, they might just answer 'Bush' to some questioner, to avoid an argument, when they really voted for the Socialist Labor candidate. Unlikely, but there is no way to check the accuracy then, and still keep it secret. (Maybe it would be better to run the election like the way the College of Cardinals elects the Roman Pope--burn all the ballots afterwards.)
Another problem is that the computer can't eliminate many sources of arbitrary error within itself. For example, if there are more than some small number of candidates for a position (say 9), then it is hard for a human to keep all those names in short term memory all at once. The letters of the names must be large enough for all humans to read, not just 80 per cent. But at the same time, all the names must fit on the screen at once. This is the problem that the butterfly ballot design caused--and it confused enough voters to be deemed unacceptable. But what other design could be acceptable for such a display?
Consider a further problem. It is generally accepted that the order of names on the ballot is important. Many candidates try to get their names listed at the top, because those names will be read first by most readers. A computer display could attempt to get around this unfair layout by randomizing the order of names. But in that case, some voters will be confused because the ballot doesn't look like the sample ballot that they saw earlier. There appears to be no good way to resolve that problem.
Then look at absentee ballots. The Republicans in the Florida election sent out a huge number of absentee ballot applications to Republican voters, and this may have made the difference in the election. They were given some help in some counties by the election officials, since absentee ballot applications by law are supposed to contain the voter registration number. Computers used by Republican campaign team members were used to aid this process, but the voters themselves could not use computer power to equalize the absentee vote. Unfair again.
The problem of using computers to tally votes is that people don't trust them. For a long time this will be true. Until there is a generally accepted and completely trustworthy way to rely on computers for vote totals, then we need to have a backup hand count system. Computer designers need to pay attention to the real needs of election officials, and how balloting is really done, rather than design in the abstract.
Unfortunately, local election officials cannot easily raise funds to improve their systems. They are at the mercy of private companies that promise too much and don't deliver. If Congress is going to reform the voting apparatus of America, it ought to set up a publicly funded research project to do this, and fund the equipment and software as well. In order to make the process transparent, many of us will urge that the software be uniform and publicly owned, not proprietary and closed.
Not much aware of the sweatshops in New York, are you?
You do what your triad boss tells you. Period.
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
> Finally, even if a court does agree that the ballot was confusing, there is legal precedent at the appeals level in Florida for saying "tough luck" anyway.
FYI, the text of the re-filed lawsuit (now apparently a single state case rather than a scattershot of separate state and Federal suits) can be found at ABC's Website.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
we have two major parties, liberal and labour. We all know that one of these two "candidates" will get in. So we have a primary and a secondary vote on our voting cards. We vote for our first choice, and then our second choice. Once the top two candidates are selected (liberal and labour everytime!), everybody elses primary votes (democrats, greens, etc etc) are split up on their seconday votes and added into the top two candidates tally. so I could say vote "Democrats" for the primary and "Liberal" for the secondary. When it was obvious the Democrats wouldn't get in, then my vote would count as a Liberal vote. Maybe the states should do something similar.... would solve the problems because u would have a clear leader by now.
I am from Meerut India . And well, I like the middle ages - no choice . It is just that I did not know that they extended to the US.
Anil Bhattacharji , anilbhx@sancharnet.in, Meerut Cantt. INDIA 91-121-642166
It's all well and fine to rant on about reducing voting errors, but we've got to give the voters the right to reject all options as a concious vote. Consider this electoral issue.
So, we hold a vote on "Which DOS should we replace Linux with?"
- "PC-DOS"
- "MS-DOS"
We get in the votes. If the vote is electronic, you get all of these cards that say "Keep Linux!!!" - Sorry - invalid vote. You get Linuxers staying away - no vote - no count. Your voting machines accept only valid choices: PC-DOS or MS-DOS. Do what you like. PC-DOS wins the day - and we replace Linux with PC-DOS. And, just think - it is the democratic choice!It could happen. It did in Tasmania, with the Franklin referendum. Read `dam the Gordon' for 'Replace Linux with DOS', replace above and below for PC-DOS and MS-DOS, read No Dam for keep Linux.
You need some mechanism to allow people to say your choices are bonkers. Some are going to turn up and say your choices are bonkers anyway, so you need a threshhold to say Too many people are saying we're hitting the wrong thing - let's do it differently
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
It's a lot harder for the boss to do that now, though.
Now, it goes: "Get an absentee ballot. I will watch you fill it out and drop it in the mail. Do this or be fired."
In the hypothetical future it might go: "Bring back a receipt and show it to me or be fired."
The former is quite a bit harder to pull off. Both of these are better than the everyone votes online strategy, though, since in that case the boss can be a bit more subtle in the "Do this or be fired" part, making it harder to prosecute.
Or how about learning to spell?
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If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
I wholeheartedly agree with your premise and conclusions.
However, from your blurb, I think you misunderstood the specific type of error the software was making. Contrast:
FOX News: The machines initially failed to read ballots on which voters chose to vote a straight party ticket, but also chose at least one candidate from another party, election officials said.
The cards that were erroneously counted were when someone overrode one or more races on a blanket straight-party ballot. An example: I VOTE STRAIGHT DEMOCRATIC, BUT I WANT JOHN Q. REPUBLICAN TO WIN FOR THE SENATE RACE.
When that happened, the software probably read "straight vote" and marked JANE Q. DEMOCRAT for SENATE. Then it marked JOHN Q. REPUBLICAN. Then it saw there were two marks for SENATE, so discarded the vote for that race. It'd be an easy error to make.
[
Falsifying paper votes is pretty easy. Its paper. Think bribery.
;-) and they're dispensed to people as they prove their identity (I'm talking over a network, etc.) -- this gives security as strong as the network security system (high-bit public keys) and the anonymity of using your piece of the OTP instead of your actual public key to encrypt your vote.
At any rate, digital signatures, if used properly (sufficient key sizes, certification systems, etc.) would make a very provable record of peoples' votes. The problem is that its no longer a secret ballot. What you probably need is something like a one-time pad of secret keys to be used to encrypt the ballots (Thats a lot of bit-space
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Ohh! ELECTION! Never mind.
Hmm, I'll bet that's just what Jimmy Hoffa did.
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NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
you'd have to force people discard the receipts before they can show it to anybody. Then it'd work yes...
I live in New Mexico so I thought I might offer some insight, albeit fairly shallow, into how the process works.
On election morning the machines are put through a diagnostic process and there is a printout made of the system diagnostics. If everything is copacetic the machine is put into use. If it is not, that machince will not be used. After the diagnostics are completed the poll workers put in two votes across the board. The reason for this is to prevent people from learning how any one person voted. The reason I know this is that in the place where I voted, one of the machines was broke and a poll worker explained to me how it worked.
Although this does not explain the buggy software problem, it does explain some of how it works (or is supposed to anyway).
I am not sure that having a printout of how you voted is conducive to privacy. I think that by signing your name to get your ticket to vote you do provide a way dealing with possible errors. If the vote is screwed then by signing your name, you would be able to vote again, should the occasion arise.
On a different note, just the sight of those straigt party ticket buttons makes me shudder. I have never seen anything that encourages voter ignorance the way that crap does.
On another different point I think that it is absolutely ironic that if the entire student population of any large university would have voted we would not be in the mess that we are in now. Maybe all of this bullshit that is happening now will force the young people who think that their vote doesn't count to realize that it indeed does.
Either give it away or get top dollar, but never sell yourself cheap.
I found this on a post in a kuro5hin.org story which has since been killed. I reposted it in another kuro5hin story and repost it here again. References for these statements are to be found in a link at the end of the FAQ.
/pe ople/pagre/13-myths.html
.edu/people/pagre/myth-references.html
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[This draft #4 was prepared by Rich Cowan (rcowan@lesley.edu) with help from Paul Rosenberg, Dan Kohn, Jonathan Prince, Marc Sobel, subscribers to the Red Rock Eater News Service and the electronic mail discussion florida-recount-discuss@egroups.com, and the Yale Law School Student Campaign for a Legal Election, 127 Wall Street New Haven, CT 06511 -- spin@pantheon.yale.edu]
1) Myth: Al Gore has a responsibility to concede the election.
Fact: A 330 vote margin out of 6 million votes cast in Florida is incredibly close! It is roughly equivalent to a 1-vote margin in a city with 40,000 people and 18,000 voters. It is extremely rare for an election this close NOT to be contested for several weeks until a manual recount can take place, with observers from both sides taking part and inspecting ballots. This kind of detailed recount has not yet taken place.
According to the US Constitution and the Laws of Florida, it is the responsibility of officials in Florida to certify the election results. November 17 is the deadline for absentee ballots sent from overseas to arrive. Since the election is close enough in Florida, Oregon, and New Mexico to be affected by absentee ballots, the results in those states cannot be certified before that date.
2) Myth: the number of "spoiled ballots" in Palm Beach County was typical. In a press briefing televised live on all networks on 11/9/00, Karl Rove of the Bush campaign compared the 14,872 invalidated ballots in the 1996 Presidential race to 19,120 ballots for President that were spoiled in this election.
Fact: the Bush campaign was comparing apples and oranges. There were actually 29,702 invalidated ballots this year in Palm Beach County. This is almost twice the number in 1996. "19,120" refers to only those 2000 ballots which were thrown out for voting for two Presidential candidates. The remaining 10,582 ballots had no choice recorded for President.
According to the Palm Beach County elections office (http://www.pbcelections.org), voters this year were not confused at all by the rest of the ballot. For example, less than 1% of U.S. Senate votes were invalidated because of multiple punches, compared with over 4% in the Presidential contest.
3) Myth: The Palm Beach ballot is definitely illegal due to the presence of punch holes to the left of some of the candidates.
Fact: According to the Secretary of State's office, there is a loophole in Florida law that may allow ballots used for voting machines to deviate from the rules governing paper ballots. This view has been contested by hundreds of Florida voters. The final decision on the legality of the ballot is likely to be made in court, as long as this issue could have an effect on the election.
It is possible that the ballot could be ruled illegal on other grounds, such as the Voting Accessibility for the Elderly and Handicapped Act or the Americans With Disabilities Act.
4) Myth: "The more often ballots are recounted, especially by hand, the more likely it is that human errors, like lost ballots and other risks, will be introduced. This frustrates the very reason why we have moved from hand counting tomachine counting." -- Former Sec. of State James Baker, speaking on behalf of the Bush campaign at a press briefing televised by all networks on 11/10/00.
Fact: In 1997, George W. Bush signed into law a bill stating that hand recounts were the preferred method in a close election in Texas. The bill, "HB 330", mandated that representatives of all parties be present to prevent fraud. Laws establishing rights and procedures for handrecounts also exist in Florida (see Title IX, Chapter 102). In fact, the Orlando Sentinel, (orlandosentinel.com) reported that a partial hand count of Presidential ballots this year was ordered by Republicans in Seminole County, where Bush led Gore. This count took place on 11/9 and 11/10, widening Bush's lead by 98 votes. The Bush campaign did not complain about this hand count; nor did it complain about the hand count on 11/11/00 which put Bush slightly ahead of Gore in New Mexico.
There do exist machine voting systems which are fairly accurate, but antiquated punch card systems are notoriously inaccurate. They were outlawed in Massachusetts in 1997 by Secretary of State William Galvin after a Congressional primary that was also "too close to call". The problem is that if the punched-out pieces of cardboard are not completely removed from the punch card, they can obstruct the card reader and the votes will not be counted. A manual recount of such cards can clearly reveal the voter's intentions.
5) Myth: The process is unfair because hand recounts were held only in liberal areas of Florida, where Gore stands to pick up the most votes.
Fact: It is true that a statewide recount would be more fair, and the Bush campaign has every right to request one. According to Florida law, hand recount requests must come from the campaigns, not from the state. To fail to request what is commonly referred to as a "defensive recount" in conservative areas of Florida, they may be making a tactical blunder that will cost them the election.
It is also true that there were voting irregularities in the counties where the Gore campaign requested recounts.
6) Myth: "Palm Beach County is a Pat Buchanan stronghold and that's why Pat Buchanan received 3407 votes there. According to the Florida Department of State, 16,695 voters in Palm Beach County are registered to the Independent Party, the Reform Party, or the American Reform Party, an increase of 110% since the 1996 presidential election" -- Ari Fleischer of the Bush Campaign, 11/9/00. The 2,000 votes received by the Reformparty candidate for Congress indicate that party's strength in Palm Beach County (James Baker on Meet the Press, 11/12/00).
Fact: Of those 16,695 voters, only 337 (2 percent) are in the Reform Party according to Florida state records. The Reform party candidate for Congress, John McGuire, is connected to a more centrist wing of the Reform Party, predating Buchanan's involvement. An analysis of his support indicates that it came largely from reform-minded Ralph Nader voters.
Regarding Buchanan's vote total, the Washington Post reported that his vote percentage in Palm Beach county was four times as high at the polls as in absentee voting. Even Buchanan himself admitted on 11/8/00 on the Today Show that many of his votes actually "belonged to Al Gore". So did his campaign manager, Bay Buchanan.
7) Myth: If Gore (or Bush) ends up winning the popular vote, he really should win the election even if he loses Florida and other states.
Fact: This is not the way the U.S. Constitution is written. The Electoral College decision, imperfect as it may be, is the only one that matters. It may be possible to reform or eliminate the electoral college in the future, so that small states would no longer receive extra electoralvotes out of proportion to their population. But until this change is made by Constitutional amendment, the Electoral College is still the law of the land.
8) Myth: The Cook County, Illinois ballot from the home district of Gore campaign chair Richard Daleyis similar to the "butterfly" ballot used in Palm Beach County (reported by Don Evans, 11/8/00)
Fact: According to the Chicago Daily Herald on11/10/00, the ballots in Chicago which had"facing pages" were referendum questions which only had two punch holes, Yes and No.
9) Myth: The election process in Florida outside of Palm Beach County was fair.
Fact: Actually, thousands of irregularities in over a half-dozen categories have already been reported:
-Ballots ran out in certain precincts according tothe LA Times on 11/10/00.
-Carpools of African-American voters were stopped by police, according to the Los Angeles Times (11/10/00). In some cases, officers demanded to see a "taxi license".
-Polls closed with people still in line in Tampa, according to the Associated Press.
-In Osceola County, ballots did not line up properly, possibly causing Gore voters to have their ballots cast for Harry Browne. Also, Hispanic voters were required to produce two forms of ID when only one is required. (source: Associated Press)
-Dozens, and possibly hundreds, of voters in Broward County were unable to vote because the Supervisor of Elections did not have enough staff to verify changes of address.
-Voters were mistakenly removed from voter rolls because their names were similar to those of ex-cons, according to Mother Jones magazine.
-According to Reuters news service (11/8/00), many voters received pencils rather than pens when they voted, in violation of state law.
-According to the Miami Herald, many Haitian-American voters were turned away from precincts where they were voting for the first time (11/10/00)
-According to Feed Magazine, the mayoral candidate whose election in Miami was overturned due to voter fraud, Xavier Suarez, said he was involved in preparing absentee ballots for George W. Bush. (11/9/00)
-According to tompaine.com, CBS's Dan Rather reported a possible computer error in Volusia County, Florida, where James Harris, a Socialist Workers Party candidate, won 9,888 votes. He won 583 in the rest of the state. [11/9/00] County-level results for Florida are available at cnn.com.
-Many African-American first-time voters who registered at motor vehicles offices or in campus voter registration drives did not appear on the voting rolls, according to a hearing conducted by the NAACP and televised on C-SPAN on 11/12/00.
10) Myth: "No evidence of vote fraud, either in the original vote or in the recount, has been presented." -- James Baker, representing the Bush campaign on 11/10/00, in a Florida briefing.
Fact: The election was held just last week, so of course many instances of fraud have not yet been substantiated. Even so, authorities have already uncovered clear evidence of voter fraud involving absentee ballots.
In Pensacola, Florida, Bush supporter Todd Vinson never received the absentee ballot he requested. According to the Associated Press on 11/9/00, it was determined after an investigation that this ballot was received by a third party, filled out with a forged signature, and then sent in. Assistant State Attorney Russell Edgar, when asked if other absentee ballots might had been intercepted, said, "I agree there may well be many more than just this one".
Much media attention on the issue of voter fraud has been focused on Wisconsin where cigarettes were offered to homeless people who were casting absentee ballots, presumably for Gore. The Gore campaign claims the cigarettes were not used to "buy" votes. On Monday 10/13, the London Times reported a suspected pro-Bush vote fraud operation in Miami involving over 10,000 ballots.
11) Myth: It is highly unusual for judges to intervene after an election. Since the designer of a disputed ballot in Florida is a member of the party contesting the election, a legal challenge is impossible.
Fact: The most fundamental right of a democratic society is the the right to vote, and to have one's vote correctly counted. The legal system exists to ensure that people's rights are not violated. Whether the person committing a violation is a Democrat or a Republican does not affect how that violation should be treated.
Elections are ultimately struggles for political power so it should not be surprising that disputes are often resolved in court. Of course judges can be biased. That is why they must explain their decisions and why bad arguments can be overturned on appeal.
The Florida Supreme Court ruled in 1998, in connection with a disputed Volusia County election, that if there is "substantial noncompliance" with election laws and a "reasonable doubt" about whether election results "expressed the will of the voters" then a judge must "void the contested election, even in the absence of fraud or intentional wrongdoing." (source: Wall St. Journal, 10/10/00). The Journal indicated that there was little legal precedent for a revote in just one area where an election occurred. It would be more likely for a court to order a new election or to overturn the result.
These issues have arisen in other states as well. In a Massachusetts Democratic primary in 1996 for the US House, the election was so close after recounts that a judge had to make the final decision after examining some of the ballots that were incompletely punched, to determine the intention of the voter. The law clearly dictated that it was the will of the voter that mattered, and the candidate who was behind, William Delahunt, went on to win the final election. Call the Capitol Switchboard if you have any doubts at 202-225-3121.
12) Myth: Richard Nixon's party in 1960 did the honorable thing in not contesting the results of the election.
