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Touch Screen Voting Trouble in Florida
usn2fsu03 writes "Here we go again with
another election controversy in South Florida. Touch screen voting was used in a State House election that was won by twelve votes. Unfortunately, there were 134 people who went through the process of checking in to vote, but either did not vote or cast a vote that was not counted. Without a paper trail it is anyone's guess as to what those voters' intentions were. Obviously, there is work to be done in the Election Supervisor's office before November comes around."
And we all know what happens when electronic voting goes bad.
I mean seriously, what will it take for these people to realize some things are just better done the old way, one of them being voting.
I can see it now, in the future major media conglomerates will consolidate and choose the president based on which is the most popular in *their* opinion. I guess that could be called a 'representative democracy' too
Representation of corporations *shudder*
I think each slashbot should think carefully about this and write to his congressman.
They just touched the screen with their whole palm, and expected it to sense who they wanted to vote for :)
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
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A shrub or a robot as the President of the US?
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
If they can't figure out to push the VOTE button to count their selection, maybe they shouldn't be voting anyway...
Florida is not allowed to vote in the next federal election. Bad Florida! Bad! Go to your room!
-moitz-
Screw 'em...who cares what anyone thinks.
-Voter walks into booth
-Voter touches appropriate button on screen
-Voting machine records the vote electronically and also prints the vote on paper (maybe in like a scantron type format so it can be easily recounted)
Done?
If you don't press vote, you didn't vote. You have to live with this. The instructions are available, so if you don't complete the transaction, you really can't complain. (and I'm sure your local poll worker will help if you have trouble reading the instructions.)
There will never be a technology that will prevent idiots from making mistakes. Now we have a system that is more expensive, no better than hanging chads at determining voter intention, and HAS NO AUDIT trail. We are worse off then before. Yet another example that technology will never turn an imperfect collection of humans into a utopia.
Now one would think that with all the trouble they seem to be having they would just move back to paper ballot. It would save alot of grief, then again it is Florida.
- It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them. - Alfred Adler -
But anyways, now they can easily fix an election without getting caught. The liberals will make a big fuss on the blogs, and the republicans will rejoice for long periods of time, and life will go on as usual.
Imagine if it was the other way around: The republicans would make a big fuss with their guns, and the liberals would probably die.
Sadly, no one seems to really care.
In the UK, the loser would have the right to go to court and ask for (and probably get) a new election. It happend in Winchester in 1997.
It seem quite possible that 1% of the people that went in to the booth just decide that they didn't like any of the voters? It seems like the the moderators on /. are just trying to find problems where none exist. Let's see what happens if a "none of the above" button is added to the UI before we go crying about the inequities of touch screen voting.
they were just looking for the keyboard and mouse, rather than trying to use the screen...
NeoThermic
Use my link above, or to view my server, NeoThermic.com
If so, whats wrong with the normal voting system. Its not like its ever been that insecure.
In a way you could call this the eroding of freedom to having your right to vote. I know its a bit of a lame idea though. I have never read the American constitution (as im not American) but im guessing there is no mention of the right to vote in a certain media.
But, if because you wished to vote using older methods you were denied because using the new method is compulsory is that being denied your right to vote?
just have 2 thing printed out...a computer punch card ballot that is punched out and has the names so people can see that the punch is taken out, and a receipt printed so that the person has a record of their vote?
it is a high tech interface with mechanical precision for the punch.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Right. Uh-huh. We never saw *this* coming. No sireeee. Electronic voting is *reliable*, *safe*, and *fun for the whole family*, and anything else is against the word of the Fuehre...er, I mean, is Anti-American.
--
I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
The point is that without a paper trail, you cannot even begin to safely assume one way or another.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
WHY? Is this corporation in bed with the politician's or something? There is absolutely no need for this kind waste of money when a pen and paper would do the job more effectively.
On another note, when elections are so close, why don't the politicians recognize that they don't have a clear mandate from the people and respect the opinions of the opposition more? It's power gone mad.
I'm sorry, but since when was any vote-counting system designed to interpret what a voter's intent was, beyond correctly-cast votes?
If people don't/can't vote correctly using even the simplest methods, then perhaps even they did not know what their intent was.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
-122
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
The way around all this insecure, computerized Diebold mess is simple: absentee ballots.
All absentee ballots have to be counted by hand, and it also leaves a tangible paper trail. Each state's website has a page on how to vote in absentia, which only requires a quick entry into google of your state's name and the word "absentee."
If you don't trust your votes to the Diebold corporation and their known political views, vote absentee in the 2004 election.
Obviously, there is work to be done in the Election Supervisor's office before November comes around
On the contrary. I think everything's going pretty much as planned.
When it comes down to it, Democaracy is all about the will of the majority. With such populations as south Florida apparently split almost perfectly down the center, both sides are equally well represented either way the vote goes. As much as electronic voting has its flaws, this is not one of them.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
Why not just have the voting machines print a receipt for the voter after they cast their ballot? For one, it'd be a great souvenier of the election. Secondly, if there was a challenge to the vote, concerned voters could bring their receipt to a recount.
Of course, the machine could also print a receipt for the election board as well and put it in a big bin, so that there's a paper ballot that can be recounted or verified by them if the election comes under question.
Electronic transactions are great, but you should get a paper receipt when it's done. Several times, I've actually had to prove to my bank that I really made a deposit to my account from an ATM because the deposit was lost/misapplied/eaten by ATM gnomes. If I hadn't had the paper receipt, I'd have been SOL.
Yes yes yes.. we all know it.
Cringley makes a good case about why we believe this might work, but probably won't.
I know it's scary that we can tell there's something wrong but there's no way to know the right result -
But the worse scenario is one where there's no way to tell anything's wrong. No reason to request a manual count, no reason for trusting fools to question the results.
Most people, it seems, have an "I haven't verified this system, therefore it must be secure" mindset. But don't worry; this particular problem will be fixed and people can go back to assuming everything works until the next time something is obvious wrong.
Remember - it can't be a problem if nobody knows about it.
Democracy in inaction...
Still, USA is not a democracy. Its a republic. People seem to forget that...
All the groups calling for voting reform can point there and say "Electronic voting without proper auditing tools is worse than hanging chads."
The Canadians will just keep laughing, as more people ask why their pencil and paper system works more smoothly, and in many cases faster, than ours.
I don't care if we have a fancy electronic system with proper audit trails, or if we go to a pencil & paper system with proper audit trails. I just care that we get there quickly.
frob
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
Hmm. Either this is discrimination, or we're onto something...
Hey, I've got an idea. Make "citizens" take a test before voting, with one question: Locate the United States on a world map. There's a large percentage of the U.S. population that can't do this, and we'd get rid of a lot of the problematic voters if we were able to do this.
Come on, Jefferson always said that the "common" folk (In our times I suppose that means people who are so stupid they can't find the country they live in) shouldn't be allowed to vote. I think it's a damned good idea.
I kind of get this kooky conspiracy theory feeling where say every 3 votes for the "wrong" candidate is excluded and it's a part of the closed program code. You kind of get that feeling when you see stuff like this: Bogdanoff had a ready explanation for the mystery. She theorized that some of the people who cast nonvotes were among the county's true-blue Democrats who were appalled to find a ballot with only Republicans. Did this really happen?
I'm otherwise (still) surprised that paper receipts were never given in the beginning, but it's a very good idea for the future. If anything, it should be a requirement.
