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New Closed Source Voting Systems Malfunction
LowellPorter writes "Miami-Dade and Broward counties are having voting problems. After the 2000 election problems, new voting methods were installed including touch screen technology. Some times the problems were with workers not showing up, poor training, or mechanical problems. It doesn't look like they cleaned up the system there." Not all of the problems mentioned in the article are due to the new proprietary voting machines, but many of them are.
This isn't a "linux would have saved the day" story.. This same quote is reiterated and paraphrased throughout the article:
"She said many poll workers did not wait for the full six-minute activation procedure to occur and then became nervous and uncertain."
The workers just don't know how to use the machines. Either that or Jan the Man wants to play the "I didnt really lose! it was the hanging chads!" game.
Perhaps Florida is hopelessly stupid. Something to do with a close proximity to DisneyWorld. (that explains the lesser but omni-present stupidity in California too. DisneyLand isn't as big.)
How about a "blink once for yes, blink twice for no" system?
Or set up a "Honk if you love Reno!" sign and count the horns.
Or something involving hot grits or business plans or a beowulf cluster "of these"
I can't hear the word 'gubernatorial' without giggling.
Next story please.. I used up too much karma on this one.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Come to Belgium in june 2003 and watch us vote electronically. As we have been doing for the last few elections.
:)
It isn't that difficult.
You go to the voting-office.
You prove your ID (national ID-card)
Instead of a piece of paper you get a kind of bankcard (of visa/master-type) or a card with chip. (I am not sure)
You plug your card into the computer.
You vote (once, although it can be for more then 1 election. We have about 9 governments, I think. Hell, even we can't keep count)
You take your card back.
You put it in a box with the others.
The card doesn't have information about you.
The card-info can't be changed after voting.
At the latest one, you could put it back in, and check if it contained the right vote.
The government knows that you have voted (it is required) once. (see above: ID-reg)
The cards get collected from around the votingdistrict, shoved into a coutingcomputer.
And you know what?
It works.
Perhaps the older people, might ask some help.
Why don't you just buy the tech from us, hey.
If your are interested, we even have electronical wallets, called 'proton'.
PS. my english isn't what it used to be, I know
Sorry, but it's unconstitional in many states (Colorado is one) to use any polling method that can be used to prove how an individual has voted.
This is a basic technique to prevent vote selling (or vote coercing, e.g., "vote for my candidate or you're fired/will lose the account/will never marry my daughter/whatever.") If you can prove how you voted, others may be tempted to "encourage" you to vote a particular way. If you can never prove it, you can lie.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
You have to provide an address to register to vote in Oregon anyway, this was true before vote by mail, so it is no more discriminatory against the homeless than the traditional system.
Why is an address required? Because many votes are regional in nature, in other words I can only vote for Congressional candidates in my Congressional District, and your stated home address is used to determine your precinct voting station, Congressional District, state office districts, etc.
In Australia, are you allowed to simply walk into any polling venue in the country and vote? Are you not asked for identification? (identification, such as a driver's license or non-driver's ID card, requires an address here in Oregon, too). If you don't have to provide ID and address, what is to prevent you from voting several times in several different polling stations?
Vote by mail is a great convenience for folks like my father, who is elderly and a semi-invalid, yet still bright. The convenience of being able to sit in your own living room, studying ballot measures and candidates, the arguments for and against published in the voters guide (which often runs in excess of 100 pages), is a great convenience for folkd like my elderly father.
Vote by mail is a smash hit here in Oregon. None of the predicted problems have materialized. Among other things it would seem to fit your KISS criteria exceptionally well. And it requires a paper ballot, you should like that as well.
... our electronic voting machines seemed to work just fine. It was actually cool to see my older neighbors figure out and make friends with the new technology. I overheard one older gent tell his wife how much easier the big screen was to read and the big (touchscreen) buttons were to push.
I spoke to one of the pollworkers, and he told me that one positive change was that the county gave each location a CD with ALL voter information, updated from the registration cutoff date. If someone came to the wrong place, they could be looked up immediatly without having to call the central office. In the 2000 presidential election, this was one of the big problems - the phone lines were jammed and many voters never found out where to go. Amazing how a simple database and a CD burner can fix things.
Typically the first results pour in within a couple of hours of the polls closing. Almost all of the constuencies have been completely counted and agreed in the small hours of the following morning, enough to ensure that generally the leaders of the winning/losing parties have made their victory speeches or conceded by 2am. Generally it's rare anyone is still counting, save for recounts, after the sun comes up.
I know 2000 was a fiasco, but it was immediately clear to me (as a Brit in the US) that any announcement about winners and losers would have had to be on the basis of predictions, not results. America can be counted by that time not because of punched cards but because by a certain enough votes have been counted in each state for it to be clear which states are going to fall for to which candidates. Counting continues for days, even without recounts.
I honestly don't think punched cards, etc, help as much as they might appear. There's a lot to be said for accountable human beings counting. Not the least of which is that human beings know what it means when they see a piece of paper with two 'X's in it - one of which is scribbled on with the word "mistake". Punched card readers simply reject the vote, with certain nuts (generally, anyone who's won the election) saying that anyone who "voted twice" is too much of an idiot to have their vote counted.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.