Fact: According to a column in the Los Angeles Times, 11/10/00, "on Nov. 11, three days after the election, Thurston B. Morton, a Kentucky senator and the Republican Party's national chairman, launched bids for recounts or investigations in not just Illinois and Texas but also Delaware, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, NewJersey, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania and South Carolina. A few days later, Robert H. Finch and Leonard W. Hall, two Nixon intimates, sent agents to conduct what they called "field checks" in eight of those 11 battlegrounds. In New Jersey, local Republicans obtained court orders for recounts; Texans brought suit in federal court. Illinois witnessed the most vigorous crusade. Nixon aide Peter Flanigan encouraged the creation of aChicago-area Nixon Recount Committee. As late as Nov. 23, Republican National Committee general counsel H. Meade Alcorn Jr. was still predicting Nixon would take Illinois." Recounts continued into December, but did not succeed in overturning the result of the election.
13) Myth: "Governor Bush is still the winner, subject only to counting the overseas ballots, which traditionally have favored the Republican candidates" -- James Baker, Press Briefing, 11/10/00
Fact: The number of yet-to-be-counted overseas military ballots is likely to be in the range of 500 to 2000, based on the 1996 election in which there were 2,300 oversees absentee ballots overall, with roughly 60% of them coming from people enlisted in the military. According to CNN [11/10/00], the military overseas ballots that arrived before the election were already counted.
The biggest difference from 1996 is that Clinton -- who avoided the draft -- was running against Dole, a decorated military veteran.
In 2000 George W. Bush -- who avoided service in Vietnam and actually lost flying privileges in the Texas Air National Guard -- is running against Al Gore, a veteran who served in Vietnam.
It is just as possible that Gore will gain a few hundred votes from veterans as the other way around. It is also possible that the Gore ticket will pick up votes from Democratic diplomatic appointees, or temporary residents and dual citizens of Israel.
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Give every voter a unique number and a hard copy receipt. Publish all the votes on the internet. All voters can then tally the votes for themselves, and check that their votes are represented accurately.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
Why would you need two? Today, you only get one, and if it needs to be recounted, there it is in the ballot box. You can get a receipt, like you do today, that doesn't necessarily record the vote itself. That way you can tell the boss to get stuffed if he insists on seeing your vote, there's anonymity preserved (because it's not in your possession), etc. I really like this as a means of electronic voting. Get the network out of the way until we really have secure and anonymous transactions that can't be spoofed for anyone's favor.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
NOTICE OF REVOCATION OF INDEPENDENCE
To the citizens of the United States of America, In the light of your failure to elect a President 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 monarchial duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories (except Utah, which she does not fancy). Your new Prime Minister (The Right Honorable Tony Blair, 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 team by 2005.
7. You should declare war on Quebec and France, using nuclear weapons if they give you any merde. The 97.85% 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 "shit".
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.
[source unknown]
This from a socialist country with a monarchy and a parliament. Your friend and his compatriots must not pay much attention to local politics in other industrialized countries with a parliamentary system, like, say, France, the UK, or.. oh, I don't know, Sweden. In these countries when no party has a clear majority, days or even weeks pass before a viable coalition can be formed and in the meantime they have no government.
We're a long way from that kind of chaos.
And the brethren went away edified.
So whats to stop a physical element from being added to the electronic one? Someone touches the screen, it gets recoreded electronicaly, and a small paper ballot, jsut like the ones sued now, is punched by the computer and dropped into the box. That way we have fast accurate results, and a papertrail to recount if we need to.
http://www.dos.state.fl.us/
It says: Please contact the Secretary of State's office by using the E-mail option to send us your thoughts, questions and suggestions. Address is: secretary@mail.dos.state.fl.us
Latest bulletin can be found at http://election.dos.state.fl.us/ (One of, 11 Domains run by the Fla Dept. of State.)
(I know this is way down at the bottom, so not likely many will read it, but I'm still interested in people's opinions. Let me know what you think.)
My Ideas for United States General Election Reform:
The electoral college needs to stay. A president should be elected because he receives the support of the majority of the states, not the majority of the people in the nation. Small states and minorities would lose out considerably if the electoral college were completely abolished.
Alleged problems with the Electoral College:
Myth 1. The American people do not really elect the president
The American people, of course, still elect the president, but not directly. They never have. This is not a problem, and never has been. Some people like to point at elections in which the president has lost the popular vote, but won the office because of the Electoral College. A good example of this is George W. Bush in the 2000 election. If one were to look at a map of the United States, one would see that Bush won the support of the majority of the nation, while Gore won several pockets of large population. If the Electoral College were abolished, candidates could campaign only in these pockets of people, and win the office of the presidency even though the majority of states supported a different candidate.
Nobody argues that in a basketball tournament, the winner should be the team who scores the most total baskets combined from every game. The baskets have to be arranged to win games, just as the votes in a General Election have to be arranged to win states. However, I suggest to:
The electoral votes allotted to each State corresponds with the number of Representatives and Senators each State has in Congress. Instead of the majority winner in a particular state receiving the entirety of that state's electoral votes, have one electoral vote per Congressional district and two for the state majority.
Myth 2. Your vote counts for more if you're from a larger state
The number of electors a state received is directly proportional to the population of the state. Assuming that a state has 100% voter turnout, every vote counts as an identical percent of an elector. In fact, it is the smaller states whose vote counts for more, because each state has the two electors corresponding to Senators regardless of size. The problem ensues when one state has a high voter turnout, while another has a very low voter turnout. In the latter case, one's vote is worth quite a bit more. Therefore I propose that the number of electors be:
Using the national census, calculate the population of the United States and divide by 435 (the number of members in the House of Representatives). This will result in the number of people per congressional district. However, instead of counting basic population, count the number of people who voted in the previous general election. Then organize the congressional districts based on this information. This way, votes from states with large populations but with very low voter turn-out don't count for more than votes from states with higher voter turn-out.
Myth 3. Faithless electors can swing votes
A much-touted problem with the Electoral College, the fact that electors can change their vote at the last minute has never been a problem. In the very few times it has happened in this nation's history, not once has it even come close to changing the results of an election. In addition, the electors are generally chosen from the prominent members of the political party for whom your vote is case. That is to say, if you vote for a Republican president, you are in actuality voting for the Republican elector who has been chosen by party leaders. If your vote is cast for a Democratic president, you are electing the elector whom the Democrat party has chosen. There is very little chance that such a person would choose to go against the wishes of his party without good reason.
A bigger problem is that a president might be elected without gaining support of the majority of the nation, especially if the votes are divided among three or four parties. A form of run-off voting, such as Instant Runoff Voting or Instant Pair Runoff Voting (Condorcet), would solve this problem.
Instant Runoff Voting allows voters to rank candidates as their first choice, second choice, third, fourth, and so on. If a candidate does not receive clear majority of votes on the first count, a series of runoff counts are conducted, using each voter's top choices indicated on the ballot. The candidate who received the fewest first place ballots is eliminated. The ballots are then retabulated, with each counting as a vote for the top-ranked candidate listed on the ballot that is still in contention. Voters who chose the now-eliminated candidate have their votes transferred to their second choice candidate--just as if they were voting in a traditional two-round runoff election. This process continues until a candidate achieves more than fifty percent of the vote. However, this still encourages people not to "vote their conscience." A more effective system is the Condorcet, or "Instant Pair Runoff Voting" method.
In the Condorcet election method, voters rank the candidates in order of preference. The vote counting procedure then takes into account each preference of each voter for one candidate over another. It does so by conceptually breaking the election down into a series of separate races between each possible pairing of candidates, hence it is sometimes referred to as a "pairwise" method. If one of the candidates beats each of the other candidates in their one-on-one race, then that candidate wins. Otherwise, the result is ambiguous and an optimal procedure is used to resolve the ambiguity. Unlike our current plurality election method, the Condorcet system gives voters little incentive to falsify their true preferences.
More detailed information about Condorcet voting can be found here: http://russp.org/ElectionMethods.org/CondorcetEx.h tm.
Other thoughts to consider:
Thanks for your input. Please email me with comments and suggestions.
Dlugar
Computer Go: Writing Software to Play the Ancient Game of Go
Unfortunately this means that hand-counting can destroy balots by accidenty allowing the punches to form.
We need something more mechanically sturdy, perhaps linked to some Linux servers-- I favor old-fashoned punch-cards for the reciepts as produced by the old mainfraims while the data can also be entered into an open-source database program. The source code and databases should be publically readable, but not writable (maybe via a copy of the DB for example).
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Look no further. And no, it's not goat sex. It's Tribes 2 beta testing. Yeah, some guy's Atari 2600 hybrid is TONS more interesting, and so's all the other crap posted today, but here's a story that got bitchslapped down.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
President Bush, in order to maintain relations with our allies, you will be required to visit Australia next week.
The reply:
Australia? I've always wanted to see Vienna!
Ack! scary thought! even on /.'s voting page we aren't supposed to trust the results! I wonder what would happen if they recounted one of them. :)
The anti-salmon
I bet Apple could make the voting booths.. the iVoter :) It could come in nice warm fuzzy colors :) that is if you REALLY want it to be transparent :)
Just to deal with one question... someone can vote for a candidate in one state but not in another because voting for president is a state process. Candidates have to work to get on the ballot in each of the fifty states (unless their party has previously garnered a certain percentage of the popular vote). Believe it or not, this is a good thing. You have to be a pretty damn serious candidate to get enough signatures in all fifty states; the process weeds out the various loonies you'd normally see on your ballot, the ones that usually run for city council seats or county dogcatcher. It's good to have choices for president, but not too many choices.
Related to this is the reason that people dreaming up a federal system of vote tabulation are just beating off: the people of the US do not vote for the presidency... the states vote for the presidency. The races are run in each of the states, not across the entire nation. This is inked into the Constitution, and for various theoretical reasons that won't be gone into here, an amendment changing it has a whelk's chance in a supernova of passing.
No relation to Happy Monkey
so you're proposing voting by mail? how is this different from an absentee system we have now?
I think that in a classic Banana Republic we wouldn't even *have* a meaningfull vote, and that by now the troops would have been called out and the new El Presidante (Gore, he's got the troops already) would have been installed, until the current emergency passes.
Display some adaptability.
Here is a book called Vote Scam which purports that between the manufacturers of voting equipment and VNS (Voter News Service), just about any election can be rigged. Interestingly, the author points out that all of the voting tabulation equipment is run on proprietary hardware with proprietary software which no one will offer up for public peer review. Does anyone here honestly think that closed source software running inside our voting booths is appropriate given how critical this equipment is to the foundation of our democracy? I don't know if the allegations made in the book are true, but I definately believe we need to lobby congress to pass a law MANDATING that all voting systems be completely transparent and run with open hardware and software in a manner which allows for public peer review. Yup, that means Free Software/Open Source voting booths.
Take a look
The same argument was said 100s of years ago about "paper voting" that people can "fake in additional paper votes" rather than actual vote of "rasing your hand and counting those hand right on the spot"
:-)
So in time, those "hard" copies will be just anotehr "hard-electrons"
Thinks forwared not backward BUT look backward as you move forward.
-- George
Karma stuck at 50? Add 2-5 inches.. err.. 2-5x Karmas Count to your pen1es.. err.. Karma all naturally and private
> Is Bush and Gore trying to prove that the only thing you need to become president is a good lawyer? Can you sue to become president?
I guess I'm an anti-alarmist. For better or worse, the courts are the final arbiters of law and procedure in the USA. When an election is this close, the courts are exactly where it belongs.
And though the courts are not completely above politicising the situation, I still have faith that their decisions will be much less politically motivated than, say, Florida's Attorney General (activist Democrat) or Secretary of State (activist Republican).
> Who really believes that a recount is anymore accurate than the original tally?
You may be interested to know that a recount law was enacted in Texas in 1997, with bipartisan support in the state legislature and a willing signature from GWB. That law says that in the event one party wants a recount by machine and the other a hand recount, then the recount shall be by hand. I think if you had asked anyone at all eight days ago, everyone would have agreed that a hand count is the most accurate. (Machine recounts are generally preferred due to considerations cost and speed.)
A side note, which you probably do not want to hear, is that hand counts can detect the voter's intent in cases where a machine count cannot. There is plenty of legal precedent for this notion. (And also, IIRC, a direct mention of the voter's "intent" in the Florida Statutes. Sorry; I read big blocks of it last night, and am not up to reading it again.)
> Out of the 6 million votes in Florida, how hard do you think it would be for Gore supporters to mysteriously come up with 2000 votes in Gore's favour?
Whence the a priori assumption that the Democrats are more able to cheat than the Republicans are, or that they will prove to be better at it? Are you aware of the procedures used in hand recounts?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Etc.
Or voting at gunpoint after being hauled off to an internet cafe... you get the point. I don't know any way around that.
I would like to see electronic tallying at the polling place, though. Just dial up and submit your totals at the end of the day.
BUT... I would really still like a hard copy of each vote, right after each vote. God forbid that we wind up with an election such as the one in Florida, with nothing but bits vanished from the ether as a record of people's votes.
Is there any way to do this securely w/o a physical record of the vote?
---
I am typing while wasted, sorry (extra attention to typing on this post)
Visit DC2600
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
With the whole world (and with an top election committe composed of republicans)
VERY HARD. The risk of getting caught would
be EXCEEDINGLY high.
tj
Yeah, and Kentucky uses mechanical voting machines as well. There was a rumor when I lived there that a couple of folks in Madison county were able to get one of their voting machines to work with the back open.
I wouldn't say that the inability to double check makes me more confident though. More precisely, I do not believe in the cute:
Man with one watch always know what time it is.
Man with two watches never sure.
Repeatability and open review are the foundations of science. One watch may always look right, but that doesn't mean that it is.
LibBT: BitTorrent for C - small - fast - clean (Now Versio
I think that it's a smart decision. States are given wide latitude on how and when to certify electors (for example, South Carolina didn't hold presidential elections until 1860). Without clear direction from statute or directly applicable precedent, the wise jurist (especially the wise *lower court* jurist) lets administrators take care of administration, intervening only when necessary.
A ruling in the other direction, where counties would be able to overrule the legal authority of the secretary of state by merely choosing to not certify their ballot, would be truly horrifying. If you think that this election has been a fiasco, you aint seen nothing yet.
That said, he explicitly and personally charged the Florida Secretary of State with coming up with a very good, legal reason to reject further revisions to the vote count, letting Palm Beach go ahead and recount with impunity. She cannot arbitrarily reject them merely because they come in late. Essentially, this lets her declare a certification of county vote counts which is only one in name, not in fact.
However. Like most lay observers, it seems that the person to whom we are replying ascribes motives to the process of law. The best thing that judges can do is rule for legal consistency, not justice, not cowardice, and certainly a pox on both your houses. They're quite romantic explanations but nowhere near the truth.
Lewis covered the bases as a competent judge should - he granted controlling legal authority to the controlling legal authority - but placed restrictions on that legal authority. Where Harris wanted to ignore any further revisions after 5PM (really, this is the only reason to call for certifications at this date), Lewis left the door open for them.
If Harris were a lawyer, she'd probably take this as a rebuke to her overstepping the bounds of her authority as Secretary of State. Because she's a Republican partisan with limited experience, it probably went over her head. I'll bet good money that the Republican legal team understood, though, and is hard at work coming up for possible reasons to close the door on Palm Beach Co.'s manual recount.
--
--
There is no premature anti-fascism. -Ernest Hemingway
The original concept behind was to prevent large states from having more influence than smaller ones, but not because of population differences. Since it was highly impractical for the candidates to campaign in those days, the electoral college was created to prevent people from simply voting for the candidate from their home state. Instead they voted for an elector to represent their state. On top of that the electors were originally required to cast two votes, one of which had to be from outside their state. yes, even at that time the number of electors was based on population, but it was not the driving factor behind using the electoral college.
Nope, punched cards are a bad idea. They are, in fact, the whole problem in Palm Beach County, Florida, because the voters often don't punch the hole fully, the chad stays attached, causing problems, or, worse, the voter punches more than one candidate for the same office. I have used punched cards, voting machines and two different kinds of mark-up paper ballots.
The biggest problem with counting mark-up paper ballots is that most of the counting machines are OLD - they use lamps (or worse technology) to sense the vote. This is such a problem that Texas allows the election judges, under supervision, to place clear tape over the original mark (to preserve the voter's intent) and apply a so the reader will read the ballot properly. Well, at least the reader does reject questionable ballots to a "try again" hopper so the election judges can make sure they are counted, either by rescan or manually. Modern scanners could do a much better job.
Riverside County's electronic system cost tens of thousands of dollars to implement. Apparently the county could afford to do it, but what about Los Angeles County? Or other very populous counties? What about sparsely populated, poor counties?
The reason that we punch a piece of paper is for the same reason that we still use pencils and paper. By and large, the system works, and works well. I believe that no matter what system is in place, irregularities will occur. That's just the way things go with a project of the scope of a national election. But the beauty of the system as it is now is that it's quite inexpensive and quite accurate. Bear in mind that the number of ballots in dispute are a small fraction of the total of number of ballots cast. Given the closeness of the election, any small problem ends up appearing quite large...but I still do not see a strong case for making a change, other than, perhaps, the gee-whiz factor.
-h-
It seems that the only presidential candidate in the US who really cares about people (and not whoever will help them the most) is Ralph Nader, and he doesn't have many vote. I live in Canada, and i've just started hearing ads on the radio for the NDP (our election is the 27th). Their site (www.ndp.ca) says
"Our commitment to Canadians:
We'll increase federal money for health care and add home care and help with prescription drugs to Medicare.
We'll establish tough national standards and strong programs for safe food, clean drinking water and clear air.
We'll implement a national plan with solid targets to make jobs our first economic priority.
We'll double the Child Tax Benefit and create a National Early Years Fund for early childhood education and child care.
We'll roll back tuition fees and create interest-free loans for college and university students.
We'll fight for fair trade deals that put the needs of Canadians ahead of global corporations."
They actually have 10-20% of the seats, i think (can't find it anywhere...), and that's better than Ralph Nader.
They that quote Benjamin Franklin on liberty and safety deserve neither.