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
She theorized that some of the people who cast nonvotes were among the county's true-blue Democrats who were appalled to find a ballot with only Republicans.
How hard is it to have "None of the above" as an option?
Can someone please explain to me when this became a land where we had to determine what a voter intended and not what he actualy voted for (or in this case didn't vote for). Ballots are fairly simple things, and most of us learned about them in 4th grade. If you are unable to comprehend how to work a ballot, by law, polling places are supposed to have someone there to explain and assist you. If you don't take advantage of it, that was your choice. Vote right, or don't vote at all, but don't be bitching when your incorrect ballot isn't counted.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Can you point to a few of these independent investigations?
Oh, and by the way, consider yourself lucky there's no spelling test for voting...
Whether you vote or not, it really doesn't matter.
Read the "greatest 50 conspiracies of all time". It talks about public voting being controlled by one private firm up to around 1960s-70s.
If voting really matters don't you think the government will pump 20x more money into the booths and systems. Make it all starbucks happy, trace finger prints etc etc.
Election law really needs to do something else -- a runoff perhaps, or a default to the incumbent -- when an election is this close but the turnout is much less than 100%. You may as well just flip a coin when the vote counts are not significantly different with respect to sampling error.
is to provide a copy of Voting for Dummies at each voting booth. Or they could just use a machine the prints a final, easy to read, ballot. Imagine that.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
For an interesting exercise in direct democracy, check out the Bush in 30 Seconds finalists. These have been winnowed down from some 1500 submitted ads.
All created by volunteers. Registered users get to vote on which ads they like the best, and the winners will be run on TV this election season.
Just to be fair and balanced, here's a similar conservative ad. No voting though.
3D Printing Tips and Tricks at Zheng3.com
Doesn't sound like its e-voting's fault. This happens with regular ballot machines too. It's akin to not pulling the handle after pressing the switches for the choices.
Touch screens doesn't really make a different in this case. It's more of a human factors issue here.
Move along.
SIG:Slashdot: indymedia for nerds.
You can't do that, people might feel peer pressure when they see the smudges and scratches all over one candidates name. That would not be fair! Just imagine you are in the booth and the weight of thousands before you bearing down upon you to just touch the icky spot on the screen just like they did... How disturbing...
-Wade
You're missing the point.
It's not whether those individuals voted or not.. it's that there's no way to go back and check whether they did or not. There's no way for people doing a recount to go and look for the equivalent of "hanging chads" and such.
The article even addresses that, it's fine if someone doesn't want to vote. It is NOT fine that there is no way to go back and identify the voter's intent.
What would you like to do?
if (vote=="Democrat") {
vote=null;
}
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They Are Vermin Feeding On Each Other's Feces.
I Hate \.
I disagree....
I think we can solve a number of problems like this...
Say everyone MUST vote
Now you have the problem of everyone MUST vote, what do you do about people who decide not to vote? Simple... you add "none of the above" to the ballot and assume that any elligable voters who don't vote (even the ones who just don't bother to go to a polling place or even to register) as votes for "none of the above"....
Then, if nobody gets a clear majority, you have a new election with all new candidates.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Beautiful troll there my freind - even a link to some cocksuckers website to fool them.
/. try kuro5hin.
And the spelling! Genius. "indipendint"!
You, sir, are the finest troll I have seen in these parts for a long time.
However, you will get very few bites with political trolling on
But...that's the point. There's no paper trail at all, so who knows what those people intended. I don't live in Florida, so I have no idea what their touch-screen system looked like, but maybe there was a "none of the above" button. Maybe they didn't like any of the candidates, and intended to vote for "none of the above", but it didn't work right. Or maybe they thought they voted for someone, but didn't hit "accept" or something similar. Maybe they just got bored and went home... Maybe they hit a wrong button and couldn't figure out how to un-do it... Maybe the machine just lost their votes... We don't know, because there is absolutely no record, no indication of what they did or didn't do. There's no way to check and see whether the system is working right or not.
yrs,
Ephemeriis
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Not only that, but assuming an even distribution of morons voting for both candidates, this won't skew any but the closest elections (though admittedly that would be this one). In most elections, if the "moron vote" not getting counted throws the election....good! If I knew that most idiots voted for one candidate, I'd probably vote for the other on principle.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Don't be so quick to point a finger at the technology or the system. Fact is, many people choose to abstain from certain ballot sections because they don't feel qualified to vote or they don't like their choices. I'd bet that the majority of the 134 people made a choice not to vote.
You can't give out votes on paper.
That would enable buying / extorting votes.
"Did you vote for me as I told you to? Yes? Show me that receipt. Fucking liar! Say goodbye to your kneecaps!"
...many software companies are considering relocation of their QA departments to Broward County. "There's no better pool of candidates for QA testers that I know of," says one manager, who requested anonymity, "to ensure that a program is absolutely idiot-proof."
If you acheive the first goal, but fail to address the second, you create an increasingly angry and restless population, and that's unhealthy for any democracy. A lesson many politicians seem to have taken from the Florida debacle is that most people will "get over it", and go back to driving their SUVs and watching TV. So far they've been right about this. Unfortunately, that only works if we're talking about an isolated incident; if people begin to develop even the impression that they're being repeatedly screwed, our society will suffer.
It has been verified that faulty citizen failure has resulted in at least one contested Florida election. It's no surprise. Some of these citizens have been around since the '20s! They cost a fortune to maintain. Clearly we can do better than this.
I recommend replacing them. Shiny new electronic voters would reduce the problem of incorrect vote selection, as well as ambiguous ballots, or the inability to understand clear, spoken or written English. Computers are far better at binary selection than senior citizens, so they should have no problem.
The novotes (134) was 1.3% of the vote. Re-read the article. If you do the math you can figure out how many people voted, roughly 13,000.
In other news, thousands of Florida citizens went to Vegas for their Spring Break holiday, but when faced with the challenge of putting a coin into a machine and pulling the lever they accidentally voted for Pat Buchanan.
Because hopefully it will bring attention to how important a voter audited paper trail is. Hopefully this will gain widespread attention, so that before a more important election (say a national congress seat or presidential election) the people who administer elections will get it right.
With all the problems that have occured in Flordia elections ya gotta come to the conclusion that maybe its not the method of voting thats at fault, but rather the voters themselves that are at fault.I strongly suspect that there would be just as many problems if Florida went back to a paper balot where you have to mark an X in a box with a pencil
A paper trail would have made no difference in this election. The people turned in "blank" ballots. A paper receipt would show just that- no votes. Even with a paper trail, you can't assume that they really wanted to vote. You can only assume that they didn't vote for anybody. Voting is binary, after all. You either voted or you didn't. There is no in-between.
"The defense of freedom requires the advance of freedom" - George W Bush
Vote Democratic: "Increase personal freedom but raise everybody's taxes."
Vote Republican: "I like the government controlling how I may (ab)use my body owned by the corporations, but hey, at least my income tax ain't that high."
For that matter, let's just add a "none of the above" option to elections anyways. I'm not talking about "no vote placed in favor of any candidate"... I'm talking about an active rejection of all listed candidates. Then, if the "none of the above" options gets more votes than any candidate, the election must be rerun with none of the original choices on the bill.
Other than the logistical stuff of keeping someone in office past term while the repeat election process is taking place, can someone tell me why this has never been implemented?
