Slashdot Mirror
How Would You Design the Voting Technology?
Bob Glickstein asks: "Punch-card ballot machines are now universally reviled, and we techies all know the perils of electronic ones. But I haven't seen anyone talk about a better solution. It's gotta be inexpensive, rugged, reliable, accurate, verifiable, tamper-resistant, simple to use, and secret. Verifying a vote tally should not result in TV news images of rooms full of election officials, squinting at ambiguous marks on a piece of paper. What contraption can possibly meet all these criteria?"
The most transparent technology there is at the moment for recording votes is for voters to tick boxes (or write numbers) on printed ballot papers and put them into ballot boxes. Voting slips are counted by hand based, in the presence of witnesses. If the result is close, the voting slips can be recounted. This system works well in Australia at all levels of government.
OK, we do get problems occasionally. But they are typically things like people impersonating other voters, and people voting multiple times at different polling booths. However, the system copes with this. If the number of voting irregularities detected is sufficient to effect the outcome of an election, a by-election is called in the seats in dispute. It really helps that the courts in Australia are not heavily politicised like they are in the US of A.
(The problems with voter impersonation, etc are also present when voting machines are used. The same solutions could be used in both cases; e.g. requiring voters to present photo ids, and throwing rorters into jail for a long time.)
Oregon abolished the polling place. That's right, we haven't had a voting booth set up for an official election in Oregon starting with the 2000 Presidential Election (don't blame us, we didn't vote for him, and we didn't leave home to vote against him!).
So how do Oregonians vote? In the comfort of their own homes. About six weeks before election day, every residence with a mailbox gets a voter's guide that comes with a voter registration card (if you're not registered and want to vote, you turn it in at least 30 days before the first election you want to vote in). A week or two after that, your ballot, secrecy envelope and return mailing envelope come in the mail. You punch out the appropriate holes on the punch card. Stuff your ballot in the secrecy envelope, stuff the secrecy envelope in the mailing envelope, and put your signature on the back, and either mail it or drop it off at the elections office, or if it's within a week of election day, at any of dozens handy points at various public facilities (libraries, town squares, city halls, courthouses, election offices, etc) staffed by elections officials specifically to collect ballots.
But how does Oregon prevent voting fraud? Easy. We check signatures on the envelopes against the voter registration. Not sure what the sample rate is, but fraud has not been an issue. If you don't get the ballot and you were supposed to, you go down to the elections office, show your ID, they verify your registration and they void out the missing ballot (so even if someone turns it in, when they go to scan the barcode before checking sigs, they see it's void and throw it out). They issue you a ballot and hand it to you and you're on your way.
What does all this mean? Well, for starters, you get three or four weeks with your ballot instead of three or four minutes. Time is on your side in making an informed, well-thought decision without having to stress out that you're missing out on having a life to go down to the polls and vote.
Encourage your state to abolish the polling place
Help us build a better map!
This is the way voting is done where I live: Columbia, Missouri. The circles are a lot bigger than the standard scantron, and you bubble them in with a Sharpie marker. It sort of makes sense, with Columbia being a college town, after all, but it may freak out some college students who have seen too many Scantrons!