Sounds like a... Blinding Flash of the Obvious !
That's pretty stupid. Not all military wives are registered to vote in the same state as their husbands; my supervisor registered in California while her husband (navy Corspman) would've registered in Florida, and done the absentee thing. (He didn't vote, so I encouraged her to needle him endlessly, especially given how close the florida vote is, and his dislike of Gore/Clinton. That's another story though)
For the past week, I've been watching and reading the news with increasing trepidation as one person after another attempts to pass off their partisan opinon as the one and only correct, unbiased interpretation of the law. Campaign staffers, GOP and Dem politicians, regular voters, the digerati, and even the press. I view both the Democrats and the Republicans with equal distaste, and am equally unhappy with either candidate. I think that's about as unbiased as you're gonna get. Am I the only one in America?
Ironically, the most level-headed non-partisan statement I've heard yet has come from Al Gore. And not even that was without a slant.
And as I've been watching this whole circus, I've been hollering at the TV screen and muttering to my newspaper, "stop acting like third world politicians, pretending you aren't arguing from an extreme position!" All these people, especially James Baker and Mindy Tucker, seem to have absolutely no clue as to how biased they sound when they make their public statements. They're so blinded by their partisanship they can't see how hypocritical they look to people who are only interested in a fair outcome.
Of course, what should I expect from Florida? Chicago and Louisiana may have the reputations as corrupt, but I used to live in Florida. Based on the amount of corruption, con artisanship, and good ole boy networking I endured there, I was immediately cracking jokes about how ironic it was that the outcome of the presidential election would depend on the integrity of Florida officials. It is a banana republic folks, in a lot of ways.
There are a lot of Americans who believe that we have the most honest, ethical system of government in the world. And they have good reason to believe it - it's drummed into us from day one. And it may still be true. But always remember and never forget: that doesn't mean it's completely honest and totally ethical. To say "it can never happen here" is to leave the door wide open for corruption. And I fear that's what we have done.
Look at it this way: when money can buy policy in DC, the way it does now, just how soon will it be until money can buy an election? And has it happened already?? We need to keep asking those questions, or else it will happen right under our noses.
Heck, that's exactly why I voted for Nader. There's too much influence in Washington by special interests with lots of money. Nobody there does anything if it's not greased by megabucks. Is that ethical? Is it good government? It disturbs me that these practices are so widely accepted. I know I'm not the only one, but it seems there aren't enough of us.
And, in closing, I have to unleash my inner conspiracy theorist or he's gonna eat a hole in my spleen: it sure smells a lot to me like the Bush boys tried to buy an election, and it blew up in their faces. But we'll probably never see any evidence to support that... then again, stranger things (cough, Monica, cough) have happened!
I can see the fnords!
I'm pretty sure I know how the paper and pencil system works, but that doesn't mean I'm at the polling place keeping Mrs. Jones from losing a few votes for one candidate or another.
Seek conspiracy and ye shall find.
Falsifying paper votes is pretty easy. Its paper. Think bribery.
Falsifying computer records is pretty easy. Think bribery...
Seriously! Someone in a back room can alter electronic votes. With card ballots, someone has to slip out with a stack of ballots in front of the other election workers. It can happen, but the electronic fraud is easier to get away with.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
You obviously didn't get my point. In a large portion of the world, it would be scumbag politicians leading soldiers and revolutionaries who were scrambling about like rats doing anything they could to kill off the opposition.
Scumbag politicians? Yeah. We've got more than a few. No more than the rest of the world, I think, and a lot fewer than some other countries. Compared to random acts of political violence, ethnic cleansing, and the like, I think they're pretty much a nuisance, particularly when compared to the alternative - waking up every morning and wondering if the local political situation will let you live another 24 hours.
And BTW - I never claimed that the US was the birthplace of democracy - nor even that we were a democracy. We're not; the United States is a representative republic.
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
If the USA was anything like 90% of the rest of the world, the country would be in flames from the rioting, looting, civil unrest, and outright rebellion that would have inevitably followed an election this close.
Aren't we stretching it a bit?
I mean, the USA is relatively politically stable, but your view of the rest of the world (oh, sorry, just 90% of the rest of the world) is totally distorted.
I mean, where I live, in Israel (which is not, you must agree, the most peaceful and stable country around), the elections are almost always this close, and yet, I don't recall any rioting and looting on this issue (though for other reasons... but that's another matter), so what "90% of the rest of the world" are you talking about, exactly? Sweden, maybe?
Of course, I cannot really blame you for this superficial view of the "rest of the world" - you probably see reports on TV about such things as the latest Yugoslavian elections and the chaos that followed. You don't a lot about the latest elections in Sweden, for example, because a news report about how "the elections went peacefully, nothing interesting happened, new prime-minister was elected" are not very interesting news indeed. Thus, you deduce that the events that followed the Yugoslavian elections are the norm in the rest of the (non-American) world.
I'm sorry, but despite what you are implying, the "rest of the world" is not populated by mindless barbarians.
Shucks.
I should curse you out for posting this five times in the last week...
But it's so damn inspired I can't bring myself to do it. Good work!
j.
Ned Flanders, I mock your value system. You also appear foolish to the eyes of others.
A friend in Sweden tells me that the U.S.A. is now being referred to as the B.R.A., the Banana Republic of America
what?!?
I know it is not relevant, but I work at a Banana Republic store....heh.
Surely this is obvious: Any vote that can't
be double checked later for fraud is untrustworthy.
I guess in New York, when you steal an election. it STAYS stolen...
tj
Florida law actually does set standards for ballot layout. Those standards were ignored in Palm Beach county.
A well-crafted lie appears unquestionable - Dama Mahaleo
I want to vote "straight Democratic Party ticket" and then also punch a vote for Bush for President
Technically isnt that a spoiled ballot? Shouldnt it get confused...?
no it means that you want to vot for everyone in the Dem party, except for in the presidential race, in which you would like to vote for bush--this would be the quickest way to do so, if that is the way you felt
Slackware: old school feel, new school gear.
to make it complete: Everybody can download the GPL'd sourcecode. You download a PC/Mac/Linux programm that lets you preview and preact your voting or/and prints your absentee ballots.
The office of President was seen as such an important one that they wanted a system that combined both of these aspects, and also, originally, the system was intended to provide for an "educated" group to actually elect the president, in times when it wasn't practical for a president to travel everywhere and communicate with the populace as a whole. In any case, the system was written into the constitution, and since small states have greater power than in any sort of system based on a single popular vote count (whether that is one man, one vote, or approval voting, or any of the other various voting systems), an amendment to change to such a system will never pass.
Note that residents of states with smaller populations have greater power in the presidential election in two ways: First, they have more electoral votes per person (the number of votes is based on the number of members of the house + senate combined, or 2 + a number proportional to the population) -- one per 160,000 in Wyoming, but about 1 per 540,000 in California. Second, they have a greater chance of their one vote (or, say, the votes of a small group of like-minded friends) swaying their state's total.
As far as complicated ballots, the one and only reason is that the form of ballots to use is left up to individual states, counties, or cities to decide. Very often, the choice is to continue using whatever they have been using, so many places are using whatever system of ballots was decided upon 50 years ago, simply because the government hasn't seen a sufficient reason to change.
The "butterfly ballot" punch-card system used in some of the disputed counties in Florida has been the subject of numerous problems in the past like the ones in this election, and it has suffered a tremendous decline because places where it has caused problems in the past have chosen to use other systems. Apparently, ballots like the only ones I have ever voted with (in Texas and Massachusetts: ones where you fill in a bubble or box or some similar space next to the name of the candidate, and the resulting ballot is read optically by a computer) are the most common in the US today. However, at least where I voted in Texas, no computer reads the ballot at the time you cast your vote; instead, you just slide it in a slot in a locked box and the stack of ballots is processed later. Where I vote now, a computer does read the ballot when I hand it in; I don't know if it will give me a chance to fix my mistake if I mess up, only because I haven't seen it happen.
The one particular ballot causing all the problems was further complicated by the fact that there were too many candidates running for president to fit all their names and the vice-presidential candidates names on one page, as is usual, without making the names too small. They instead chose this system where the names appear on both sides of the row of punch-holes, and while most of the voters could follow the arrows to the correct hole, a small fraction of the voters either were in too much of a rush or were genuinely confused, and the election is so close that the votes of these few rushing/confused voters can sway the result. When the election is won by 500,000 votes, nobody cares much if 1000 voters' votes may be counted inaccurately, but when the election is won by 300 votes, suddenly it matters a great deal.
I lived ten years in Australia and recently made the mistake of returning to America. I share your sentiments. Americans think they are special, different, preeminent, etc. They're not. They're just like everyone else. It's by luck more than anything else that they live in a politically stable society.
If we consider the murder and incarceration rates in the USA, then it may well be argued that America pays an unreasonably high cost for it's democracy. Other countries have democratic republics as well, they just do it more efficiently.
A quote from some Palm Beach retiree, seen in the SJMN: "I hope they keep recounting until Gore wins."
A lot of people are calling for the electoral college to be disbanded. The above is one reason why I think it needs to stay. No matter how much the candidates whip their supporters into irrational frenzy, it all gets filtered through the electors. It ain't a perfect system by a long shot, and I'm not claiming electors are any better than condo-maniacs, but it beats the hell out of revoting every time the election gets close.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Woohoo! I may be the next president!
That's not what he said at all. Read his ruling, here.
He reviewed the relevent statutes, noted the conflicting requirements of the certification deadline and the time needed for recounts, opined that the Legislature would not have provided for recounts but intended them impractical to conclude, both deferred to and cautioned the Secretary of State to apply appropriate discretion, and observed that the results may be challenged in Circuit Court within ten days of certification.
That last point is a veiled admonition to the Secretary of State to "do the right thing" or risk being handed her partisan head in Circuit Court (perhaps his) in short order.
I humbly beg your pardon. Of course I knew that, which is why I didn't call it outright libel.
I was mistaken by calling the previous post "borderline libel". I should be more accurate. When someone accuses the miltary personel as a group of being a bunch of wife beaters, the correct term is "asshole." I may not like a lot of the current military policies, but I respect the individual soldier (and anyone else who volunteers to stand between me and harm).
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Congress is going to reform the voting apparatus of America, it ought to set up a publicly funded research project to do this, and fund the equipment and software as well
Geez...When will people understand?
Voting is,has been, and will always be an enterprise of the individual states. This was one of the primary reasons for the 10th Amendment.
Federal regulations on voting are bad. Actually, let me repeat that in case you missed it. Federal regulations on voting are bad. Statewise peer review of other state's elections is good. Ensure that voting access is unabridged, but otherwise leave it to the states.
I'm convinced this country has survived because the Founding Fathers were one hell of alot smarter than their successive progeny.
Shameless self promoter:-D I only put it in election items and this is the best spot I have gotten thus far.
What software did you use, and where did you get the pictures? :)
One criteria though is anonymity. How would your
system address this?
:wq
There's some comedy in the story of how my county (Dane, Wisconsin) abandoned their old mechanical machines.
I made a write-in run for Sheriff in '92, the first semi-serious write-in effort in a generation.
The paper spools had not been replaced in 25 years, and become brittle. As they tore while being pulled past the Write-In window, the next voter would be confronted by a slip still bearing my name.
The county spent $600,000 on a new Bubblereader system, rather than $600 for new paper.
Ben Masel: 51,282 votes for US Senate in the Wisconsin Democratic Primary
As opposed to the republicans, who've been trying to block scrutiny of the Florida votes, by attempting to stop recounts ? IMO, the secretary of state has been acting in a partisan manner also. Both sides appear to be scrapping for the last few votes. I don't blame either side, but it seems dishonest or at least very biased) to act as though one side are the "good guys" and the other side are "evil". It's really not that simple.
And that idiot judge finds it difficult to read a statute that clearly says that "the state shall certify results by 5pm".
Are you a lawyer ? If you're not, you are not qualified to interpret the statute. IIRC, the judge upheld the deadline, but gave the secretary discretion to accept corrections to the count after the deadline.
here.
-nbot
Other countries have democratic republics as well, they just do it more efficiently.
Those of us in democratic monarchies do alright too =).
skribe
Being a Republican in Australia often means you're a Democrat!
Blog
Only one version, human-readable (but in a simple font adapted to be machine-readable as well). Otherwise, I could be cheated by a hacked machine that prints "Harry Browne" in the human-readable characters (so I don't know that anything's amiss) and "Al Gore" in the machine-readable characters (so the tabulation machines credit the vote to him).
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
It's a good thing some states actually have 'simple' ballots and 'fool-proof' voting as described before, but I wonder why that's not a nation-wide thing, given the past incidents you've described in your post.
Ah well.... whoever gets to be president will probably have 4 years of hell :)
AC comments get piped to
You do know, don't you, that your post is borderline libel?
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Someone look in the box already!
I can see the fnords!
This is a very bad idea. You do not want individuals to be able to "prove" that they voted for a specific candidate. Your bosses and parents will try to force you to vote for their guy and there will be lots of people saing "I'll pay you $100 for a vote for candidate X."
Now, all internet voting allows this kind of abuse, but there are a few possible solutions like allowing you to change your internet vote a the polling station.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Yes, the computer voting booth is pretty good if you see it print out a paper ballot in front of you, but it seems unlikely that the ballot implementors will be that paranoid. BTW, one of the biggest electronic voting corperations is run by a guy who has beenm convicted of falsifing th vote twice before and his company's software is very closed source (i don't know if they only do internet voting or electronic voting booths too). Anywho, the point is that I would expect a lot of vote rigging when electronic systems are installed since they woil not have the simple security systems like making a printout for the voter.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Hmm, first I heard of us having anything newer than the ancient mechanical voting machines we use here in Beauregard Parish. (Thats county for those of you in the other 49 states.)
Personally I'd be scared witless at anything computerized in a voting booth that hadn't been designed in a very paranoid way and with all hardware and software exposed and vetted by impartial experts.
Democrat delenda est
No, it's buttons. Highlight the votes you want and when you're finished and sure the correct buttons are highlited, press a submit button.
Sure, "the boss" can do that now. Doesn't mean you have to tell him. Plus, you can always say you threw the receipt away(like most people do at ATM's).
Whence the a priori assumption that the Democrats are more able to cheat than the Republicans are, or that they will prove to be better at it?
All those dead democrats who regularly vote in Chicago. Heck, it was about time a dead democrat was elected to office instead of just voting, and whaddayaknow, it happened. Plus, this election, just like that crooked one in the 60s, features.... a Daley!
The whole idea of peering at a spoiled (improperly marked) ballot and determining "intent" surely seems like this kind of stuff the road to hell is paved with. I like machine tallies; machines aren't democrats, and they aren't republicans.
Even Nixon conceded defeat under much shadier conditions (previous Daley) than this. Gore seems to think he can harangue and sue his way into office. Someone once said that anyone who wants to be President bad enough to fight to get there, shouldn't be trusted with the office. Gore is certainly disqualifying himself on those grounds.
And these dolts on Florida thinking they get a do-over! Right! Which third-world peacekeeper-infested kleptocracy do we live in again? If ANYONE gets to vote again, I'm driving to that locale and demanding a second vote myself. Perhaps even a third, if we're going to play that game. And I'll also be buying tickets to a more civilized country, like Sweden, Norway, hell, even Argentina.
Let me just point out something that everyone seems to be missing. New York uses mechanical voting machines. There is no hard copy of the vote, but the voting process works just fine, and the concept of "recount" doesn't apply.
What's wrong with at least using this in other states?
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Obfuscated e-mail addresses won't stop sadistic 12-year-old ACs.
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
So get a Recipt!
IANAA (I Am Not An American), but what terrible consequences would arise if the 25 Florida electors split their block of votes evenly between the two candidates? Since it looks like we won't be seeing a clear-cut winner in the state for a long time (if ever), doesn't it make sense to look for a way around the problem? Of course, the GOP team would wail and scream, since this would (I think) give Gore the majority of EC votes.
AFAIK, there's no law set in stone that says the electors have to all vote the same way, just a tradition. Other states have split votes, don't they? Of course, changing the EC's procedure part-way through the process isn't the most "clean and fair-looking" solution, but how bad could it be (unless you're a Republican, I guess)? Better than shotgunning the count and turning the orange state into a banana republic.
"8 million, two hu.. What? Damn. One, two..."
StuP
Security is always a matter of perception. If an election server is secure, but people don't believe it- it may as well be wide open. Think of the reduction in violent crime in recent years relative to public perception.
What will become of the counters?
Gore says "Listen to the Will of the People (At least the half who voted for me)"
"A Bold Solution" by Ming The Merciless
America To Occupy Self To Assure "Free And Fair Elections"
That's heresy! As soon as the first "Votronic" gets popular, we'll see a bunch of "Hack the Votronic" slashdot articles about "How I added an Ethernet card". They'll probably try to stimulate sales of the Votronic by adopting the following business model: give them away and sell subscriptions to a per-election counting service. This will really get the hackers going: "How I hacked my free Votronic to play MP3s" or worse, "England's New PM Turns Out To Be an MP3. RIAA sues."
Honestly, people only have a problem with this when it means their man is going to lose on an accurate count
Actually, "my guy," Harry Browne, clearly lost.
I'm inclined to agree, though I find it odd that Gore's is the only name you mention in the present context
Only because he's the one initiating and backing all the lawsuits, and rejecting all of the Bush team's proposals for settlement. Bush team does get serious demerits for filing suit -- in a FEDERAL COURT -- about a state election matter. The idea I get looking at the news is that Gore is trying to sue and or recount himself into office. Bush's single lawsuit (that I know of) tried to put a stop to the manual recount (which wasn't even the first recount), which as far as I know of, was against Florida law anyway. Idiots to go to federal court and not florida court over that, though. In other words, it looks like Gore could care about the law as long as he wins, and although Bush filed suit as well, we appears to actually care about the law being followed. In advance of the first recount being completed, Bush stood a very real chance of losing, but offered that whoever won, won. Gore rejected that pending the outcome of the recount. My complaint is not about "my guy losing" -- my guy was the Libertarian, after all. My complaint is about a bunch a whiners thinking that they can vote and count and vote until they like the result. An interesting side note is that the ballot in question was approved by the Democratic Party in that Democratic country prior to the election, and had been approved and used for years. Suddenly they find a problem with it? I agree it's a silly looking ballot; but fix it for the next election.