I know that most folks think the elections are WAY off in November - you could not be more wrong
Florida's Primaries are March 9th - IF the primaries are tight, there could be problem
Remember, the first primary of the year is NEXT WEEK (Tuesday - Waskington DC), and the Iowa Caucuses are Monday the 19th
We are already in full election swing
Disclaimer - I write software that looks at election data (but does NOT count vote - so don't shoot me) - we have been in testing, 2-3 days/week since 2 months before the CA recall election. Even without that, we would have been testing since about Labor Day. From Now till June, it's 6 days/week between testing and actual elections
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
Who's actually going to waste^H^H^H^H^Hcast their vote in November?
It uses the same paper ballots we have now, and only minor modifications in the counting process.
Why Approval Voting Should Be Approved Now
MORTAR COMBAT!
I have to admit that since the last election, I do look closely at the punch card to make sure that the holes are cleanly punched. My feeling is that it's an extremely important civic duty and calls for a bit of care and attention on the part of the voter.
-h-
Hows the recount going to be fair if they can't recount the individual votes? About all they can do is tabulate the total from each voting machine again.
As many people have already stated, this is exactly an audit trail is necessary with electronic voting.
In the UK any ballot that is considered "spoiled" - left blank, more than one vote, incorrect or badly placed marks - is counted, and the total number of spoilt ballots is recorded and reported.
At the moment this is the only way to legitimately record a vote for "none of the above" and have it reported. Simply not voting is dismissed as "voter apathy".
So when I'm not happy with any of the candidates I turn up and spoil my ballot. I suggest that more people do the same, until there is a valid "none of the above" option on all ballot papers.
Perhaps some of the failed votes were simply people's attempts to "spoil" their touchscreen ballots for this reason.
If you're not smart enough to vote, I don't want your opinions on government issues.
What sources have you read? As previously noted (in the NYT, et al. - there have been multiple references/links to it on /.) Bush lost 6 of the 9 recounts - Gore won most by 1000 votes. The Gore-conditioned recounts gave Bush the victory, while Bush's desired methods gave the vote to Gore. I think Gore also won in a few other vote counting variants. That doesn't seem like "all the other independent investigations prove that Bush did win in Florida". Of course, it could also be that having the person running Bush's campaign in FL also in charge of the vote counting in FL, two SC justices having immediate family working for the Bush campaign, or Bush's brother running the state with contested recounts might give an impression of impropriety...
Regardless, what's so hard for people to figure out? Having two paper copies (one so the person knows what they voted, another as a backup to the electronic vote, treated as the paper votes are now, both containing numeric impersonal codes for each vote) and a computer copy is neither difficult to implement nor expensive. It provides the ability to verify election results (although considering FL, I can see why you wouldn't want THAT). It would allow for the rapid count advantages of computer polls and have a secure backup in case of (or when) problems happen. Instead, the emphasis is on all-electronic voting with security holes one could drive a truck through. Irrelevant of the (supposed) stupidity of some FL voters, this doesn't seem like a hard concept to grasp.
I live in one of the counties in Florida where 1) the touch screens were piloted and 2) where I have voted with them in two elections.
There is a print out that is produced as a running record as each person votes, which is the "backup" of data stored in the voting machine.
The voters that "did not vote" or "voted but it was not counted" should be able to be located and queried regarding that happened at the polling place. Unless there is no way to determine, from this paper printout, which exact registered and present to vote cvoters did not vote or had a problem voting, for some reason.
Obviously these fools in Florida have the mentality of a first grader. What they need to do is draw a big chalk line right down the center of the state, then designate each side to a candidate. Then we could convince them that it is a dodge ball game at recess and have them go stand by their candidate choice like they were choosing teams. I'd show up just to peg all those idiots in the head with the dodge ball. Then somebody can count after I get them all out and they have to sit down at the back...because O'Doyle Rules!!
I've already said all that I have to say.
"I'll break your legs unless you prove you voted for x"
I wouldn't call that "bought" exactly...
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
It's the Republicans manipulating the vote. It has been proven beyond doubt that they're in bed with the companies that manufacture these machines.
Is it any coincidence that a Republican won the election?
Those "indipendint" investigations were all haphazard, and in my mind didn't prove or disprove anything. The bottom line is that the margin of victory was significantly less than the margin of error; we will never know who actually won. Bush just happened to have several things go his way -- it's up to the reader to decide the legality or fairness of such events -- and found himself in the White House.
But Bush sure is lucky that tens of thousands of blacks -- an ethnic group in which 91% voted for Gore -- were "mistakenly" labeled as felons and removed from the rolls. A lawyer for the company that put the list together explains
Statistically speaking, only about 2,500 of the tens of thousands removed would have made the difference in the election.Remember kiddies: better to disenfranchise voters than to actually do our jobs!
-jdm
The point, dimwit, is that if the voting system had not been touch screen, there would have been a paper trail. ie: a record of how those 134 people voted.
Most of these people are old enough to have voted in the old voting booths with hundreds of little levers. Rows and rows of them. And then there was the big red lever that commited your vote.
These people could operate that system, but can't touch a button on a screen? Bullshit. They didn't vote, or the software is fsck'ed. But we'll never know, because there's no hard copy.
Why are we having this system pushed on us instead of the no.2 pencil and ovals? That system is electronic, it's verfiable, it's an established technology.
Despite the tin foil beenie cap conspiracy freeks who think tri-lateralists are behind all of this, I think we are seeing an example of government contracting abuse. Florida has paid for a bunch of machines and now finds they don't work.
And yes, a verifiable paper trial sure would help in situations where there are questions like this -- of course the paper receipt would have to be printed for and indicate nonvotes.
Seeing Diebold in action just gives me that warm fuzzy feeling just south of the bellybutton. It appears Diebold, having sole control of the voting appliance, either planned to have an extended development cycle, or never considered the vote to be such an attention grabber.
If establishing a paper-trail causes difficulty, then perhaps the voting appliance should be freed to allow third-party "plug-ins" to allow openess in vote validation. Each candidate could choose the software and reporting method delivered once the polls have closed.
If I don't want any of the candidates, I still cast a ballot. I just don't vote for any of them.
I'm surprised that the elections officials are surprised at this.
Not that I like their idea of how to count the votes. It's just that they don't seem to understand how voters make the choices they make.
Just don't let them vote. Go ahead and mod me down on this one, but no matter how simple we try to make it for them, they just aren't going to be able to get it right.
Make the voting booths a bit more substantial, like the "man-traps" that are in some banks now.
Voter enters the booth, booth closes and locks. The booth will not re-open until the person has voted properly or if they page a pollworker to let them out. If the latter occurs, the pollworker can give them additional instructions or let them out and note the incident for any subsequent legal challenges to the election.
Of course, in all fairness a "none of the above" entry should be made for any one-party election.
I vote in all local and national elections and my local incumbent "representative" is not of my political party. My party (or any other party for that matter) does not even have a candidate on the ballot! In those cases, I leave the entry blank if I cannot vote "NO" to abstain. Since in the Florida election all the candidate choices were Republicans, I would think that some voters seeing their party was not represented at all on the ballot would abstain in a similar fashion.
So there's nothing to see here.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
Why not start a new party or something, one with new ideas actually worth voting for? Or is that just too far beyond you people?
Rush can talk? When did he stop propagating sound waves from his large intestine to oscillate his fat ripples for communication? Did it sound like he was chewing up opiates or running pills through his formally nicotine stain fingers?