And what about absentee ballots? No one is insisting that they be received on the day designated by The Congress.
Yes, they are. Those ballots must be postmarked by the day of the election, regardless of what day they arrive.
Or what about jurisdictions that allow early voting. Mine does, and I did. Is my ballot lying uncounted in a dumpster somewhere right now? Should it be?
I don't know its whereabouts, but it certainly should be counted. But once you submit your ballot -- by mailing it, putting it in the ballot box/machine, whatever -- your part of the game is over, and unless your ballot is spoiled (improperly marked), your vote should be counted.
I don't at all think a revote is a forgone conclusion, and in fact I don't really expect one, but it's a very head-in-sand approach to laugh at the idea as though it were impossible
I'm not saying it ius impossible -- I'm saying it should either be impossible or universal. I'm saying it's not fair to let one section of the electorate vote again after the election is over -- i.e., with special knowledge of the expected results. This happens on a small scale due to timezones in the general eletion, yes -- but bue to exit polls, not votes being certified and announced. Perhaps precincts should not make public announcements until all of the polls have closed. And TV and Radio shouldn't publicize exit polls until after the voting has ended. Perhaps all voting should be moved to weekends -- or better, a declared national holiday -- and no poll-based prognostications of "the winner" allowed under thw law, because it's really tampering with the vote. The Press has turned the election into a circus and a revenue generator. If everyone waited until the electors gathered and cast their votes, Dec. 18th this year, there would be no brouhaha. If they even waited until the states each certified and announced their votes by the deadline (Dec 18th), there would be no problem. It's the artifical hype-wagon "crisis" that the press created and is perpetuating that is the problem. Gore's trying to use it to his advantage. Bush is too, to a lesser extent, but pre-announcing cabinet choices and transition teams. There's nothing strictly wrong with that, except that he's doing in in such as way as to imply that he's won already. He'll look pretty stupid if he loses. Both of them look stupid right now, as a matter of fact. Gore just looks stupid, plus arrogant and shady.
I would like to remind you that, first off, Israel is very stable, within its voting population. Second, it appears your view of the world is the distorted one. While Europe (most of it) and North America, and Israel are good at handling close elections, think about Africa, and South America, and much of Asia. India has gotten good at the mass democracy thing, but most of the countries in the aforementioned regions would be in utter chaos. These countries also happen to take up a whole hell of a lot more space than America and Europe. Should I bother to mention Russia?
Choose One as we still have to choose....
And others.
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
It's perfectly feasible to have computers at the polling stations. It would mean an accurate count the first time, and avoids much the concern about people cracking the system. We should concentrate on getting the computer voting system up and running, and worry about the extra issues raised by connecting to the internet later on.
Not every computer needs to be on the net guys!
Drag n' Drop DVD Recommendations
Maybe if more people voted for who they believed to be the right person then this whole damn partisanship mess wouldn't have happened? Enough! Nader did not cause Gore to lose, Gore caused Gore to lose, and if Gore supporters say otherwise then they are poor losers. And if Bush supporters, or Buchanan, or Browne, or anyone, says that as well, then those comments are in poor taste. (This is all presuming Gore loses of course.)
And you yourself think Gore had the least-obnoxious statement on the whole thing.
"Vote for me, I'm less obnoxious!"
Hardly a stunning promotion, I would think. But in this day and age...
Those who do not know the past are doomed to reimplement it, poorly.
You need a hard copy as proof that you voted. It's easy to alter digital records if you know how, but to falsify 10,000 paper ballots is another story. I think we should *always* have a physical record of a vote or any important action/transaction (like major bank transfers, pay stubs, credit card bills, etc.)
I'm a little segfault, short and stout.
Brave words from an AC. Normally that's an irrelevant argument, but in this case it applies.
Anyway, even if you would quit, millions don't have that option.
Thats in Canada for the geographically challenged. We just had a municipal election using a new ballot system that worked VERY well. Each name had a broken black bar beside it, and you used a felt marker to fill in the gap. Immediately, you walk over to the counting station, with your ballot inside a folded over sheet so that nobody can see the vote. The ballot is fed into a machine that looks like a fax, and if it cannot read it, counts two, etc. it spits it back out. Immediate feedback on at least basic procedure. sdg
Ok, how about this one. The voter will be shown a unique number that the voter has to write down for use later if they want to check their vote online. No one would pay money for a hand written number that could match an unknown entry. Of course the entry would be anonymous.
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable" - JFK
Not by mail. You drop one in a regular old ballot box like in the good ol' days. The other one you keep for personal proof of vote. In theory, you wouldn't even need this second one. As long as the First one is machine printed and machine readable, that would be the only one you need. As long as you selected the right votes before printing it would be as fool proof as possible for the voter.
A simple voting system, such as a paper and pencil means everybody knows whats going on. Electronic voting allows for fraud through obscurity, because only a few people understand how the system works.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
There is no
Here's my idea for a voting system, as inspired by my frequent visits to the airport: use boarding passes!
Use a touch-screen kiosk, with a screen for each election (president, senate, etc), with the candidates clearly laid out for the voter to touch, and a confirm vote screen. Once a voter has been through each election choice, the kiosk prints out the ballot. On the front is clearly printed the candidates the person has voted for. On the back is the encoded magnetic strip with the vote details. They then drop it in the ballot box themselves.
Advantages?
1) No over or under voting thanks to on-screen selections
2) Printed human readable names allows voter to confirm for themselves they picked the right people, makes for easy manual recounts (no arguments over pregnent chads here!), and guarantees against a fraudulent magnetic strip encoding.
3) Magnetic strip makes electronic counting quick and easy. No chads, no OCR screw-ups. If the strip fails, you still have the printed vote.
4) The vote isn't final until they place the ballot in the box, so the old dears have until the last second to realise they've screwed up and go back for another go. Also allows for multiple attempts to print if the machine chews your ballot or doesn't print properly.
5) Uses existing wide-spread, proven, reliable cheap technology.
And of course, the software is written as Open Source and runs on Linux...
Call me old-fashioned, but I still prefer having bits of paper to look at to confirm a vote. There's just too many power-hungry dishonest politicians and lobbyists out there willing to do anything to win to guarantee free and fair e-lections.
Reckon I could get a patent on this???
aye, there's the rub.
eudas
Blessed is he who expects the worst, for he shall not be disappointed.
You can not trust the bar code and the human readable output to be the same. Actually, you cna not trust ANY specific machine to report the proper value for the bar code.
.a recipt, i.e. they can get paid to have voted a specific way. Now, if you really want to do the weird recount / limited revote then you can give someone a recipt which is linked to their vote, but I think this is really unnecissary.
I would say that you should only print the human readable form, but use a very OCR friendly font. A really OCR friendly font would not be any worse then a bar code for a computer to read.
Also, there is no reason to allow people to leave with a recipt which states their vote unless you want to try and to weird recounts, but there are big problems with letting a person leave with
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Technically they were using computers, but with punch cards !?!?
I swear, my grandma actually programmed with punch cards when she was in college.
Is Florida Really that far behind? Where I voted There were pretty buttons to push with screens for each name and said "You voted for Gore" on the screen.
I think it's crystal clear at this point that voting has error bounds. The vote totals really should read
Bush: 2,910,492* Gore: 2,910,192*
* Totals are accurate to +/- 6,000 votes 19 times out of 20.
This vote is within the error bounds and consequently any recounts may well change the result. The "winner" is merely the winner of the last recount.
What this means is that one either accepts that certain votes are a toss of the coin, rather than the mythical will of the majority, or one revamps the system so that votes that are essentially statistically tied (perhaps 0.1%) cause a divying up of the electoral college vote.
(Obviously, to avoid the same problem as we have now at a different edge condition, only the initial count would qualify for the "split". Any subsequent recounts would only split the vote if the the losing candidate was now numerically in the lead.)
I enthusiastically differ. I'm an American (hopefully not for much longer), but have many foreign friends, from heavily diverse countries. My experience speaking with anyone from outside of the U.S. is that your "90% of the rest of the world is full of barbaric murderous thugs" opinion is exactly what earns us titles like "the Great Satan." Most Americans, or at least the loudest ones, can only decry the sorry state of the rest of the world. Wake up! The only reasons America is more "civilized" are sweat shops and slave labor in those "barbaric" places.
In this situation ( a legacy system ) its always best to make as few changes as possible, since we can't accurately predict how the changes will affect the performance of the rest of the system.
The Electoral College has some flaws in it, but it has a valid use.
We live in a Federal Republic. A federation of 50 states. 50 seperate / parallel / distributed "countries," joined by a federal government.
Within this architecture, it is most appropriate for states to elect the President.
A direct ( popular ) election would clearly re-inforce the dominance of states with the largest populations, and furthermore lead to the dominance of the densest cities within those states.
Current Flaws
1) Electors that add a useless level of indirection, and are even dangerous in that they can vote in whatever manner they please; including opposing the underlying population.
2) A "winner takes all" approach to awarding electoral votes of a state to candidates.
Simple Solution
1) Electors MUST be replaced by "points." A state would have as many "Electoral Points" as it now has Electoral Votes.
When a candidate is awarded a point, it acts as the equivalent of an "automatic electoral vote."
This removes the useless and dangerous level of indirection. This also makes the election more direct, which co-opts part of the appeal of a "popular election."
2) The Electoral "Points" of a state MUST be awarded to candidates in proportion to the percentage of votes they won in that state. Only whole points would be awarded, and in the case of ties, any "odd" points would be discarded.
Example #1: Florida would have 25 electoral points. Assuming the following vote percentages ( Nader 20%; Bush 40%; Gore 40% ) the electoral points would be awarded as: Nader 5; Bush 20; Gore 20.
Example #2: In the case of a tie ( Bush 50%; Gore 50% ) the electoral points would be awarded as: Bush 12; Gore 12, with the remaining point being discarded.
Dividing points, allows for a more accurate reflection of the public's "will." Discarding the "odd point" in the case of a tie, and rounding to the nearest whole point, should also eliminate all the problems we've seen in the case where the margin of difference is so small.
Nader 2%; Bush 49%; Gore 49% would yield an awarding of Nader 0; Bush 12; Gore 12, with the remaining point discarded.
There would be no "hand recounts" because the percentage would not be changed enough to swing a point in any one direction. And because the points are divided ( in proportion to the popular vote within the state ), each candidate would not be so desperate for every last vote to be "counted."
Conclusion
This compromise system retains the correct granularity for the architecture of government we currently live under, yet provides a more direct and fair representation of "the will of the people."
Does anyone want to start a petition?
i heard that someone on ebay was auctioning off the president's seat but ebay removed it after it reached some absurd price. it'd be nice if someone had a link to a story on it (if there is one) because all i did was hear it on the radio today.
Old-style mechanical booths do have the advantage of clarity and built-in validity checks, but I wonder how robust the mechanical system is. Perhaps an electronic system with the same sort of interface would be best.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I think we should all just draw stick counts on the walls of the booths...its more accurate then todays perdiciment (and gives off the 'bathroom stall' feel when i go in there)
::
Hell, lets just have a 'booth post' where everyone goes in and adds something like 'Joe licks you ass' Or 'Vice gore drinks piss for fun' or something obscenly brilliant like in aamco stalls.
Ill feel more at home.
-Swift
-Swift
There's nothing to prevent your boss (or your abusive husband) from forcing you to vote in his presence.
No, there's not. And there's nothing preventing your next door neighbor from coming over with a shotgun to tell you how to vote. Or for the local Mafia to come around and break you kneecaps for the sign in your yard.
But it's all fantasy. Sure, a few wifebeaters may bosses and spouses may try it, but the threat of going to jail for a very very long time after a very public trial stops the rest of them. Did you have a boss that told you how to vote? If you did nothing then YOU are the problem, not the boss.
It's all to easy to blame evil people for your unwillingness to stop them.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
However, it may be ok to give a reciept with an identifiable number that can be traced back to the selections in the voter database--although I doubt any laws out there allow one to check or change their ballot after it has been cast. How many Floridian Buchanan or Nader supporters do you think would recast their votes now if given the opportunity?
Some cool states *cough*Oregon*cough* are already vote by mail only, and there have not been any big problems yet...of corse, time will tell.
Laugh at stupidity: mod idiots +1 Funny.
There's one thing that would make that voting system a good idea - a way to have the machine print a FAKE receipt. That way you couldn't be coerced into voting by someone who demands that you show them the receipt, or someone who offers you money in exchange for your receipt for their favorite candidate, etc.
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Obfuscated e-mail addresses won't stop sadistic 12-year-old ACs.
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
Vader for 2000 Wow, Star Wars and the US elections all at once, sounds like a /. match made in heaven.
Where I voted (MD) once you had filled in your ballot, it went into a little R2D2 computer. If you had marked incorrectly(voted for more than 1 candidate etc) it told the attendant who gave you the choice of starting over, or having your vote not count. I watched 2 people get errors on their presidential candidate choices,and both chose NOT to fill out a new ballot, making their choices null.
What "large portion" are you referring to?
Black holes are where God divided by zero
I would tag this as a work of great judicial discretion, which is not quite cowardice. He doesn't want to come down hard on either side until more facts are in. If the manual recounts are done on Friday and show that Gore has pulled ahead, and the SoS refuses to certify the revised results, then she'd better have a damn good reason. On the other hand, if the manual recounts still favor Bush, and the Democrats want to revise the tally yet again, they'd better have a damn good reason.
--
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
No offense towards Jamie BUT if I hired someone to post stories to slashdot I'd expect them to be up on something like electronic voting. Next time get all the facts, and make a more objective, stronger opinion before posting. Electronic votings pros and cons have been discused for the past 15-20 years and I'd expect you to have a much more objective opinion posting for Slashdot and all.
Its upsetting to me to see the editors of this site not having their shit together. The editing quality seems to be diminishing at an equal rate to the reader quality. Just because you have a bunch of losers reading your site doesn't mean you can start slacking off on you devoted readers looking for the latest news. Stop posting repeat stories and old news and get back on track guys.
(Emphasis mine, not the poster's, and the bulk of the poster's post is non-partisan; I emphasize this bit for a reason, which I'll get to in the second part of this post.)
Funny, I'll bet good money that the Democratic legal team understood too, and is hard at work coming up for excuses to sue the Secretary for "being arbitrary" should the (third!!!) recount go Gore's way and not be certified. They changed the definition of what constitutes a "voted" chad at least twice during the manual sample recount, and they've even sued Democratic Broward county officials for deciding that its vote was accurate enough and didn't need a manual recount.
Make no mistake - I firmly believe the Gore team intends to continue calling for recounts until it gets the result it wants, and if it hasn't won, it'll sue to get more recounts if the recounts it gets don't pan out.
> Like most lay observers, it seems that the person to whom we are replying ascribes motives to the process of law. The best thing that judges can do is rule for legal consistency, not justice, not cowardice, and certainly a pox on both your houses.
In a perfect world, I'd agree. It is not a perfect world. Which is why I (unfairly and out of context) highlighted the partisan chunk of your post.
The problem is that there are no non-partisans left - and if there are non-partisans, anyone who independently comes to any set of conclusions resembling either the Gore or Bush positions is indistinguishable from a partisan, so it doesn't matter.
(Tackhead's Corollary to Clarke's Law: "Any sufficiently-advanced political thought in this debate is indistinguishable from partisan sniping" ;-)
There are no [detectable] non-partisans on the bench, on the street, or on Slashdot. You and I are part of the problem.
But as others have pointed out, it's a testament to the strength of our democracy that the protests on both sides have been lawful and peaceful. Damn near anywhere else in the world, people would be picking up guns.
But in America, we have enough faith in the process - even if it ends up being a bunch of lawyers in a steel cage death match - that we'll abide by its results, whether they're in favor of our preferred candidate or not. In that sense, we may be part of the problem, but we're all of the solution.
What? Now you want them to print MORE paper? When you vote on paper you don't need a receipt, why would you need one here? And what's the point for you to submit paper for them to scan? Unless you have some super special printer, it won't stop fraud.
Don't you hate working at a company that wants you to submit 1 electronic and 2-3 paper copies of every piece of documentation you do?
Now if you have to wait for every voter's vote to be printed out, paper refills, toner refills.......
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Ah, so if the state had not been using paper ballots there would have been no way to check the data and so there would have been no bug, right?
If you can't get it right when there is a check, what makes you think you can get it right when there isn't? If we ever do go to an electronic voting system, I damned well hope that the software running on the machine is all open source.
LibBT: BitTorrent for C - small - fast - clean (Now Versio
Is that they haven't tried this system.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Then there's the Asimov story, where the science of polling has advanced to the state where the election is settled by carefully selecting one person, asking him a bunch of seeming-irrelevant questions, and then extrapolating from that information to determine how the election would go if they were to actually go to the expense of having everyone vote.
Nope, sorry, Miami wins that one. They'll have to think of another name. :)
Face it, people are stupid, and the internet is the place where they all meet.
2) Trust & Comfort with Technology. I can't be the only /. reader whose grandparents still use a rotary phone, won't get an answering machine, and aren't particularly more excited about the dust-collection-device on their TV that others call a VCR.
While we may love technology, the fact is that Florida can't even get the hang of punch-card ballots. Sure, the design interface was lousy. But I've seen a lot of counterintuitive & unreadable web sites too.
Design problems don't go away because of the net. How many people will fail to scroll down and read the rest of the initiatives and referenda in thier state, just to pick the obvious example.
IMO, we aren't ready for full scale Internet voting. Let's do more on-site experimenting, work on teaching non-net-users in net-dense areas (I nominate northern California), and generally work to figure out if this is a good idea and what implementations might work/fail utterly BEFORE pushing for widespread adoption.
Liza
These opinions are my own. My employer is not aware of them, does not endorse them, and is not responsible for them.
Since it appears the /. readership is about as ignorant in it's math and civics skills as the general popularion (judging by the discussion I have seen in the last week) here is a quick refresher course.
:)
The reason why the recount numbers keep rising is extremely simple, and not any sort of consipracy or fraud. All of the principles know about it, along with the talking heads on TV. It does appear that speaking it is verboten though, so lets see if I get 'disappeared' for saying this in public.
Those paper vote counting machines have a crock rate of between 1% and 2.5% depending on who you want take the spec from. This is due to both the 'hanging chad' being endlessly babbled about on TV and just plain miss counted ballots. This has been known since almost the day the machines went into service but it isn't a problem! They are still far more accurate than any manual count for two reasons.
1. The error is RANDOM so it hits all candidates/ballot issues evenly so while it fudges the number of votes a bit it hits the percentages very closely.
2. It is a MACHINE. It can't be biased in favor of one candidate over another. If you have three machines (in good working order, which is testable by running a batch of known sample material through) lined up they are all impartial instead of having two Democrats and a token Republican like the board overseeing the manual recount.
As you run the ballots through multiple times more of the partially punched or otherwise problematic chads dislodge enough for the sensor to pick them up... along with the parallel problem of holes falling out that voters DIDN'T punch, which is why after two or three runs they are considered unreliable. A perfect manual count (assuming it were possible to actually conduct an impartial manual count of ballots designed to only be read by a machine) would increase the total counted votes by that 1-2.5 percent that the machines missed, which is why the two sides are behaving the way they are.
The Gore camp KNOWS that they can pick up 1-2.5% more votes because statistically the extra votes will come out in the same proportions as the county at large. Since only heavily Democratic counties are being recounted manually, if the recount gets accepted he wins. The odds of a meteor hitting Gore smack in the forehead are greater than the odds the recount in those four counties would net Bush a single vote.
The bush camp also KNOWS these facts and is therefore fighting like mad to prevent the Gore camp from using the public's ignorance of statistics to steal the election. If the entire state were recounted by hand both sides would pick up votes in proportion to their current numbers. But since the spread IS inside the margin of error it would all come down to random chance or outright fraud. Personally I'd bet that (especially considering Daley and the whole history of the Democratic party in the 20th Century) fraud would play a much larger role than random sampling noise and I suspect Bush is smart enough to know that also. Basically the Bush camp is faced with the reality that EVERY recount will net Gore votes (like it has been doing so far) and they are left with the hopeless task of keeping the numbers shifting to Gore slowly enough that they still lead when the public finally says "Enough!" Iceburgs have better odds in hell, but it's the hand they have to play so they are giving it their best shot.
In my more cynical moods I say that Bush is still tilting at this windmill to 'salt the ground' so that Gore will be unable to accomplish anything and be a one term wonder. Can't really say that I blame him or the Repubs. The Democrats adopted the 'win at all costs' rules so it's only fair that they see them turned back on them once in a while.
Democrat delenda est
From where I stand, it looks like the people of the United States of America are first and foremost showing that they're mindless enough to vote for politicians who are sueing (sp?) anyone they can possibly get to sue in order to win office. And that it seems to have degraded into a shouting contest. I win! I Win I WIN! *I* WIN!!! Reminds me of the pre-school my son just joined...
Are those the rules you're referring to? I think your founding fathers would have a slightly different view of how the rules should work...
Black holes are where God divided by zero
Think about it this way. At least they had paper ballots to go back to and recount after the bug was found in the software. Humans can sanity-check ballots against the electronic counters by doing hand-counting to be sure the counting software is performing as it should. Even if Y2K came 11 months late we'd be able to hold an election and have the ballots counted.
If there had been purely electronic voting in New Mexico the story probably wouldn't be on the front page because the software would most likely have silently dropped the votes which were straight party votes and no-one would have noticed.
Punch cards a a perfect compromise because they are easily machine tallied while being a permanent physical record that can be reffered to if mechanical error has made the automated count suspect.
-- Greg
Slashdot, would a spell-checker for posting be too much to ask? It's not rocket science!
Heck, that's exactly why I voted for Nader.
Hey, thanks. If just a few of you guys had voted for Gore, as would have happened if Nader hadn't been running, we wouldn't be in this mess. And you yourself think Gore had the least-obnoxious statement on the whole thing.
...Several elderly Floridians are requesting hand recounts on their bingo cards.
Someone ever tries to kill you, you try to kill them right back!
Well, strictly, it would have to be 5-man teams of poker players, because the electors are technically the ones on the ballot...or, they could use this to break up the winner-takes-all rule, which any state is allowed to do.
Well this is interesting... I checked out the link in the story to Amazon.com's very amusing interface which essentially was the Palm Beach ballot. I sent the link to a friend and when he visited it, it was gone! Typical BS from Amazon I guess... anyone have it in their cache? Maybe someone could set up a mirror?
Thanks
Louisiana does just fine with computer ballots. We've had them for years now without any problems. I was surprised to hear that Florida still uses paper ballots. With a computerized ballot, there's no chance of double punched cards or anything like that.
The actual recording of the votes is likely to
stay manual, but the counting done by computer.
You have to consider the case of power outtages
(by natural cause/accident/intentional), and I
just dont think every polling place is going to
have UPS to handle backup power to these proposed
computerized balloting systems.
Also, consider the costs of some of these
proposals. Surely there are reliable paper
ballot alternatives, or other mechanical systems
that are a lot cheaper.
Repubs:
The smartest character today is, IMHO, the judge in his ruling on today's 5pm deadline:
His ruling on the 5pm deadline is basically: "Yeah, she [the Secretary of State] can ignore late results" (Repubs happy because that's the law), "but not arbitrarily" (Dems happy because the judge has introduced ambiguity).
- That's either the work of great cowardice ("Fuck, I don't wanna touch this!")...
- ... or wisdom of Solomonic proportions ("You two idjitz can't agree on who's [baby|election] this is? Fine, gimme a sword, we'll carve the [sprog|decision] in half and you can each have custody of your half. Now get the fsck out and don't talk to me until one of you does something that shows me who the real [mother|statesman] is.")
I'm not sure which of the two it is, but I have a hunch it's the latter....there's an election taking place, and oh my kosh are the hot buttons being pushed.
I haven't heard much about the parties' stance on the Internet and digital rights/privacy issues, but then again, I haven't been poring over campaign literature either.
And while I don't think we have to worry too much about situations like the presidential mess in Florida, I'm starting to wonder if the Liberals are going to win with a much slimmer majority this go-around - or even if someone could get stuck with a minority government! Wouldn't that just be a kick in the pants, that 2000's least controversial North American election ends up being Mexico's (kudos for dropping the PRI like a giant maggot, BTW)!
Who do I plan on voting for? Good question; none of the four "major" parties set my pants on fire, and I don't know too much about the smaller-party and independent candidates in my area. Suppose I should find out and practice what I preach, non?
-------------
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
That already happens today with absentee ballots. There's nothing to prevent your boss (or your abusive husband) from forcing you to vote in his presence. Changing the mechanics of the voting process won't prevent illegal fraud which is already occurring under the old system.
-- Anne Marie
Has he done some good for this country? Yes, but not as much as people would like to believe. Now most of what he does is use his consumer advocacy groups to amass wealth and power for hiimself. Did you realize that he has opposed and fought against such horrible things as whole milk, Volkswagen cars, fluorinated water, and the Elvis stamp!?! He routinely mistreats his own workers, and lies to cover his tracks at every corner.
So PLEASE will people stop supposrting this man and giving him more power that he certainly doesn't deserve.
For more info, PLEASE visit www.realchange.org/nader.htm. i didn't like nader much before I read the site, but after I read that page, even Pat Buchanan was higher on my list of politicians than Nader.
Lets put it this way our Founding Fathers were not only wise men but I would go so far as to say inspired, what other country has as large as population as ours with as stable an economy, and as much world influence as us. The American experiment as I like to call it is one of the greatest achievements of mankind and of our society as a whole. What other country has fostered such growth and innovation as ours?
This election is just another testament of the wisdom of our founding fathers and the greatness of our country. This is not a constitutional crisis, it is merely a test of our system and proof of its soundness and reason. I say long live America, and let the rest of the world stand back and marvel...
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
Domain Names for $13
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
You assume too much. If we were like the rest of the world, we'd treasure our right to bote, and more than 40-fscking-percent of the population would have bothered to turn up at the polls in the first place. Until this happens, your riots are a pipe dream: people have to care before they give enough of a damn to riot. If this were a third-world country, Jimmy Carter would be in Palm Beach Co. right now.
Regarding polling places, you're not missing out on much except frustration. In 1996 when I lived in LA it took me nearly two hours to drive five miles to get from my place of work (UCLA campus) to my polling place (somewhere in Culver City) and then find a place to park. Then I stood in line for about an hour before I was given a ballot. Though I left over three hours before the polls closed I was within half an hour of not being permitted to vote.
I, for one, think "no-fault" absentee voting is a good thing. It's how I voted in '98, and if I still lived in CA it's how I'd have voted in this election.
Note that it says that the voters chose a candidate from another party, not the machine. I could see how you might read it as Jamie did, but let's avoid spreading any more misinformation!
---
What I should have said was nothing.
I am all for electronic voting. I think that vote collection should be standardized for national elections. Why is it someone can vote for a candidate in one state but not in another? A federal system of vote tabulation could clear this up.
However I am dead set against voting from home or work. The problem is, the election committee cannot certify your home PC. It could have a virus on it or trojan program specifically designed to interfere with your vote. Electronic systems that are highly secure, closed from external mischief and under the care of the election officials is the way to go.
Voting isn't like eCommerce. The system has to verify it is you, give you the proper choices, get your result AND THEN FORGET IT WAS YOU when it records the results.
Also, since an electronic system would have the results at the close of the election I think it makes sense for the system to NOT return results until all votes have been cast. It always seems terribly unfair to the West Coast and to Alaska that the election is often decided by the time evening rolls around there.
We live in a Federal Republic. A federation of 50 states. 50 seperate / parallel / distributed "countries," joined by a federal government.
... for a change).
So what ? Germany is too and has nevertheless a system, which is balancing out the needs for a system which can produce clear majorities without trading off the proportional representation of the direct vote too much. What your forefathers had in their mind, could be achieved in a many different ways, some being fairer than others, IMHO.
Before you jump into "homebaked" point systems, why not petition for a real scholarly examination in how far the current U.S. electoral system is holding up against basic civil/human rights of providing fair, unbiased, accurate, equally weighted and unbribable results ?
Someone asked here when comes the time where votes can be bought. I have no answer, because it would involve a serious study of your system and it's a job you can't take lightly, but it looks darn close as if almost everything in your current system is somewhat bought and sold.
The whole campaign is nothing but a mediocre sales pitch, the candidates running around like crazy, promising each and every group exactly what they want to hear. Everybody knows in his heart that the whole thing is a sham, but nobody knows how to change the system back into something where the political will of the people is really represented and not bought.
And with regard to the posters, which seem to think being a Republic and being a Democracy is an either/or situation, I have really a problem understanding that. Why would being a Republic
exclude you from being a Democracy ?
I guess I should ask my own government then to open up embassies in Texas and in New York State separately, because what is really left in your Federal system which unites you as ONE country ?
By the nature of your beginnings, the US is the only country in the world, which has "artificially" become the most "diverse" country in the world. You have a tremendous burden to deal with it and I have nothing but utmost respect about the fact that the U.S. IS dealing with that burden at all and considering the difficulties involved so well. Just, I think you could even do a MUCH better job.
It's really doesn not seem THAT helpful to always just resort to the perceived WISDOM of your forefathers. They had their reasons and found methods to deal with their perceived problems, which were appropriate for their times (well, I really don't want to discuss if I really believe in that). But then what is appropriate today ?
Hey, you guys are programmers, right ? How about Perl's slogan: There is more than one way to do it. Start examining the code (may the legal code this time
Why so damned partisan? Everywhere I go it's "Democrats are stupid and corrupt and machines can count better than people and if people voted wrong they deserve to get their votes counted wrong and Bush should win because he won and because he's better" or else "Republicans are stupid and corrupt and a hand recount is the only way to be sure the count is right and the election should be based on what people actually think and not how their ballot turned out and Gore should win because he won the popular vote and becuase he's better." Tell me I'm wrong. Seen many Democrats complaining about the process taking too long? Seen many Republicans saying we need to take our time and make sure we're right? It's all BS and you're not contributing by adding your sweeping generalizations and your personal attacks based on politicians' lineages. I don't mean to make this a personal attack but your post was by far the most blatantly partisan I've seen in this discussion so far (I've been reading Highest First, Nested. Maybe that helps explain it.) Can you honestly say that if the positions of the candidates were reversed you'd be yelling for Bush to step down?
(Suppose somebody proposed a voting system where, on Election Day, you go to your parish priest and tell him your choices for all of the races; the priests then send their tally of votes for each parish to the Pope, who announces the winner. Devout Catholics might trust a system based on the honesty of priests more than a system based on mathematical techniques that most people can't understand.)
The great thing about paper-and-ink ballots is that an untrained Democrat and an untrained Republican can look at the same ballot and agree on who was selected -- and if they disagree, a judge can argue for one interpretation or another without needing to consult a technical expert. Yes, there are opportunities for fraud and error, but those exist in any system -- and at least in a paper-and-ink system, you don't need to be a hacker or cryptographer to understand what those opportunities are and how to guard against them.
--
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
Seriously - introduce some small quantum effect into the count so that the results change only if they are observed directly. The more they are observed the less discrete they become.
it's obvious we need quantum computers to tally votes. This way we'd know the results before anyone voted.
bye!
According to this weeks Onion, it already is!
-Dead Lesbian Witches! Think about it!
Instead of looking at technology you should be looking at process, how does the system work? where is it weak? what are *appropriate* solutions (hint, not a gazzillion dollar IT system where 20 votes are likely to be cast)? A "quick" techie fix is only going to get you in deaper trouble next time - and there will be a next time.
It seems to me that there are a number of key problems, such as:
- the ballot papers are not well designed for the fall back position...the manual count;
- trying to vote for too many things at one time, this makes voting confusing, time consuming and increases the pressures on staff and voters alike;
- there is not an independent layer of goverment running the election. Because so much of executive government is elected everyone seems to be open to accusations of "partisanship". Whether they be the secretary of state or a local precinct election official. As a result there is no alternative but to seek independent review of process through the courts, hence the current litigeous situation.
I could go on but these issues *before* looking to technology to help with the resolution of the problems.
-- Free software on every PC on every desk
How about a computer vote which prints out two optically scanable ballots. One for you to submit, and one for you to keep as a receipt. That way, you get the best of both worlds. Instant results, plus a fallback to count against in case of fraud.
Punch cards? what's up with that?
I'm actually starting to enjoy the ambiguity of it all (though that may be because of a nagging conviction that the final outcome will be really depressing.) and kind of hope that no one will know the decision until the electoral college actually gets together and officially ballots. I definitly don't think anyone should conceed until after the EC has spoken. Everyone should just sit back and take a big ol' chill pill and enjoy the funky uncertainty. pretend the vote is in december and you sent in your absentee ballot REAL early. :)
-Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
My evidence? Witness the computerization of the GRE (Graduate Record Exam). They no longer give it on paper. You have to take it by computer. The net result of the computerization of the GRE -- my university, and many others, silently no longer enforce our requirement that applicants give us GRE scores, because the computerized system is such a disaster, many students aren't able to even take the test.
And don't get me started on other well-meaning but totally screwed up attempts to replace an "obsolete" but effective system with a "modern" computerized one that doesn't work any more.
Think voters are disenfranchised now? Wait 'til we turn an election over to a lot of bug-ridden hardware and software.
Bah. I say keep using 19th century technology until you actually need to replace it. Computers are good at many things - and interacting 100% reliably with the general public isn't one of them.
Thats almost how it works here in this part of Michigan. Except instead of checkboxes, it's an arrow without the middle part:
<-- ---
and you use a marker to make the arrow complete for who you want to vote for:
<--======---
When you're done, you feed it into a computer, that error checks it, and if it's ok, counts it and drops it into a locked ballot box.
It's also larger than 8.5x11, but that's because there are alot of things on it...
The Onion has a very important news update on the election.
sulli
RTFJ.
Are these people complaining about the inappropriateness of hand counting the same people who took the administration to court over the necessity of counting the census in person by hand? Whut with them thar new fangled stuhtiztucks and stuff Yuh nevuh no whut yer gonna git ?!?!?!?!?!?!
Do the math people - what demographic would benefit most from online voting? Don't forget that 'Dewey won' when the networks interviewed upper class white Republicans.
A Zimbabwe politician was quoted as saying that children should study this event closely for it shows that election fraud is not only a third world phenomena.
1. Imagine that we read of an election occuring anywhere in the third world in which the self-declared winner was the son of the former prime minister and that former prime minister was himself the former head of that nation's secret police (CIA).
2. Imagine that the self-declared winner lost the popular vote but won based on some old colonial holdover (electoral college) from the nation's pre-democracy past.
3. Imagine that the self-declared winner's 'victory' turned on disputed votes cast in a province governed by his brother!
4. Imagine that the poorly drafted ballots of one district, a district heavily favoring the self-declared winner's opponent, led thousands of voters to vote for the wrong candidate.
5. Imagine that that members of that nation's most despised caste, fearing for their lives/livelihoods, turned out in record numbers to vote in near-universal opposition to the self-declared winner's candidacy.
6. Imagine that hundreds of members of that most-despised caste were intercepted on their way to the polls by state police operating under the authority of the self-declared winner's brother.
7. Imagine that six million people voted in the disputed province and that the self-declared winner's 'lead' was only 327 votes. Fewer, certainly, than the vote counting machines' margin of error.
8. Imagine that the self-declared winner and his political party opposed a more careful by-hand inspection and re-counting of the ballots in the disputed province or in its most hotly disputed district.
9. Imagine that the self-declared winner, himself a governor of a major province, had the worst human rights record of any province in his nation and actually led the nation in executions.
10. Imagine that a major campaign promise of the self-declared winner was to appoint like-minded human rights violators to lifetime positions on the high court of that nation
Reality has a liberal bias
You can also invalidate them by making up new counting rules every time the count comes up in a way you don't like.