We'll never know now though.
It's not keeping more of your own income; it's continuing to accept the services you formerly paid for with taxes (in fact taking more services), but now paying for them with a cash advance from a multitrillion dollar credit card. You're still going to pay it all back one day with money from your income, but with interest.
Here in Virginia (Fairfax county) there were two lines. The first was very short this is where they verify your identity and mark you off on the voter roster. They give you a little vote card and you stand in line to vote.
This second line was very long due to the new touch screen systems and the large number of candidates. Once you get to the booth you hand over your card, which basically is verification that you checked in and got your name marked off the list. It is not a count of total number of people that voted. With long lines I can see that a number of people might have got frustrated and just left before even getting a chance to cast a ballot.
This would lead to voters being counted but no votes cast. So far I am not impressed with the touch screen ballots but I think with time voters will get use to them and voting will take less time than the last election.
Neutrons are slippery little rascals, they can fool you. They can bounce and show up around corners you don't expect.
I pity people who think democracy is supposed to be easy and painless. It's not. It's an argument, and even though it does get ugly once in a while, it teaches us to maintain our civility. What do you think of the Florida 2000 election now? At least we had chads to argue about.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
They even tally the votes the same way, through counters that are read off periodically throughout the day.
One of the selections in every category is "I am not casting a vote." I recall that at the top there is an option to cast a completely blank ballot. (The party lever has been removed, thankfully.)
Sure it's low-tech. But I like it.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
My point, dimwit, was that EVEN IF WE HAD KNOWN THE EXACT INTENTIONS OF ALL 13,000 voters INCLUDING the 134 that somehow didn't get their vote registered, the votes for the two candidates would STILL have been within 1.5% of each other: (12+134)/13000*100=1.123.
What I'm saying is that when an election is THAT close, the person who gets elected is basically down to random chance. A difference of 146 votes at most can not possibly express the will of the voters as a whole. I'm simply suggesting that maybe it might be a good idea to so something other than electing the candidate who just happened to get the "most" votes in this case -- a runoff perhaps.
This is totally independent of the method of voting, touchscreens or otherwise.
In some places where proportional voting is used, there is a sy stem in place which might satisfy you, though: Each party submits a list of candidates if 30% of the people vote for their list than the top 30 entries in the list make it. However if you don't like one of the entries on the list, you just cross his name out, and you can still vote for the party. If enough people do that for the same person, the party still gets 30% of the seats but that guy is out.
This gives you some additional control over the party while still being able to vote for the party you like best.
Well, at least the e-voting programmers are figuring out how to idiot-proof their systems in the right place.
Adidas To Bring Back Sneakernet
It amazes me how confident people are about their ability to vote. Especially since they have received no validation of this.
For instance, I know who I intended to vote for in 2000, but I have no proof that my vote was counted that way.
I assume that I voted correctly, just as all the people who accidentally voted for Buchanan instead of Gore believed they voted correctly.
The problem, and challenge is providing the voter with some verification that does not lead to corruption(vote selling)
My other sig is extremely clever...
''We always pray for large margins,'' said Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore.
Keep using unverifiable voting machines and you'll get your wish. G W will win by a landslide this time.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
According to Jello Biafra, among others, elections should be declared null and void if the turnout is less than 50%, with new elections being called with a completely new slate of candidates. That way, people might get to vote for people with new ideas, instead of having to vote for the same old choice of dumb or dumber then running for the nearest toilet.
...is ill-fated on many levels. If you have the time please, PLEASE listen to "The Annoying Gap Between Theory and Practice" audio found here. Just do a search for "The Annoying Gap Between Theory and Practice" in the search window in the left column. It fills many gaps as far as understanding the fundamental "problems" with e-voting, and it's quite an eye opener.
Good luck.
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
I disagree
Voting should be so easy and so simple to do that it is hard to screw up.
A key part of a fair election is that if someone makes the effort to cast a vote, the system should record that vote.
Making it unnecessarily difficult risks making it an unfair election.
you lost me on the math
What is it with people? Be they educated or uneducated in terms of schooling, politics, or their chosen occupation.
It continues to amaze me that people with NO COMMON SENSE get put into high ranking positions. Yes they may be book smart, but when it comes to actually thinking about something (aka thinking outside the box) they just can't do it.
These are the people more likely to make snap decisions without wieghing the pros and cons and actually thinking about the impact of their decision might be. Most of them never even do any research about the decisions they are making. Hell whenever I buy a new car, computer, home product, I spend my time looking around to see if the item is any good at all. Will it last, are there better products out there, are the items that will accomplish the intended goal better than others.
Obviously the people who decide to implement crap like these voting machines without doing their research are going to get what they deserve.
Hell look at all the problems with these machines. Has there been one test of these machines yet that has actually yielded correct or even close to correct results yet. If so I would like to hear about it.
Could anyone find who the winner was, and why this was not listed in the Herald article?
Vote for new mod!!! Score:-2,Imbecile
You don't know that they turned in blank ballots. Possibly an error kept their vote from being recorded. If they truly didn't mean to cast a vote, then a paper trail would confirm that. If there was an error, a paper trail would have helped to catch it. There is no good arguement not to have a paper trail.
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
There are lots of good parties out there. The Libertarians are a good example of a balance between Dems and Reps. Lots of freedom, little govt. Essentially though the Dems and Reps have many more simliarities than differences. If we could get past the personal freedom issues (e.g. abortion, birth control, gun rights, etc... ) a lot more would get accomplished in this country because we'd actually have politicians being elected based on what they would DO in congress, not whether they support the left or right wing positions on these relatively petty issues.
I don't think it's undemocratic; By voting "none of the above", more people said that they (actively) did not want Candidate X, than said that they did. To allow that candidate to run in a revote would be against the expressed wishes of all of those people. It would also open the opportunity for the parties to just decide to blow more money on the same candidate in the hopes that the "none of the above" voters will be suggestible and buy into the marketing.
I see your point though, and I recognize that an absolute restriction would be somewhat stifling towards the most-important-by-far form of free speech, the vote. So I would probably be willing to compromise that the rejected candidates could still win via write-in votes, but they are ineligible for listing on the ballot.
That would also still solve the problem with the party spending; no party would risk spending tons more money if the candidate they supported couldn't even be listed on the bill.
What do you think of that idea?
Nicely put, but relies on the assumption that use of public services has a positive correlation to income. The correlation is in fact negative. Thus the argument is a failure.
This losing votes because people can't figure out the machine is unconscionable. The only way to assure every vote gets counted is to have volunteers from the local union physically in the voting booth "helping" people cast their votes. The "voting helpers" could also help avoid problems where the wrong candidate gets elected.
Is it just me, or is this a subtle way of saying to those who read this article that 'A paper record can't be made of the votes, too bad. That's the price you pay for progress.'
Why is it so hard to imagine a printer?
And why doesn't the article point out the bogus reasons why vote-machine manufacturers have been avoiding printing the vote record?
Fair voting is the one time when the weight of your opinion exactly equals everyone elses. Anyone trying to screw wtih that should be dealt with in the HARSHEST manner.
I don't even rule out public stonings. This HAS to be fair or it doesn't work and we are screwed.
There is a simple reason you won't see a "None of the above" option in an election.
There are 2 ways you can implement a NOTA - non-binding and binding.