OTOH, there are lots and lots of ways to make pretty thoroughly unalterable digital records, using write-once media (CD-ROM, anyone?) and a "signing" hash like MD5. If you want a physical record you could dump the ones and zeros out as big, scannable dots on paper.
From a CS perspective, this problem is almost trivial. Applied Cryptography discusses it specifically. But even if you do come up with a 100% effective solution, there are still some much more difficult wetware problems to resolve, like people voting in more than one district. In North Carolina, for example, the courts decided you cannot be asked for positive ID when you vote. See, if a state ID costs US$15, and you need one to vote, you've effectively created a US$15 poll tax, and poll taxes are illegal. Give away IDs for free? Sure, but this is still a wetware problem, far beyond the scope of the simple, well documented, doable task of making unalterable, non-refutable digital records.
I don't know what you consider a "major" bank transfer, but the ones the banks themselves consider major are done electronically, billions of dollars worth every hour.Show me a laser printer and a piece of paper, and I'll show you a falsifiable physical record. They even have a name for the act of falsifying a physical record. It's called forgery, and it's a crime that's been around ever since about two weeks after the first physical records of things were made.
--
This is not my sandwich.
Example #1: Florida would have 25 electoral points. Assuming the following vote percentages ( Nader 20%; Bush 40%; Gore 40% ) the electoral points would be awarded as: Nader 5; Bush 20; Gore 20.
Did you write the vote-counting software for New Mexico?
Floating face-down in a river of regret...and thoughts of you...
For online you do not want anonymous transactions, as this would lead to people voting twice, voting "for" someone else etc. Having the contents of each vote anonymous is one thing, but the anonymity of the voter is another. For online voting you would need some strong method of identifying and authenticating the voter. So as to ensure that a) the person is eligible to vote and b) that no person votes more than once.
The machines initially failed to read ballots on which voters chose to vote a straight party ticket, but also chose at least one candidate from another party, election officials said.
It seems that isn't bug to me. If you are voting a straight party line ticket, PLUS at least one candidate from another party, then you would be voting for TWO candidates for the same office somewhere on the ballot.
For example, if I wanted to vote a straight Democratic ticket, AND I voted in addition for Bush, that would be TWO votes for president and the ballot should be tossed out.
On the other hand, the software should have prevented this while the voter was still in the voting booth, so they could correct the mistake and "make their intention known".
On a side note, due to a severe storm in the SE corner of NM on election day, several polling places lost power for a couple of hours. I haven't heard this mentioned as a possible cause of errors in NM's very close presidential race, but even if it resulted in just a handful of lost votes, it might be enough to change the winner in the state.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
All this attention is being given to paper ballots vs. Electroninc polling. But people are ignoring a perfectly valid option that has been available in PG county MD at least since the 80s: Mechanical Voting booths.
They work sort of like glorified babage's calculators. You walk in; pull a lever to close the curtain; flip the switches for the candidate of your choice; pulling the lever back 1) mechanicaly adds the vote to a hidden odometer 2) resets the switches and 3) opens the curtain again.
It's easy, hard to mess up (except with invalid switch combinations but the same problem is on a paper ballot)
The added advantage is that vote counting is easy, just open each machine and look at the counter for each candidate and sum up the 20 or so values for a poling place.
"You saved 1968." - Ms. Valerie Pringle to the crew of Apollo 8
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
I don't think anyone is denying that the big Democratic party machines in Texas and Chicago were corrupt. What's missing is the relevance in the current case.
> The whole idea of peering at a spoiled (improperly marked) ballot and determining "intent" surely seems like this kind of stuff the road to hell is paved with.
For better or for worse, there is ample legal precedent for it. After all, the voters' "intent" is the ultimate imperium in a democracy.
Perhaps you'll sleep better for knowing that certain safeguards are taken, such as the proceedings being conducted by representatives from both parties, the proceedings being open to the public, etc.
Honestly, people only have a problem with this when it means their man is going to lose on an accurate count.
> Even Nixon conceded defeat under much shadier conditions (previous Daley) than this.
Not everyone agrees with this. First, not everyone agrees that Nixon could have garnered enough votes even if all the acknowledged problems had been corrected, and second, Nixon's people did pursue things in court for months, contrary to the myth about his noble concession.
Also, as I posted last week, if Nixon really had won, what gave him the right to throw away the true wishes of the voters just to look like a noble man?
> Someone once said that anyone who wants to be President bad enough to fight to get there, shouldn't be trusted with the office. Gore is certainly disqualifying himself on those grounds.
I'm inclined to agree, though I find it odd that Gore's is the only name you mention in the present context.
> And these dolts on Florida thinking they get a do-over!
From The 2000 Florida Statutes, Title IX, Chapter 102, Contest of Election, item #8, re remedies for contested elections -Emphasis mine.
Also, there are ample legal precedents for revotes, at least in other circumstances.
Some say that The Congress's constitutional right to set the day for general elections means that a revote on a different day would be unconstitutional. IANAConstitutionalLawyer, but that interpretation seems to be problematic, at best.
For instance, if a category 5 hurricane hit southeast Florida on election day, would anyone seriously argue that the US Constitution disenfranchised half the state's population for that year's vote, due to their own bad luck?
And what about absentee ballots? No one is insisting that they be received on the day designated by The Congress. Or perhaps they should be filled out, rather than received, on the designated day? Is anyone checking?
Or what about jurisdictions that allow early voting. Mine does, and I did. Is my ballot lying uncounted in a dumpster somewhere right now? Should it be?
I don't at all think a revote is a forgone conclusion, and in fact I don't really expect one, but it's a very head-in-sand approach to laugh at the idea as though it were impossible.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Remember that electoral votes are allocated to states based on their population. Thus, eliminating the winner-takes-all allocation of electoral votes would result in a system that is nearly identical to a direct popular election. As you suggest, this would serve to reinforce the dominance of urban centers in populous states. (The only difference being the rounding errors introduced when divvying up each state's electoral votes.)
-- BrianThe most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
Oh shut up! please.
why not just have everybody vote by mail? it works for taxes right? the only problem i see is the tv people don't like it.
Actually, New Mexico has electronic voting booths. The dead trees were for absentee and early voting ballots.
What's wrong with the computer-based GRE? I took it last month and everything went fine. I certainly like it better than the (still paper-based) GRE subject test. Bubble sheets suck.
***
Generally, you do not want to enable vote buying. A system that allows a user to display his vote after having voted, enables vote buying and eliminates the benefits of anonymity.
And, according to NPR, Gore retook New Mexico again today because some election official had confused the digits "1" and "6". Correcting the mistake gave Gore 500 extra votes.
However, would the bug have even been found if there weren't a paper trail to audit? Possibly not. What if there weren't even a recount? We wouldn't be here talking about it, that's for sure.
If we're going to use a fully electronic voting system (and hopefully not Internet voting -- too many problems with that), we're going to have to be damn sure there aren't any bugs, since the computer system will be the only thing we have to go on.
So how much testing would we have to do on an electronic voting system? What happens if a bug is discovered the day before elections are held? Is it possible to fix it and then fully test the system before it's used the next day? If not, what do you fall back on?
What do you do about voters who've never used a computer before? (Yes, they do exist, believe it or not.) No matter how easy-to-use you make it, they're still going to be uneasy with it, afraid they're going to make a mistake, and possibly not even trust it. And you can't have an election official go with them and show them how to use it, although you could set up a test-only box with "dummy" candidates and parties for tutorial use (you don't want to advocate any candidates or parties). I'm thinking of my grandmother here, who automatically assumes any computer system is "too hard to use" even if someone shows here exactly what to do each time. In other words, take the confusion generated by the Florida "butterfly" ballots and multiply it by ten.
If done properly, an electronic voting system can be more accurate than the paper ballots we use now. But I can probably count the number of 100% bug-free, 100% reliable computer systems I've ever encountered on the fingers on my left foot.
One solution to this might be to use an electronic system to record and tally the votes, but also print out a "receipt" with the votes the person made, and put that into the ballot box. The receipt would have to be in a form where the voter could verify that the selected candidates are correct (i.e., encrypting it wouldn't be any good -- the computer could still have made an error), and put that receipt into the ballot box a la a paper ballot. That way, there's a paper audit trail you can use to verify votes in case the computer's tally is called into question for whatever reason. (Of course, I'm sure there are some flaws in this system, but my point is there has to be some way to audit a computer-based voting system).
--
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The real Captain Derivative has a Slashdot ID.
I can not wait for internet voting, because Jeff Vogel of the Scorched Earth Party would get more votes fro presicent than the estimated number of electrons in the universe, from ME!
thank you
Visit DC2600
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
Very few large retailers still use paper journals. Electronic journals are easier to transmit back to head office, easier to find a particular transaction (or credit card, or item) in, and in most cases are nearly as reliable as the file system and disk hardware. That's significantly more reliable than paper that can jam, ribbon that can run out and ink that can smear.
--
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E_NOSIG
i've never seen anyone else suggest this, but...
i think the states should be further subdivided into their counties in a similar manner as the country is divided. right now (afaik) states are won by direct votes, why not split them up as well? improve granularity & allow greater accuracy.
foreach $ballot ( @ballot_box ){ /Bush/ ){
/Gore/ ){
...
if( $ballot =~
push( $ballot, @GOP );
}elsif( $ballot =~
push( $ballot, @Dem );
push( $ballot, @GOP );
}
}
whoops, looks like buggy counting software to me,
now I wonder how did that get there
There are a thousand forms of subversion, but few can equal the convenience and immediacy of a cream pie -Noel Godin
The UK not having a proper constitution is somewhat negated by the incorporation of the European Human Rights into law here. But recent legislation such as RIP, Freedom Of Information Bill etc is very scary and shows how much of an elected dictatorship this country has. There are very little checks and balances if you have a whopping great majority like Blair's now or Thtcher's in 1980s. We are basically 'trusting' the politicos not to go to far and relying on archiac customs. Also any political party with a majority in the house of commons can alter the constitution and if the tories get back in, they could abolish the Scottish parliament just like the GLC.
Will his judge allow it? Or as a felon is he not allowed to vote anyway?
Why not ditch the politicians altogether and just live in peace with one another? Oh yea, that's right, it can't be done so we shouldn't try. If we're going to continue to play pretend then, we should just elect Mickey Mouse and have Disney Production teams(including the writers) be the brains behind our president. I honestly believe, nay, I am deeply convicted, that at this point, this would prove more inteligent and helpful than the extremely poor and insincere "acting"(horribly) like clowns for the American public. Most Americans would probably feel just fine knowing that a team of Disney cartoon makers were the ones in the oval office. Of course, they wouldn't think about it like that, they would, sadly enough, have the image of a mouse holding a sign that reads "president" under his face, and that, in their minds, would be their president. That's what I think of my fellow Americans right now, most of you are baffoons(no, not the other half, try a good 90 percent of you) Get off your butts and start doing something. Open your damned eyes and see how retarded you look. Grow the hell up already.
You voted for beauracracy, you've been voting for it, what are you stupid? What do you think you people have been voting for all these years? And now you are letting those mosquitoes, the media, get you all irritated and excited as the very beuracracy that you the American people have built with your votes and your taxes operates in it's beureucratic manner. I got news for your geniuses, you plant the seed of corn, wheat is not going to grow. Are you following me here? A dog is pregnant, kittens will not be born.
You've all asked for this whole mess, and now you all whine about it. Whatever. You are the prime chumps. You're simpletons, I will call you simps for short. You crapped on yourselves and now you are all astonished that you have crap all over yourselves. This is hilarious. In spite of the fact that the kids show, Mighty Morphing Power Rangers had better acting than the democrats or republicans do these days, you chumps are still taken in by the same b.s., year after year. "Lower taxes!" "Reform Medicare!" "Social Security in trouble" "Crime up, ban guns. Crime down, ban guns."
In spite of the endless predictability of it all, you short attention spanned dimwits are still surprised when beuracracy is what it has always been, slow, unresponsive, inaccurate, and just plain beuracratic. Try to pay attention here, this could save your life one day, if you step in front of a moving bus, you better not expect flowers and an invitation to dinner. You've all asked for this, this is the product of the 2 party system. You've all helped to propogate the belief in it, and so you now reap accordingly.
Take back your faith from them, believe only in the truth, that this existance is what it is, and we make of it what we make of it. When you grasp this, you will be ready to begin your adulthood, and you will find childhoods end/begining. Faith, you must have Faith. No, not the tired old dogma's of the world's dead religions. You must believe that you can change things, and you will. We must all believe, and we will. It was not by sitting around complaining, or buying into media distributed party lines that the founding fathers were able to defeat those who oppressed them. It was with sincere conviction, even faith, that they must stand up for what they believed was right.
You can be a typical tvtard, and disgard my message with some prefabbed response that shows you haven't even begun to grasp of what I speak, by saying something like "did you know the founding fathers owned slaves". Yes. I did. Here's your cookie, go your way. To those of you who can see past such irrelevance, to the fact that the founding fathers, slavery or not, changed and molded the world into what they believed would be better, and they did this, not by talking about how they and others owned slaves, but by taking the examples given througout history, by all the "great" men who have dared to change their existance simply by believing it could be done. Belief which does not lead to action, is not belief, but a daydream. When one believes something, it will affect his actions. I wish I could just make you fools see, your being mislead, lied to, and your thanking them for it. Brainwashed.
It's almost impossible to confuse ballots in that case. If you want electronic counting of these ballots, then each ballot can have a bar code at the bottom.
We would like to see a system that would still have the voter go to a polling place. The voter would go into a booth and make their vote electronically. The voting hardware would print out 2 copies of what was selected. On the paper would be a machine readable version of the vote, like a bar code and a human readable version. It also would have a unique number for use later. The voter then must compare the electronic vote and the paper. If all is OK, the voter tells the machine to submit the vote. The voter must then give one copy to the poll person which would place it into a ballot box. At a later date, the voter would be able to go to a web site that would allow the voter to enter the unique number to verify that their vote is in the system.
Random sampling of the paper outputs, both bar-code for speed and human for extreme cases, could be done as a check on the system.
This system would have the speed the electronic proponants want, and it would have a hard copy for the luddite folks.
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable" - JFK
In some places, the polls stay open until the people who were in line at closing time are done voting.
One of the goals of a voting system is to give you no way to prove how you voted, to make sure voter coercion is ineffective. Receipts defeat that goal.
The biggest advantage of a computer vote that prints a paper ballot is excellent usability: if you press the big "CONFIRM" button when the screen says "You have cast your vote for Pat Buchanan and (somebody-or-other) of the Reform Party. If this is your final decision, please press Confirm, otherwise press Back." then there's not much can be done to stop you voting that way!
And of course, you get a human-readable paper ballot out of it, so if the software tries to substitute fake votes it'll get caught.
I would still count the ballots entirely on paper, though.
--
Xenu loves you!
The law specifically states the rules by which a punch card ballot would be considered voted.
- --------------------------------
- --------------------------------
quote:
-----------------------------------------------
127.130(d) Subject to Subsection (e), in any manual count conducted under this code, a vote on a ballot
on which a voter indicates a vote by punching a hole in the ballot may not be counted unless:
(1) at least two corners of the chad are detached;
(2) light is visible through the hole;
(3) an indentation on the chad from the stylus or other object is present and indicates a clearly ascertainable intent of the voter to vote; or
(4) the chad reflects by other means a clearly ascertainable intent of the voter to vote.
(e) Subsection (d) does not supersede any clearly ascertainable intent of the voter.
-----------------------------------------------
It is interesting to note that the DEMS are currently suing to have precisely this legal standard applied to the hand count in Fla.
tj
In the case of this election, the infrastructure is working terribly poorly. Up to 5% of votes cast are invalid is some areas? Conflicting laws about how to adjudicate close races? Biased bonehead political hacks running amok? The failsafe measures are embarrassingly poor. The smoke detectors only worked fine until the fire came. They certainly aren't protecting the right of all Americans to have their individual choices reflected accuately in a close national election.
Ya, Know.... I think if by some miricle of the dough god that the election come down to a poker game in New Mexico, that all this damn media-polictico-slimeo-circus might be worth it. Would be quite amusing and as accurate as anythinge else I have seen. Feed me a cookie to shut me up.
Would you like to:
[Vote for President]
[Vote for Senator]
[Vote for Representative]
[Quick Withdrawl from Voting]
Please select one of the following choices:
[Candidate 1a] [Candidate 1b]
This voting booth is owned by the ____ party. If you are not a member of this party, a $1.50 surcharge will be added to your vote. Would you like to proceed?
[Yes] [No]
Would you like a receipt for this transaction?
[Yes] [No]
Every measurement has an element of error in it, and, in a sufficiently large/complex system, it can never be totally eliminated. However, it can be measured.
What I'm suggesting is that we institute statistical methods in elections that not only let us measure the result, but the error as well. If the results are within each others' margin of error, allow a run-off between the top two. Unfortunately, I don't know enough about demographics to make any specific suggestions, but I'm sure it's possible. If it's not, let me know.
"If I removed everything here that I thought was pointless, there would be like two messages here."
woxy.com - Bam! The Future of Rock and Roll
I think the presidency should be decided by Bush and Gore competing in the Gladiator TV show. I think we can agree that they are both more or less equal in public opinion, give or take half a percent, so what better way to decide the presidency. The advantages of this are as numerous:
The result would be decided quickly, and more importantly, provide great TV coverage for CBS, ABC, CNN etc.
The competition would be easy to understand, everyone is familiar with the rules.
The winner would be seen clearly as the first candidate to cross the finish line of the assault course.
We would know that the candidates are judged on their abilities, rather than money spent campaigning and the help or political aids.
I can see it already-
"Candidates ready... Gladiators ready..."
I can't wait.
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated up.
Forget voting. During my lifetime (i.e. since the Nixon administration) there has never been a candidate for President who was actually qualified for the job.