For the sake of discusson, assume an election is held with Larry, Moe, and Curly as candidates, and the results are:
Larry: 10%
Moe: 10%
Curly: 10%
None of the above: 70%
The Non-Binding form works like this:
Since NOTA won, run a new election with the same bunch. Remember the definition of insanity - doing the same thing, and expecting different results? The only way things change is if the people decide that Larry is better than elections ad infinitum.
The Binding form works like this:
Since NOTA won, Larry, Moe, and Curly are out - here's your years supply of Rice-O-Roni and your copy of the home game, bu-bye, mind the door.
OK, now we have to pick a completely new slate of candidates, and have another round of campagning, and another election.
Now, Binding NOTA scares the hell out of the big parties, as it gives the smaller parties a real chance to win - during the first campaign, don't have your guy in the election, and run attack ads against the big boys. If you get the people to vote NOTA, THEN run your guy in the new election.
Since Binding NOTA would force the big 2 parties to be more responsive to the people, you can rest assured it will happen shortly after water freezes on a hot stove.
www.eFax.com are spammers
When you closed the curtain, it set up the levers, you made your selections, changed them if you wanted, but when you opened the curtain the votes were tallied and the machine reset for the next person.
Simply allowing someone to walk off without pressing the "Vote" button is a very poor UI failure.
...by attaching a *printer* to the voting machine.
So, how is this better than a paper ballot with a stub you detach as proof of voting?
It gives the machine makers millions that should have gone to public schools.
Hooray for demcracy.
In Soviet Russia, articles before post read *you*!
It's so bad in Florida now I think the only way to make it work again is to give voter's a crayon so they can circle a picture of the person they like with the name below the picture.
---- "Excuse me. Where's the children's gun section?"
I live in Broward County in the district adjacent to the one in question. The Old elections supervisor (Miriam Oliphant) WAS a problem. She was removed by the Gov. Bush for "misfeasance". But the new one (B. Snipes) actually appears competent and dedicated. I'm not a big fan of pure electronic voting. I think that there should be a paper record generated for audit and recount purposes. The machine would in essence just help you fill your ballot out correctly. But, in this case there may be a good reason for people to leave without casting a vote: There were no Democratic candidates on the Ballot. This was a special election, and the republicans ran uncontested. If a dedicated Dem went to vote and wasn't aware of this, I can certainly see them choosing to leave rather than vote.
Strongly agree. Question tho. What if NOTA also gets say 51+% in the new election. Yeah, have another, and another, etc, but .. office term expires, current idiot^H^H^H^H^H incumbent already lost re-election bid to NOTA, so now what? Leave the office vacant? No president? (Hmm, might be an improvement over any we've had these last (mumble) years at that.)
I am a resident of Broward County and this poster is incorrect. There is NOT a paper-trail generated in Broward. They are considering a retrofit to add printers, but it will cost several million $ to do. Currently there is no hard copy record of any kind.
if your too stupid to figure out how to cast a ballot, then you are too supid to vote in the first place. and who's to say these missing votes arent purposely miscast or uncast?
Hacked by Chineese!
It doesn't rely on who is taking what proportion of the services. By not having the political will and honesty to actually reduce government spending while cutting taxes, the total quantity of taxes that will eventually be paid by everyone will be increased.
I can rephrase my argument to say that you were paying for other peoples' services with your tax money, but now you're paying for those services with a cash advance. It doesn't change things.
Spending increases -> more taxes + interest will be paid. There is no way to get around that.
Where's the "controversy"? It's just obvious to anyone that Florida can't handle voting. Their elections should be void until the voting is repaired, followed by revoting every representative in the State, including the Governor and the judges. The campaign season in between should feature Federal and private investigations into those responsible for the fraud, mismanagement, and negligence that got us into this mess. If we wait for Jeb and Kathleen to deal with it, it'll be four more years of this 3rd World abuse.
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Can someone please explain to me when this became a land where we had to determine what a voter intended and not what he actualy voted for (or in this case didn't vote for).
Forget about the intent, we don't know what they actually voted for either, since there is no record of the votes!! Hopefully this resulted from voter incompetence, but there is no way to know.
Aside from possible technical errors, there is always the suspicion that someone tampered with the results. If so, it is the perfect crime, since there is no way to uncover it in this system.
Vote Republican, hope to cash in on the ripoff of everybody "else", deny any personal responsibility when confronted, and get screwed with practically all "the rest of us" when the politico gets power, and doesn't need you anymore within your delusional event horizon. Are you better off than you were 4 years ago?
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fuck the election bullshit! who cares WHICH representative we elect? they're still supposed to do what the fuck we tell them to do! that's why they're in OFFICE! we need to get off our collective ASSES and start organizing civiliam committees to lobby the lobbyists on what they should be passing or not passing. otherwise it's just the same thing as having some kind of ruling party who does whatever the fuck they think is best and says "screw the people."
With this screwup, the Republicans prove they're just an army of cannibalistic orcs. Not content with monopolizing the election "choices", they're hacking each other in public. Go, Frodo, go, wherever you are!
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82 Million vs California's 35 Million.
What's not scalable about how they do the voting? If you have more ballots to count, you just get more people to count it.
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
I'm going to take a shot in the dark and guess that the Republican won, and that people whose votes weren't counted are registered Democrats. And that the voting system runs on Microsoft Access.
This will all be solved when the Patriot Act III is silently passed. I'm sure it will have a provision for the government to be able to identify who you voted for in each election. And will be able to get at the information without a subpeona -- just a simple letterhead request.
But I'm sure this wouldn't be abused. Nope. Never.
Invalid Checksum. Retrying.
Nice try, but incorrect. Lets see what social services could be cut that I pay for but don't use at all. Welfare. Homeless shelters. Subsidized water and sewer, we have a well and septic. Roads are paid for through gas taxes, and still aren't repaired as they should be. We could stop giving billions of dollars away to other countries before our own is in shape.
There are billions if not trillions that could be cut from the budget allowing the people who WORK to keep their income.
I have worked for several years running elections as a Chief Election Officer for Fairfax County, VA. There are occasions where the number of people processed into the voting queue is greater than the votes tallied on the machines.
/. with regard to electronic voting, and I'm sure some of that is earned by the way the public has been informed about the technology. I, personally, liked our old Shouptronic 1242 systems. They didn't produce a chit or receipt either and no one complained. In fact, the reviled butterfly ballot is no more error prone than electronic voting, and unfamiliarity with the system can even make electronic touch screen systems more prone to errors until people become familiar with their design and methods.
In my precincts over the years, it didn't happen but once, but we are advised that it is well within the voter's rights to register a no-vote for a particular race, or even to not vote at all. This is called "undervoting" by those who help administrate elections.
Now in our last election we switched to touch-screen voting and for the most part things went well. There were a few cases where people were intimidated by the technology, or downright nasty about the process (many suburban folks are quite impatient about their routine changing). One person even got fed up and left, which was unfortunate but was his right. I won't say the technology is perfect, but then there is no requirement for a perfect election, just one that is run to the best abilites of those involved.
In contrast, two gentlemen in their 80s I can guess were enamored by the technology. They both had a physical disability that made it difficult to walk quickly (one had lost part of his foot and the other could walk but extremely slowly).
They really were grateful and impressed that I could physically bring the voting machine to them. Those experiences really made my day.