Instead of voting, there should just be a lottery in which, every four years, a special 1040 form would be printed with the words "INSTANT WINNER" printed on it. (Everybody else's 1040 would say "SORRY--PLEASE TRY AGAIN".) Alternatively, we could go to a randomly-selected lifetime monarch, based on scratch-off birth certificates.
Is this sarcasm? Maybe. But is our current system really any better?
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
What I'd like to know is just how long we have been using this software to count ballets? Was it used int he last election? How long could this have been throwing things off? Then the question comes up, if we go to touch screen voting or something like that, what will happen if a hard drive or system failure occurres, as we all know it will inevitably.
You'll find 90% is a bit of and overstatement, in a large part of the world the US problem wouldn't happen. The parliamentary system you have just produced a collision by this point (OK they might still be wrangling). Heck even the UK all but one (Westminster) of the assemblies/parliaments have collision in power (Scotland lib/lab and the same in Wales....NI well that's an odd situation) and most of Western Europe is run on various collision. As a bonus it also allows smaller parties to be herd and taken seriously by the public.
I believe in paper ballots for one simple reason, it makes it possible for any citizen to participate in and verify the count. Electronic voting disenfranchises the citizen from scrutinising the election.
I speak from experience as a Labour Party candidate for the Scottish Parliament. In our elections a scrutineer for every party is expected to manually examine every single spoiled paper about which there is any doubt. Even with my 4,000 votes running short of the eventual winners 12,000 my agent and I had to sit there and go through the reject pile.
The problem with the US election is not that it is taking a long time to count and recount but that the procedures for deciding to do the recounts are straight out of the 19th century. If every district was electronic (and different) and all still had different and unagreed rules about how and when to conduct a recount there would still be chaos at the moment. This is not a machine fixable problem.
There are long established conventions in the UK, as well as a considerable corpus of electoral law and precedent for judicial review which deal with this. There was a seat in the Westminster Parliament in '97 that was tied and 2 weeks for recounts and legal action which ended up in a rerun.
PS for any smug Brits out there - I wish we were like the Yanks with a proper constitution. Do you know, fact fans, that we do not have a secret ballot in the UK? When you are issued with a ballot paper it has a number both on it and the stub. Because we don't have a constitution the teller writes your poll number on the stub and your vote can be reconcilled with the tally. The ostensible purpose of this is to address issues of voter fraud, but in practice it has been used to monitor 'anti-social' political activity - ie communists or fascists which kind of negates the principle of the secret ballot.
http://scottish.politicaldiscussion.org
Here, (belgium) we already use a system to vote electronically for a few years. The system is fairly simple : you get a sort of credit-card on which you put your vote, by means of a computer(in the voting cabins). when you have made your choices, you retrieve your card from the computer, and you put it in a box, which immediatly counts your vote. The card is not reused, it stays in the box until the elections are over, this is than used as backup. The computers on which you make your vote are completely stand-alone. The box in which you drop your card is also stand-alone. safety : if this system thoroughly tested, nothing can happen to your vote, and it is 100%accurate.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
The buzzword of proportional representation has shunted the issue of different kinds of preferentional voting down the agenda in many jurisdictions, however I like the idea of a (or more) representative being elected from my local area to represent my local area, now the fact that the individual(s) in question may be party aligned diminishes the benefit (perhaps) but it does not eliminate it. The relative simplicity of the US electoral college means that the mechanics of counting ballots is really easy, but some of the more equitable systems such as PPP or Hare-Clark the actual process of counting the ballots is, er, tricky and needs a good scrut (p scroot). (have a gook at The ACE Project).
The need to physically move around ballots makes the automation of the process via computers an excellent methodology. Whilst at university we used one of these systems for Student council elections and for the few thousand ballots that were cast, a team of tens of volunteers spent all night shuffling papers to try and get a result. I wrote some software (as an exercise to teach myself C) that would do the actual counting in seconds. I also looked at the processes needed to take a manual ballot and data enter the ballots so that the computer could process them. Even with a cross check and audit process the whole counting could be an order of magnitude faster (and probably much more accurate). With electronic vote capture (polling booth or not) even more so.
I guess the point here is that IT has roles to play even in the scrutineering process. Remember the "spoiled ballot" issue. When the first count goes through the scrutineers from the candidates are unlikely to have too much to do with fighting about spoiled ballots, it is only once the election becomes close that the real barneys occur about whether a ballot is spoiled or not. This is probably part of the reason why Gore caught up some in the recount, some of the previously spoiled ballots were admitted or vice verse.
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
As for a better system, what you are looking for is a system where the margin of error on 6 millions votes is well under 200. Also, the system must provide great confidence that there was no fraud and that the vote represented the true intent of the voter. That does not seem easy to me.
let's be honest about this: this is complete and utter bullshit. you know it. i know it. the american people know it.
[quickly setting threshold back up to 1]
Computers at the polling stations would provide a much more accurate vote tally, but I think the problem would be where to find qualified people who could operate the system. It would seem simple for /.'ers, but think about the poll workers where you voted!
I mean really, who among us would miss out on this spectacle? With electronic voting, elections can be stolen quietly and without fuss. With a paper punchcard ballot, Robo-Gore is going to have to work at it.
aside: Does anyone else find it hilarious that Daly is braying about election fraud? Anyone remember "Boss" Daly of Chicago? Plenty of links on Google..
I'd favor a system of one electoral vote for each Congressional district, with two for the overall state winner. Attempts at proportional division across the whole state would set recounts at dozens of different cusps (e.g. for a state with 25 EV, there would need to be a recount if the total came near any boundary between:
etc ad nauseam./.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
We're not going to have internet voting unless computer illiterates can be convinced they won't suffer from it.
The people we need to convince are politicians. The evidence suggests that it's an uphill battle.
Ed Craig "Who cares what you think?" George W. Bush, 4th of July 2001
RANT
/RANT
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. No matter the complexity or simlicity of any given system a certain percentage of the population will find a way to srcew it up! All the hubub in Florida right now is caused by the fact that the percentage who screwed up is large enough to swing the election. Or rather margin of victory is narrow enough to be swung by that percentage. Technology is nither a solution or a problem it merely multiplies and facilitates solutions and problems.
"I'm making perfect sense, you're just not keeping up."
Oh, be serious.
If the USA was anything like 90% of the rest of the world, the country would be in flames from the rioting, looting, civil unrest, and outright rebellion that would have inevitably followed an election this close.
Instead, we're doing what probably no other country in the world would have the balls to do. We're following our own rules. Yeah, they're rules we set up centuries ago in some cases, but damnit! - we said we were going to follow 'em, and we will, come hell or high water. We may decide to change them later; but for now, they're what we've got.
We, the people of the United States of America, are showing the rest of the world how a mature, stable and prosperous representative republic really works when under pressure to bend the rules and just make something happen. With a very few exceptions, we've been doing this a hell of a lot longer than any other country in the world; so look, listen and learn... and ask yourself if the people of your country, faced with similar circumstances, would show the same restraint and decorum that American citizens have.
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
Hard cheese old boy. Instead of relying on cron you could take this job execution utility for a spin if it is super important that you achieve FP.
They are called LOGS. Duh! When someone selects their vote, the ballot is logged and the data recorded in the primary database. When the election is over, you count the tallies from the primary Database. If someone demands a recount, say if the results were really close, you could go through the logs to check for consistancy. I bet 99% of the time the logs would concur with the db results, but you still have the option of "double-checking" the results.
:-)
Okay, nuff said.
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
I, in fact, have never seen the inside of a polling place. I have no idea what they look like. I've never voted anything but absentee.
California has a lot of absentee ballots already, and things are going up from there. So while in Florida it might be just a tiny fraction, in California it's up past 5% if I remember correctly, and growing every election. That's not a tiny fraction anymore.
It's so close, you might as well. the democrats seem to like head(s), so republicans get tails...
I live in Ottawa Canada and we just had our municipal elections (yes, 2 weeks before the big (who am i kidding) federal election). Anyways, the ballot was super-clear -- 3 columns on a regular letter-sized sheet of paper. you filled in your choice by coloring in a small oval with a marker (like those grade school tests). Then you put your ballot into a folder (but not folded). Then the deputy returning officer puts it next to this laser-printer like device and it takes about 1 second to suck the ballot in (think change machines but bigger) & scan your votes (no feedback of any kind, i suppose there may be some rejected ones that have to be hand-checked at the end). Then the dial up some central computer by modem & the complete results were up around 30 minutes after the polls closed. very efficient and quick, IMHO. don't know what the cost of the machines is but it would have been worth it in florida right around now!
"Luck is the residue of design" -- Branch Rickey
Would you please identify a state which does not allow write-in votes?
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
The only thing worse than bad record systems for votes is a flaw game theory of your voting.
I'm not big on political processes, but there does needs to be more experimentation given to different kinds of voting.
Seastead this.
It would be stupid for any district to use Microsoft Vote v2.04. Everyone knows that Microsoft products are never stable until version 3.1.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
I like Gore's new math, recount until the total comes out to something more favorable. Who really believes that a recount is anymore accurate than the original tally? [conspiracy theory] Out of the 6 million votes in Florida, how hard do you think it would be for Gore supporters to mysteriously come up with 2000 votes in Gore's favour? [/conspiracy theory]
(Score:-1, Bush Sympathizer)
Go not unto/. for advice, for you will be told both yea and nay (but have nothing to do with the question)
Yes, well done. Only the third person to post it, though I admire your eschewing of even the most basic formatting on your message. Despite that I agree that the merkans should learn to play real sports and speak properly. But I doubt that is going to happen.
Here in Cologne, Germany, we're using computer voting ( *not* internet voting! ) since several elections and it works really well. The results are available only minutes after the election is finished and I trust them.
Internet voting == BAD! There are too many security issues. Even if you could be certian that your name is not saved when you logged on, you could still be traced back vi IP address. Right now this may not be a big issue, but I spent a couple of months in Singapore and it was my understanding that they were required to vote and there name was on the ballot so the gov could see who is voting for who (if the whole block voted for the "right" canidate they would probably get some kind of perk). Even if security wasn't an issue, someone could DOS attack sites to prevent voting.
A better solution: The state (ie california, etc) could generate a private and public key. The public key could be sent to all the voting places. Each voting place has a single computer, a bunch of touch screens, and some printers. Also, each voting place generates a private and public key and it registers its public key with the state.
Voters then use the touch screens to vote for canidates/issues/etc. Up to 64 yes/no votes could be encoded on a single 64 bit number (or 128 if needed). For example, if the canidates are Gore, Bush, and Nader then a vote of 100 would be a vote for Gore. This small number (ballot) could then be encrypted using the state's public key and then signed using the polling place's private key. The ballot is then stored on the computer and batch uploaded to the central server later (or the polling place combines a bunch of unsigned ballots, signs these, and then uploads them). The state of course uses the polling places public key to verify that the ballots are valid.
For hard copy records, one printer in the back prints a bar code representation of the encoded data on a spool of paper (the data is encrypted) and one printer prints a copy out for the voter in ASCII form. At a later time, the voter could possible go online or to another outlet to verify that his or her vote actually got counted and that it was correct.
The encrypting and digital signing would mean that all the data is on the printed ballot, but it can't be changed or falsified so if a hand recount was needed (say some ballots just get "lost") people could always send in copies of their ballot.
\forall code \in C, \frac{\Delta readability(code)}{\Delta t} < 0
Florida Statutes, Title IX, Chapter 102, Section 111:
1) Immediately after certification of any election by the county canvassing board, the results shall be forwarded to the Department of State concerning the election of any federal or state officer. The Governor, the Secretary of State, and the Director of the Division of Elections shall be the Elections Canvassing Commission. The Elections Canvassing Commission shall, as soon as the official results are compiled from all counties, certify the returns of the election and determine and declare who has been elected for each office. In the event that any member of the Elections Canvassing Commission is unavailable to certify the returns of any election, such member shall be replaced by a substitute member of the Cabinet as determined by the Director of the Division of Elections. If the county returns are not received by the Department of State by 5 p.m. of the seventh day following an election, all missing counties shall be ignored, and the results shown by the returns on file shall be certified.
(2) The Division of Elections shall provide the staff services required by the Elections Canvassing Commission.
This one contains the "shall be ignored" part. I don't see a paragraph here that says "may accept". You lose points for proving you haven't read the statutes.
But we continue. Chapter 102, Section 112 states:
(1) The county canvassing board or a majority thereof shall file the county returns for the election of a federal or state officer with the Department of State immediately after certification of the election results. Returns must be filed by 5 p.m. on the 7th day following the first primary and general election and by 3 p.m. on the 3rd day following the second primary. If the returns are not received by the department by the time specified, such returns may be ignored and the results on file at that time may be certified by the department.
(2) The department shall fine each board member $200 for each day such returns are late, the fine to be paid only from the board member's personal funds. Such fines shall be deposited into the 1Election Campaign Financing Trust Fund, created by s. 106.32.
(3) Members of the county canvassing board may appeal such fines to the Florida Elections Commission, which shall adopt rules for such appeals.
In this one it says "may be ignored" (note the difference between that and "may accept"). In the sentence immediately prior to that, it says that "[r]eturns must be filed by 5 p.m. on the 7th day following the first primary and general election..." (emphases mine)
Try reading it next time.
--
Pretend there is some witty statement here.
personally, i think having a hardcopy record of every vote is important. kind of like a cash register journal, ya know?
sweden criticizing the USA? isn't that the country where the people are so liberal they rent their children to paedophiles? yikes.
someone was telling me about a system they saw where you slide your ballot into a machine *before* turning it in to the volunteers, and it 1) validates the holez; 2) prints a slip for you to take w/ you that lists everything you voted for.
the touch screen things are cool, but with no physical trail of every vote it could get ugly. but hey, if www.uboc.com can handle browser-agnostic banking through the web, i guess it's just another kind of transaction.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Recently, we just had municipal elections. The ballots we simply laid out: two rectangles with two candidates in each, representing that you had to vote once for each for each (one for city mayor, the other for counsellor)
To vote, we simply had to color in the circle to the right of the name (no lining up arrows or lines with machine!)
Once done voting, you brought your ballot to the person who took care of these, which would insert your ballot face down in a machine that would verify that the ballot was good. If it wasn't (ex: voted twice for the same post, although very unlikely given the ballot design), you were given a new ballot and asked to vote again (properly! :). No 20,000 ballots annulled possible.
I also don't really see the need for an electoral college; although there was an article posted here on /. detailing the resons it should stay, I didn't finish reading it because of lazyness, and I didn't see the relevence of comparing a baseball series to an election; but I won't argue the article's points untill I read it fully.
It did seem to imply however that democracy would've fallen down had it not been for the electoral college. Funny, I haven't seen other countries being destroyed specifically because of a lack of it, but IANAPH (I am no a political historian).
I can see electronic voting being very good; no need to go anywhere to vote (in the case of internet voting), and less possibility of errors. But this can take a while to get adopted, just like bank machines; older folks don't feel comfortable with technology sometimes.
Give me democratic popular-vote elections any day!
AC comments get piped to
Is it just me or does this seam like taking the idea of choice a little to far?
The Officials down in Florida are defending their ballot and pointing out that it was open to review ahead of time. This brings up the question of how many ballot's are there? How many different ballots are we the public expected to check and why can't they be standardized. If each state had a standard ballot/polling method that would give each state 49 others to compare with. That seams like a good selection to me while cutting the complexity.
The only way I can see this being OK is if there was a hard-copy printout of your vote that you could verify, and turn in. If there was ever a need to validate results, it would be possible.
In a "third world" poor country like India (where I am from) , one recently held state election was conducted entirely using electronic voting machines. I do not see what is stopping the US from having electonic voting (maybe kickbacks from the paper companies !!)
...let Gore invent it. He did such a good job with the internet...
turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie
A lady on one of the Alphabet networks stated that she trusted handcounting more than she trusts all this computer stuff. Electronic voting is a high tech way to tell people that they are no longer worth catering to.
Besides, the Pentagon, Microsoft, and a whole host of computer companies which ought to know better can't keep their systems safe from hackers. What makes you think electronic voting would be any safer?
Finally, electronig voting still doesn't solve the problem. When you get down to 300-400 votes being different between two idiot candidates, when something like six million votes are cast, it doesn't matter who wins. Statistically they are even. The problem is, both idiots want the job so bad that they can't see how lame duckish they are before they get into office.
Beware the wood elf!!!
This is a plea to the slashdot community to become involved in the demonstrations being coordinated at www.countercoup.org
They are non-partisan rallies dedicated to the belief that when it comes to determining the results of our presdiential election delay is perferable to error. These rallies are going on in every major city and should be easilly accessible to nearly everyone reading this that lives in the United States.
It is VITAL that the voting process be trusted in order for a democracy to maintain the peoples faith. It doesn't matter wether you voted for Bush, Gore, Nader, Hemos or anybody else. If you believe that the vote should be respected, open and trust worthy you should attend this rally and show the government that this is an issue on which you have no tolerance for error.
There was a pre-rally in San Francisco that I attended. It is the very first rally I've ever attended. It was safe, interesting, even fun. Demos, Reps and Greens all got to speak. Even a person who thought the whole group was wrong and should go home was given his five minutes with the mic to speak his mind. Later we walked to the city federal building, made some more little speeches to each other and then peacefully dispersed.
Please, come show your support for democracy in America.
For more information go to
http://www.countercoup.org
The problem with electronic voting is that there is no physical record, no physical evidence of the actual vote. This makes it great if your intent is to commit election fraud, but it's terrible if you want fair and honest elections. Furthermore, the source code for these systems is invariably a closely guarded secret. Finally, I think it is no coincidence that the maker of one popular electronic voting system (Shouptronic) just happens to be a man who has been convicted of election fraud...
Listen, India has far more voters than the US has, and they have no trouble manually counting every single ballot. We should do the same, to ensure that we have the proper checks in place to prevent election fraud. I know, you impatient children are whining that we won't have the election results by the evening of the same day we vote. So what? It's worth a little wait for results in order to ensure the integrity of the process.
Moderation Totals:Flamebait=4, Insightful=3, Interesting=3, Overrated=2, Total=12.