I see a lot of skeptcism on
I think people need to take a step back and take a deep breath. No system of voting is perfect but we try to do the best we can. If you are so concerned about ensuring people's right to vote, then you should consider signing up with your local Office of Elections to work the polling place. When you spend time operating the machines, and talking and guiding voters through the process, you realize that most people are capable of learning the technology, and many of the complainers are those who perpetually live with a bad attitude.
-Crolis
More like 10000? You overcounted by 30%, on a simple enough question..
The numbers correspond nicely.. if 134 was 1.3%, 1% would be about ~100, so surely 100% is ~10000.
10307 people, gives a percentage that is very very close to 1.3%, but 1.3% is probably a rounded figure.
You have to choose your poison. Non-binding none-of-the-aboves favor the big parties, who can keep running their candidates in run-off elections. But binding NOTA voting favors marginal parties, who can concentrate on bringing down "the establishment" parties, then run whomever they want. So which do you want: The corruption of the established parties or the chance for a really wacko party to gain ascendancy?
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Touch screen voting was used in a State House election that was won by twelve votes. Unfortunately, there were 134 people who went through the process of checking in to vote, but either did not vote or cast a vote that was not counted.
Assuming 50-50 vote distribution (i.e. very close), the 1 standard deviation uncertainty for 134 votes is actually 12 votes (sqrt(134)=11.576). This means that assuming 134 votes weren't counted, the current result has a 16% chance of being wrong.
(disclaimer: yes I made a couple other statistical assumptions here, but you get the idea)
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
There is no reason to believe that votes were lost through any technical error. The machines simply claim that about 1.5% of voters chose no candidate. This is a valid option, and MUST be allowed.
It is a little surprising that so many people chose no candidate, given that this was a special election with only one question on the ballot. (Why bother voting if you're not going to vote for anyone?) But on the other hand, voter stupidity and the fact that the only candidates were Republicans would tend to increase the number of nonvoters.
I think that we need to get a verifiable hardcopy system where the voter gets a chance to verify the hardcopy token before it disappears into a secure receptacle. This will not only make recounts better, and it will also help technology-challenged voters to vote the way they intend.
The one issue here is that the token cannot display more than just a small amount of information. Otherwise very few voters will bother to check it for accuracy. And in a regular election, the level of State House Representative is surely below the cut that should be made. Otherwise (in most states) you will have at least six different names that the voter has to check: President, US Senator, US Representative, Governor, State Senator, State Representative. If you think that more than a few percent of voters are going to pay attention to a long list of names after they are already done voting, you are crazy.
These people had trouble punching a hole in a card. Adding computerized touch screen systems isn't going to help them. A punch card and a stylus was too much technology, so computers and touch screens will surely add to the confusion. I am amazed that only 134 people failed to properly cast a vote.
Since we seem to want to gear this country for the lowest common deniminator, we need a preschool approach:
1) Print pictures of every candidate on a page (or in a novel in the case of CA gubernatorial race)
2) The voter need only circle the face of their chosen candidate to cast their vote.
There is no reason to try to solve every problem by throwing technology at it. In many cases this will only add confusion and expense without solving anything.
Actually, ten thousand African Americans (singular - 12,000 isn't tens) were mislabeled, representing 41% of the mislabeled group. If you look here, you'll notice that 43.91% of incarcerated Americans are black (Apr 2003). Given this statistic, it doesn't seem out of place for 41% of that group to be composed of them.
Now why blacks make up only 12.32% of Americans and almost 44% of inmates is another issue entirely (that has many lurking variables, so the association doesn't necessarily imply any such causation)
You can twist statistics to say anything that you want, but in the end the numbers don't lie.
-tvh2k
In my opinion thats BS! How can you possibly have technical errors when all a machine does is count. I mean Sh!t thats as basic as 1+1=2. I am in Florida and this pisses me off, we are not as stupid as this explanation shows us to be. I'm not least bit suprised that Jeb Bush is not really doing anything about this. Shouldn't he be doing something about it ?????? Make you wonder doesn't it?
I stand corrected regarding Broward county then.
I am in Pinellas County, and they do have printer tracking the voting data.
Now, what exact data is printed, I do not know for sure, other than the votes on a particular issue or for a particular candidate.
If no voter is tracked due to state law, then my suggestion would not work, even in my county.
I do not see a problem with a person's name, address and phone number being retained by a voting machine, with a general "40 issues or offices to vote for, 40 votes received", which would also show if 1) person actually voted at a particular machine and 2) if they "missed" voting on all, one or more, issues or offices.
There has to be a way to help find out if the was a problem with the voting machine, person didn't really understand how to use it, etc. Without being able to talk to the specific person(s) that did not vote or had a problem voting, this would be necessary to help correct the situation.
Even in the case where a person provides NO votes at all, a "Do you certify that you are casting no votes for this election?" with a "Yes" and "No" button would handle situations where a person showed up, but for some reason did not want to vote.
Whomever modded this "Troll" ought to note that it IS a good point, troll or not.
We the taxpayers have to pay for these voting machines. The supposed advantage of the voting machines is that they save us the cost and time of a manual count. Well, if the machines are not trusted, and we are going to have to do a manual paper count anyways, then where is the added value?
You're assuming he'll ever rejoin the workforce.
On the upside, anyone who has taken out a US Savings Bond lately knows that you get a much better rate on the multi-trillion dollar card than you do on the MC/Visa in the wallet, and they don't even charge you that nasty cash advance fee.
paintball
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
A horseshit question. If the answer is "no" then the response is "See, this proves that NAME_OF_HATED_PUBLIC_FIGURE is UNFAVORABLE_QUALITY". If the answer is "yes" then the response is "Well, that doesn't mean that NAME_OF_HATED_PUBLIC_FIGURE had anything to do with it."
Stupid, stupid, old, stupid, stale line of thinking. You're probably smarter than that. Stop being so naive.
Picture Montgomery Scott from the starship Enterprise speaking into the mouse.
Some, if not all of these 134 people are what are referred to as "fled voters". I work on my local election board. I'm one of those knuckleheads who spends 13 hours twice a year explaining to the exact same people how to use the exact same voting machine that they've used for 10 years. Every three or four elections we end up with more people signed in then actually voted. It's pretty simple actually... someone comes in, waits in line for a bit, then decides that it's too much of a pain in the ass to wait any more and simply leaves. Since I started on my local board I've done maybe 10 or 12 elections and we've had at least 4 or 5 fled voters. Multiply our average of a third of a fled voter per election over the several hundred polling places in this election (I have no idea of the actual number) and 134 fled voters is not out of the realm of possibility.
What would REALLY worry me is if there were more votes than voters signed in. Now THAT is definitely voter fraud.
Were the machine to print out a paper ballot with my choices on it, I could confirm the machine had registered my votes correctly before I placed the ballot in the ballot box. If the machine had erroneously printed a blank ballot I could have the ballot invalidated and been given a chance to have my vote properly tallied.
If I specifically wished to cast a blank ballot (as a protest, perhaps) I could be assured that it would be tallied as blank and not attributed to a machine error or other mistake.
I want a new world. I think this one is broken.
Then where are they on the tickets? Or is there something seriously wrong there?
NOTA gives voters the opportunity to actively state that they don't like any of the candidates. With a binding NOTA, if the majority of votes go to NOTA, no one is elected and the process begins again. In a non-binding NOTA, the populace get to express their opinion, but the candidate with the most votes still wins.