Flame me, agree with me - but anything that generates this amount of comment and criticism is, at least, entertainingAnd, in a strange bit of irony, the moderation totals are neck in neck... maybe I'll ask Taco for a hand-recount.
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
According to CNN, on presidential elections:
Under New Mexico law, if the candidates end up tied, the winner could be determined by having the two men sit for a hand of poker -- with the state going to the winner.
New Mexico statute requires that in case of a tie, "the determination as to which of the candidates shall be declared to have been nominated or elected shall be decided by lot." In practice, the usual method for this rare event has been to play one hand of five-card poker.
This was last done in December 1999, in a local judge's race. Republican Jim Blanq and Democrat Lena Milligan played one hand of poker in a courthouse with dozens of people watching, and Blanq won.
I'd like to be the dealer for that game!
m
http://www.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/11/14If everything goes through electric lines and is accumulated on some cpu somewhere, if one can't see the stacks and stacks of votes or the machines counting them, then it becomes harder for many people to palpably trust everything is going on in an orderly fashion.
(not complete) list of advantages of paper votes
- It's hard to loose a palpable vote ballot.
- It's easy to hold up a vote ballot and say: this is my vote!
- It's easy to check, see and understand how the possiblity of vote fraud is reduced to a minimum. Everybody has an eye on the ballots and boxes. Counting is done under observation.
Now look at electronic votes. Being a complex system that has to ensure authorization, anonymity, data confidence, UI, and security, the chances of failure are high.Failure means votes that disappear. Only a small percentage of the population will actually phantom what the technical details are that ensure authorization, anonymity, data confidence, UI, and security. The rest won't know what's going on.
If I don't know how it's garanteed that my vote doesn't get deleted or the other guys vote duplicated then the system scares me. People will start believing in reality of fictional stories like The Net.
Hello disentchantment, ambiguity and loss of trust.
If you think Florida is bad then try to imagine the conspiracy theories that would arise each time there was mass bitterness and dissatisfaction concerning the framework of the election.
People would say the computers were rigged, files were deleted, hackers broke in.
It doesn't matter if the system is technologically set up to make it impossible.
Nobody except the upper digeratti will understand and so believe that. Everybody else will highly doubt it.
I suppose you're a tech-adept person. Then you should know that the solution should always be of maximum simplicity under the condition of fully and satifactorially solving the problem. The method should solve the problem - no more and no less - as often as possible with an induced overhead that is minimal.
Efficiency, fault tolerance and simplicity.
what you're suggested in a way increases efficiency (no more bears, no leaving the house) if you leave out the extreme costs and overhead of such a system, but it utterly stamps fault tolerance (which means how much can one trust worthiness of the results) and simplicity into the ground.
tom
______________________________________________
sigamajig...
One criteria though is anonymity. How would your system address this?
The actual "ballot" would be anonymous, with only a tracer record number. The 180 day files with the voter reg ID to tracer record ID match would be stored on a precinct by precinct level, and would only have the match of the two numbers.
The best security would be physical security - use removable hard drives, which are wiped once the 180 day period is over for challenges.
Your question, however, is based on the concept that you actually have an anonymous vote now. You don't. Every Precinct Committee Officer gets records indicating your name, phone, address, when you voted over the last four years, and which party affiliations (ballot type requests) you declared during that time.
How do you think we know you have an absentee ballot when we knock on your door?
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
To those who suggest abolition of the Electoral College, I'll again suggest reading the Constitution, the 12th and 20th Ammendments, and Federalist 68. This is a system designed to give the most power to the individual voter at the local level, and to prevent or minimize manipulation at any higher level. As was pointed out, we live in a Republic, and a move to a straight national popular vote would parallel the genesis of the U.S. Civil War in terms of trampling on "states rights".
"Major" candidates receive substantial federal funding for their campaigns. Add to that the "soft money" that may be impossible to eliminate without trampling on the 1st Ammendment. While some have called for federal funding of all campaigns, I think it would be a more fair solution to ban federal funding of any campaign.
There is no reason nor need for the federal government ot dictate election policy to the states in terms of how the ballots are voted and counted. However, it would be in the national interest to modernize the system nationwide. I would suggest offering matching block grants to the states to defray the cost of updating their voting systems, and to offer partial credits to states who have done so on their own (without federal assistance) within the last four years. That is NOT to suggest that the federal government should dictate the system, or even the type of system, to be used.
http://drteknikal.blogspot.com/
I've been thinking about this one...
So, we start with a kiosk terminal in a polling booth. You access it with your registration stub. It has the candidates, lined up like choices on an ATM terminal. You can pull up more info (picture, bio, positions on issues) for each based on the same criteria as the mailed brochures. When you settle on the choice you like, you hit that one on the screen. It highlights, and you go on to the next page. When you're all done with all the voting, you get a page showing the list of positions, the candidate you chose for each, and an edit/print choice. You choose print, and a punched (with nice round holes) card comes out, showing the choices under the names in clear boxes. You notice that something is wrong, feed it back into the machine, and run a fresh session. You print it again, and all's better. You go to another machine and slide the card into it, magnetic strip up. The machine counts your vote and stores the card for auditing...
Does anyone do this? If not, why not?
-- Still waiting for the Nike endorsement
Im sure they would have a real problem with electronic voting!
At present, the voting system in the US is robust when there is a large margin but very weak with close races. While counting may be a simple process, it becomes very error-prone when the numbers go into the tens of millions. So I have a simple solution in mind. Perhaps more resource intensive, but I think worth it.
First of all, use some sort of electronic medium to cast votes. In my county, for example, we voted on LCD notepads that aren't succeptible to these hole-punch, dangling tab issues. These votes can be tabulated quickly and accurately.
The second part (and an important part for those folks who tend to get confused by some ballots). Here it is: Each voter casts three votes. Each vote would be cast on a different ballot layout and when all things are done, the computer would present any inconsistencies to the voter to be resolved. While this may take voters two or three times as long to cast their vote, it would make voting more stupid-proof(which we definitely need) and increase reliability and accuracy vastly.
There's lots of talk about how archaic the US voting system is. So what. In almost every case it works flawlessly. Paperless computer voting is tempting disaster. There is no evidence a computerized voting system would be more accurate than the current system, or more resistant to tampering, and without physical ballots marked by the voters, there would be nothing to recount if that were needed. Just because it's new and sounds techie, that doesn't make it better, contrary to the Slashdot mentality. A good compromise is what has been done in San Francisco. We use a paper ballot, you mark your choices with a pen on the ballot. When you put your ballot into the box, it passes through something like a scantron scanner, and is automatically counted. There is still a paper ballot which is the ultimate record of your vote, and can be recounted if needed.
...that a Slashdot contributor should think that throwing computers at our electoral system is the way to solve its problems. Typical, also, that he should pepper his language with such contemptuous phrases as "dead tree" and "19th century technology". Sigh...
I will give him this, though. It would be easier, possibly, to design a computer-generated interface less susceptible to error, and easier to use for those with some disability (e.g. poor eyesight, tremors in the hands, &c.) than to design a mechanical or paper-based scheme.
While I still lived in California, San Diego used Hollerith-card "butterfly" ballots just as Florida used. They are seriously flawed in that they separate the _ballot questions_ from the _ballot_ itself. The ballot is simply a numbered card with perforations. While it's in the machine, it's not easy to tell whether one of its holes has been perforated or not. Out of the machine, it's easy enough to check for "hanging chads", but impossible to tell if the correct holes have been punched, or if a vote was spoiled with multiple perforations.
In Seattle, a Scantron-type ballot was used. These are superior to the Hollerith-card ballots because the ballot choices are printed on the ballot itself; it's very easy to check the ballot for missing or duplicate filled-in bubbles. No special machinery is _required_ at all, although of course a photoelectric ballot-scanner is used for on-the-spot vote counting. It would be far easier manually to recount Scantron-type ballots than Hollerith-card ballots. However, the ballots may be difficult to fill in for anyone who had difficulty grasping a pen steadily; and they would be susceptible to fraud (an extra bubble filled in, and voila, a good vote is now spoiled and worthless.)
It should be possible, however, to design a small, dedicated "voting computer" whose sole purpose would be to display an interface to a ballot which it would then print on a piece of card. This card would, just as the Scantron-type ballot, have the choices clearly printed on it, along with the voters' responses. The interface presented by the machine could easily be adapted for accessibility to the disabled. The important thing, though, is that the computer be nothing more than a ballot printer. It is _vital_ that a printed voting record be generated. The ability to fall back on manual vote counting _must_ be left open.
hyacinthus
Hold on...computer software fucks up and throws the result of a ballot, therefore we should use more computers in future? Check your logic, boy, 'cos it looks broken from here.
nal 11
Why not have a touch screen selection of your candidate and have the computer print/punch your ballot for you? You can verify that it created a ballot that reflects your vote and hand it in. This would allow for permanent physical evidence of your vote, and make filling out the ballot REALLY EASY. Maybe the ballot could even be printed out to read,
You have voted for:
Your President for President
You Veep for Vie President
Wouldn't that be the easiest way to make sure you voted the way you wanted to???
Pretty simple.
You write custom code for the left over I-Openers. The program presents a series of choices to the voter complete with pictures of the candidates for Florida voters. At the end, the program summarizes your choices and spits out a clearly punched punch card ballot without those damn chads. It also simultaneous keeps an electronic count of the vote.
At the end of the day, you run the punch cards through a machine, compare the results to computer tally, and certify the damn things.
Ok, who's willing to back me with some venture capital?
This can all change! Join us at the Political Information Center Network to shake sleep Washington out of bed. The chaos in Florida would not have happened if people actually listened to Slashdot posters a year ago!
But we can actually make a difference, and it's time. Let's consolidate our voices to push forward not any specific political agenda, but rather a voice for reasoned technological change for the 21st century.
Join the fight at:
PICnet - The Political Information Center Network
How about this? 3 copies: one electronic copy on the local storage of the machine, one electronic copy on removable media (1), and a paper printout with a bar code (2). The two electronic copies would be "tripwired" (md5/md2/etc) for protection from tampering. 1. The removable media (compact flash/ smart media/ etc) would be initialized by the voting officials when you present your ID (voter registration/drivers license/ etc). It would only contain a crypto signature that lets the machine know that it is the right one for that polling place. When the voter was finished and had printed out their "paper" ballot, they would put both into an envelope and deposit it in the ballot box. The paper printout would hopefully be printed on thick (recycled) paper. There would also be a bar code reader on the ballot machine so the voter could quickly double-check that the bar code printout was the same as what they had chosen before they put it into the envelope. It might also be good to have the bar code at the beginning or end of the paper and a list of everyone that was voted for by that voter (duplication of ballots and voting IS a good thing, it helps to make sure that everything can be checked 2 and 3 ways).
UNIX doesn't have a monopoly on Good Ideas, it just owns most of them. --Alan Cox
Well, there's a reason: They are the worst offenders! I hold equally distasteful opinions and paranoid hypotheses regarding the Dems, but I chose to express others because they were more relevant to the thesis of my little screed.
If there's one area where the GOP really turns my stomach more than anyone else, it's their rhetoric. They pretend to speak from a moral or ethical high ground, esconcing themselves as the word of law and the hand of equity, when in reality they're practicing petty partisan politics, motivated because they still haven't forgot how they totally lost the '92 general election.
I don't endorse Gore's legal team's strategy in Florida, but his statement last Sunday that, to paraphrase, we should take the time to make a careful deliberate count, is on its own merit the most reasonable thing to do. (Heck, the EC doesn't even vote until Dec 20; they can recount every vote in the state five times by then.) However, put it in context, and you're correct - he really only wants it done in precincts where he'll gain votes as a result.
I can see the fnords!
In my county (Stanislaus, CA) we voted using the punch card method. At each polling place were several machines that you slip the ballot into, line up the mechanical hole punch with the appropriate candidate or answer and press the handle to clearly mark your vote. The mechanical hole puch ratchets into each place so there is no way to mark in between candidates or anything. Then you take your ballot (all two pieces of paper of it) put them back in the incuded sleeve and hand it to the attendant who tears off the top 2 inches (leaving the rest in the sleeve) gives you the tags and drops the sleeve with the ballot inside into the ballot box. It is your responsibility as the voter to make sure that your ballot is properly marked (no chad, as they called it on the news last night). If you make a mistake, you tear up the ballot and get another. Simple, elegant and clear. More technology is not the answer to everything...
Averye0
--o You're just jealous cause the voices talk to me and not to you! o--
Problably the easiest way to do it to the computers is to of course start with a terminal. Then you enter your options with some idiot interface (they can use canidate pictures, colors, or a donkey and a elephant, I dont care). Then it asks for confirmation, you say "I wanted the donkey, yes." The computer then punches your ballot for you. That way there is no worries about hacking the machine or hard drive failures or anything. But the ballot is always printed properly assuming its a serious voter.
To the citizens of the United States of America,
In the light of your failure to elect a President of the USA, and thus govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective today.
Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchial 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 "shit".
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 European cars, you will understand what we mean.
10. Please tell us who killed JFK. We are most eager to know.
Thank you for your cooperation.
New Mexico had problems because their ballot includes a single punch which indicates that the person wishes to vote the "straight party ticket" for whichever party they select. This means that they do not wish to individually indicate their selections.
The problem develops when "voters chose to vote a straight party ticket, but also chose at least one candidate from another party, election officials said. "
In other words, if I select that I want to vote "straight Democratic Party ticket" and then also punch a vote for Bush for President, the machine would get confused. That was the problem.
In any case, I think we've had as much Election coverage as anyone can stomach... so, let's just wait it out.
Thalia
How is the vote screwed up by 'bad computer software'? It's not..
It's scrwed up by a bad PHYSICAL BALLOT.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
How do I know the tally is correct?
If someone question the mechanical out come, at least I can do a phusical recount, if someone screw with the Code, how are we supposed to do a recount.
And someone will try to tamper with the software.
remember bush thinks he's the president because the media said so.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
A real Net voting system would work like this:
A. Voter shows up at polling place (secure encyrpted terminal in secure place like library, post office, govt building kiosk, embassy).
B. Voter swipes voter reg card, machine takes pic and stores it in 180 day storage file for verification. Reg card ID stored in voting PC and marked in voting queue database. Key generated, attached to voting record. Key now used for all further transactions.
C. Voter says name, machine records voice snippet for 180 day storage for verification.
D. Voter uses touch screen or mouse to vote preferential ballot. Choices are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 up to 9 max. No vote is no vote.
E. Voter has ballot choices displayed, with choices checked. Voter clicks/enters OK, voice snippet records voter saying OK "Please repeat your name".
F. Files uploaded once complete to servers via encrypted data stream. If incomplete, ballot is voided after 30 minutes. If voided, you can vote again. Max wait time is 30 minutes. If less than 30 minutes prior to polling booth close - voter is issued receipt to vote again, but noone can start voting after poll close without receipt number.
G. Midnight all voting ceases. If recount, voter pics and voices are available, voters can challenge vote. Humans decide if same person - people have better wetware to recognize faces and voices to confirm.
H. Preferential ballot drops lowest vote total first, reallocating to No. 2 choice, until candidate wins race.
I. Script-kiddies have Voltron elected anyway. Corporate paymasters pay them off for job well done.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
I love that song! The Sex Pistols rule! ;)
---
Zardoz has spoken!
Oper on the Nightstar
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
When I voted I didn't have to produce any form of identification. I simply walked in and told them who I was. Hacking free votes under the current system (at least in my district) would be easy! Given the shitty state of the current system, it shouldn't be too difficult to produce a better computerized one. Eric BTW, under the current system, when someone asks "Did you vote yet?", you could tell them: "At least twice so far"!
Ant method that gives you a "reciept" printed out from info sent from the computer can be tampered with. So your reciept says one thing, but your vote is talied for another.
As long as the winner is not elected by a close margin, or by a landslide, you would never be found out before the elected official had been in office.
Now that I think about it, there are ways to do it so nobody could ever find out.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Seems to me the best near-term solution would be an electronic verifier, as mentioned in other posts. A voter would insert his punched-card ballot into a verifier before depositing it in the ballot box. Any double-punched or unpunched races could be flagged for the voter. It should be relatively easy and cheap to manufacture and maintain, if it uses optical technology to read the cards instead of mechanical readers.
It ain't perfect: it wouldn't solve all the problems with chads and poorly designed ballots, but it should be able to find and flag a lot of them before they end up in the ballot box. And maybe that's all we really need for now: a better solution until the perfect solution becomes available and affordable.
electronic tabulation is a pretty neat idea so we can get a fast accurate poll of the will of the people. but internet voting, hold on there! there is civic value to the anonymity offered by curtain in the public polling place. there have been many studies showing that husband and wife more often profess to vote for the same candidate than they do in reality. and how could you stop your boss from watching over your shoulder as you vote? no way, i don't want lose the integrity of the vote. and yes, mail in and telephone voting suffers from the same, well-studied problem.
Hey democracy lovers, add Quorum as a c
This is an election quicky, maybe if it had been posted as an article I wouldn't be forced to promote every chance I get.
There is a system in place in Florida that casts bets, the Florida Lotto. Our beloved elected officials spent a big chunk of money making sure their computers work and are located everywhere.
I've never heard of a single lost bet or misread bet in the lotto so far. It's a VERY reliable and accurate system. So how come we still vote with punch cards down here?
The answer is, everybody scratches where they have an itch. The florida officials are more interested in collecting an ever growing amount of money, than in the accuracy of the voting system.
It's of course our own fault for not kicking their butts out of office. Maybe this time we'll wake up and just do it.
~~~Please pass the salt, I hate unsalted MD5s
Talk to your friend in Sweden. Ask him, "Is Sweden a Democracy or a Republic?" We're not a Democracy, we're a Republic. There's a big difference. We're specifically designed so the popular vote isn't always the one that goes. And as far as I'm concerned, it works. A wacky event like this was bound to happen eventually, good that it happens now, right?
You can talk about voter anonymity and voter privacy, but your vote is always connected to your name. If it wasn't, then there'd be no accountability.
And just curious, what are the first three laws of democracy? Truth, justice, and the American way? Linux, Linus, Zerg? Hm...
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O