Nevada has had non-binding NOTA on the books since 1976. This past summer, Massachusetts passed the first binding NOTA. It goes into effect in 2005.
Goddamit, experts agree that flames aren't required to be reaonable or logical! In fact, they work better if they aren't.
Beer Party. Worth voting for. And the candidates look better and better, at least until the next morning.
The fault rate 134 out of 91K is comparable to paper ballots. Hopefully e-ballots will get this down to 0.1% for closely contested elections.
um, why can't the voter get a receipt w/ a unique
number after he votes. the voter could check his receipt to see if he voted right(could change his
vote on the spot if receipt is wrong). could keep the receipt for a month or so after the election. if there are problems with certain votes, post the unique numbers and people can submit their receipts.
there's probably a problem with logistics, forgery, and people actually complying with
receipt requests. but if a voter goes to the
trouble of showing up at a polling place, he
would probably want to make sure his/her vote
counted and could immediately check his receipt
to make sure his vote was accurately recorded.
i know, a screen should be sufficient, but obviously its not.
How about this idea (a meshing of other ideas I've been reading).
We have an electronic voting system that at the end prints out a voter sheet that is hole punch with the votes. The computer tallies the votes itself but before submitting the votes to the central system it first waits for a number of sequential verification steps to take place. The first step would require the voter to look at the print out of their votes and verify the accuracy. This would be done while still in the voting booth. The paper with the holes would be black with white lettering for the names and information. The paper would be placed over a light bed which would shine through the punched holes to illuminate the selections. If everything matched up the person would push the button on the screen to say that the paper had been verified. This might be tied to the door so then the person could exit. Verifying the vote would also encode that vote into the system and wait for the next step to release the vote as fully cast. The next step would invlove the person taking the paper sheet over to another machine that it would be feed into and that machine would do a count itself (which would be stored seperately from the other count in the computer system). As soon as it would accept the paper vote as accurate - having no mechanical flaws - it would send a response to the computer system to free up the voters vote. The information sent to the computer system would be a one way transmition that basically would say vote (some randomly generated number that was tied to the vote while the paper was printed and encoded on the paper using a UV ink) is valid and accepted by the paper system, accept into that vote computer system.
What this system does for you is gives you the same vote in three different formats. First it leaves a paper trail that cannot be tied to a person, but is an accepted and valid vote - this is the real vote that is cast. The second is a mechanical count (the paper counter count) that is a verification for the computer system count. The computer system count is a fast count that is verified against the mechanical count and can be used to get up to the second data and if verified is than accepted as the true vote. If the verification fails then it would go to the paper votes which would be considered more accurate the computer system which must always be suspected.
Ok so what if the person doesn't like the printout at the first step? Easy. They are required to push the not accepted button which then causes the computer vote to be discarded and a new vote started up. The paper would then be requested by the system and shredded completely before a new vote could be started. Once the paper was shredded the process would start over and the verification process started again as well.
If the paper is somehow damaged between the voting booth and the paper tally machine then a new vote could be created by putting the damaged paper through a scanning shredder that would say please reprint this vote. The person would then be allowed to reverify and if everything was good then it would be put into the machine. If it wasn't good then the vote could be recycled as per the first do again section from the last paragraph.
Ok so that all might be a bit confusing so here is a step by step.
1. John Doe enters voting place and waits in line to sign-in. The sign-in process should be such that the brunt of the wait should take place before the person gets into a booth. i.e. If there isn't a booth open then no one is allowed to sign-in until a booth opens.
2. Booth opens and John Doe is allowed to sign-in and is given a start card and a paper sleeve. This card is his means to activate the computer and the voting process.
3. John Doe walks straight from sign-in table to booth and closes door (for those that are claustrophobic or who require assistant a special "large booth" is provided and an assistant is provided up until the voting begins. The rooms should be void of everything exc
Yeah, it's possible, but there is absolutely no evidence that was the reason there were 143 non-votes. It was just total supposition based on someone's guess. Just because someone with a definate self-interest in the validation of the touch screens comes up with a non-threatening reason it might have happened does not mean that _is_ what happened. A supposition about black helicopters and midnight re-programming by commandos in black camo holds just as much weight in the fact department.
Hi, I'm Clippy the voting assistant! It looks like you are trying to cast your vote.
Jeb truly did us wrong. After the debacle of the 2000 election, results like this are nothig less than the consequence of criminal recklessness. . .
.
Start a citizen initiative petition to Amend the constitution to put it plainly . .
No election shall be held in this State, unless a tangible and reliable record of each ballot submitted is maintained for purposes of verifying its results.
Until we do something like this, politicians are going to continue jerking us around and treating the award of election architecture contracts as yet another form of spoils.
More affluent communities, which in Florida tended to be predominantly white, were able to afford modernized, well-maintained and readily auditable mark-sense systems. Less affluent communities were not. The variation in technology was, in part, the problem.
It's the basic question. It is used to help answer the all-important question: "who will better you for the next 4 years?". It's up to you to answer both of those questions. In these political discussions, the only chance for any give and take lies in formulating the questions. I wonder, were you asking those questions when they helped put Reagan in office? And, if not, what *do* you ask? How do *you* decide? Do you believe there's any Presidential accountability?
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Namely:
1.- If there is no way to acurately audit the vote, the system is unusable. That applies to raising a hand on a tribal vote or in the other technological extreme to this system. A good vote system should recognize when a voter fucked up or should be completely unambigous about the choice taken even if this is reached by mistake.
2.- If a user (voter) does not follow the instructions that means the instructions are not clear enough for that person. The system is broken, not the person. The voting system is there to serve people, no the other way around.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
It has always been the law in the United States, so far as I can tell. I haven't looked at this since the 2000 election fiasco, but when I did the research, the first case I saw of this type was either in the late 18th century or early 19th. There is similar case law from other nations before that time.
There is a vast amount of case law in this arena nationwide, and virtually all of it deals with older, "mark the paper" technologies. Where the voter has marked the ballot ambiguously (in the eyes of the party challenging the ballot), but clearly enough to discern intent (in the eyes of the party seeking to have the ballot counted), the courts routinely favor allowing the vote to count.
There are many reasons for this, not the least of which is the absolutely ridiculous way grown men and women behave when a close, hotly contested election comes down to an audit of voting records. Suddenly, people deny the absolutely clear intent of the voter with respect to a ballot, where an electionworker squashed a fly over another box, but the X with initials, and the signed affidavit "Yes, I really meant to vote for George" appears by the other box. Likewise, people get childish, treating the slightest deviation from flat normal as evidence of an intent to make a pregnant chad.
The fact is, you have run the election, and we actually need to adjudicate who won. The question is whether we are going to have hypertechnical rules (that will still be argued fiercely as they are bent by litigants), or rules that permit an adjudicating party to use responsible and reasonable rules consistent with general democratic principles. Arguments for both sides might be made, but the hypertechnical, leave them flat if I am not happy with the form of the ballot, rule is not only a minority position, but rather is the law in NO STATE IN THIS COUNTRY.
The law is what it is, and it has almost always been so. Deal with it.
The Students' Union here implements this to elect officers (there's an extra "candidate" called RON, for "Re-open Nominations"). If Ron wins (rarely happens), nominations for candidates have to be reopened.
(People sometimes even campaign on Ron's behalf, when they realise the only candidate is someone who would do the job badly, and they want nominations reopened so they can stand for it themselves...)
there is election case law all over the country. nearly all of it, so far as I can discern, places the measurable intent of the voter above all other concerns.
Gore also won if they had done a full count (i.e. looked at all of the ballots that were rejected by the machines and not counted (under or over votes) in ALL of the counties in Florida. This is not a 'recount" as the votes were not counted in the first place. It would be the only fair thing to do as it would have been a good faith effort to try and determine as accuratley as possible who won.
To their everlasting shame NEITHER campaign was interested in this option. NEITHER cared what the actual vote count was they BOTH wanted to manipulated the system in their favor.
IMO the only way to vote is with paper ballots and you put an X by the candidates name. Most western democracies use this method, and rarely have these sorts of problems.
We need to fix this system or they'll "fix" our elections (and not in a good way).
It still doesn't detract from the fact that the elections are rigged by the corrupt politicians and administration anyway. How else can you explain that G.W. Bush won the last election. Hello people? Wakeup!
Actually I believe the press did a hand count and they concluded that Bush really one. So I guess even though Gore one the "paaaaahhhhpular vote," he didn't win the one that really matters.
And the electoral vote does matter to equally represent people otherwise canidates would only campaign in large cities and those bumpkins in the midwest and the south would never been considered or cared about.
They could be cut, but they HAVEN'T been cut, even though the GOP is now firmly in charge of government spending. That was my whole point. You need to look beyond what they say they're going to do, and see for yourself what they're actually doing, which is inescapably raising your future taxes well above an beyond what you were already going to pay.
Every other state can move on with technology to make the process easier and faster, but for Florida, for the next few years we should do it this way:
In each booth there is a life size cardboard cuttout of each canidate with a mechanical arm that waves and a speakers that tells the voter their name and lots of flashing lights to get their attention. The voter is given a tail. The voter then walkes over and pins the tail on the canidate they want to vote for. Now since every child can play this game (pin the tail on the donkey for you non-yanks) I think the people of florida should have no problem.
Oh wait a minute, how many of these people will leave the booth saying the pinnned the tail on the democrat and they're ready to vote for their canidate of choice?
In 2002, Chester County, PA, was still using punch ballots. You go to the desk, sign the book, get the card, go into the booth, slide the card into a little box so that the holes in the end of the card rest on two little pins. You then read through a book of questions, and punch holes into the paper next to the number that matches your answer (In this way, noone can casually glance at the card and know how you voted on the way to the dropbox). Write in candidate names went at the botton of the card. When you're done, you remove the card from the punch box and drop it in a slot in a lockbox.
So summer of 2002, I moved upriver to Montgomery County, PA, where they had installed electronic machines like you described. You go to the desk, sign the book, then are directed to a booth. The machine is a giant board about 3 feet wide by 2.5 feet tall, and you just push the name(s) you want and the board lights up. I distinctly remember there are two "party lever" buttons at the top of the board that allow you to Select All Democrats or Select All Republicans, but you can still override with individual choices, or select Write In buttons (where you filled out another paper next to the board). You have to make a selection for every question on the "ballot" before the Register Vote button lights up. You push that one, it saves your vote, and gives you a receipt (date/time that you were there, but not your individual choices).
Without a paper trail it is anyone's guess as to what those voters' intentions were. Obviously, there is work to be done in the Election Supervisor's office before November comes around."
What the HELL are people talking about, "intentions". BS. You simply cannot pull crap out of a hat by hoping to GUESS what they MEANT to do. If the people are too STUPID to be able to push a button (hell, even to make a hole in a piece of paper), they shouldn't be voting and instead playing in traffic.
Think about it - if you were John Q. Voter, and had just gotten done "pushing" some on-screen buttons, wouldn't you assume that in pushing the on-screen button, you were actually "voting"? Then, you see something at the end that says, "Vote". "I just did," you think to yourself, so, somewhat confused, you ignore it.
I can't think of a more STUPID way to implement an interface. Would it have killed them to use something that's clear, like "Register your vote," or maybe even something more lengthy, like a brief explanation:
"Your selections have been noted, but they have not yet been registered. Press here when you are done to register your vote."
Not perfect, but if in fact, voters did ignore the "Vote" button, this would make the button's function (and its importance) fairly unambiguous.
Jeez. Maybe we should stop trying to sell "Democracy" to other nations until WE can get it right. This is getting just a bit absurd...
FUCK BLAIR!!! and I'm not talking about the fat girl (which one?) from 'Facts of Life'...
There is a reason that the Republicans are fighting for a paper trail. The 2004 election is way too important to corporate America and the NeoCons, to let a silly little thing like democracy get in the way. Fight it all you want, Bush in coming back in the '04, hook or by crook....most likely by crook.
I mean if they cant figure out how to use the thing, there are people at the locations which can show them (without compromising their vote), as well as the various prints that come in the mail. Read people, it isnt that hard.
Isn't a wacko party really likely to run out of possible canadidates well before a mainstream one does?
Try Vote Republican (Loose all my rights, get drafted, and get sent off to die in some godforsaken desert or jungle to make some asshole CEO's quarterly budget statement look good... But get a tiny tax cut.)
There was a paper trail during the 2000 election, and people still managed to screw up. Look at a paper ballot where there is a "dimpled chad" next to Gore and a "hanging chad" next to Bush. What was the voters intention there?
"Obviously, there is work to be done in the Election Supervisor's office before November comes around."
Indeed there is, covering up this stuff so it isn't so obvious next time.
Sigs are for people who started using the net _after_ '86.
Juan, this is Lance calling from the United States. (pause)
Yes, well we've never met, but I have a proposal for you. You see, we'd like to give Florida back to Spain. (pause)
I know--(pause)
Yes, I know it's been over 184 years since we signed the Adams-Onis treaty but, well, how can I say this nicely? It's just not working out for us. (pause)
I think it may be defective, and we'd like to return it. (pause)
We have the original receipt, yes. (pause)
I was afraid you'd say that Disneyland voided the warranty, but since we've been paying for the extended NATO warranty, I thought you'd make an exception this time. (pause).
I'd like to speak with your supervisor, please. (pause).
OH, yes, I forgot you were the *King.* Then let me speak to your wife. (click).
My
Simple, accountable.
Honestly, your reliance on machines at the moment of casting the ballot is a problem of the system.
When you have a system this simple you need to recour to real acts of thugery in order to taint the elections.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... that always comes with this rubish?
Both are not mutually exclusive you know, at least nominally the US is both, go and check a dictionary.
Now, if you are talking about the spirit of the current US political system, then you Sir are relatively more perceptive that your co-nationals.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
a pig green VOTE button??
cpeterso
No problem. Pinellas is a step closer to where we should be in Broward IMHO. I want an auditable paper trail. I understand the Anonimity issue, but I really don't see it as a problem. Just have the printer spit out a ballot to be reviewed by the voter and put in a box like before. It would reduce voter error (butterfly ballot) and eliminate hanging chads and remove the need for determining "voter intent". There need be no personal information printed on the finished ballot and no one would be able to see who voted for whom. Sure we would have to manually count, but is that really so bad? I'm not very comfortable with the idea that our votes only exist electronically, in cyberspace. To easy to manipulate/lose through error.
The real problem with voting, and everything else for that matter, is that as a society we can not wait. We are no longer patient. There is not perfect method to count votes. Electronic and human error will always exist. I'm not suggesting to hand count every vote. What I want is a paper trail. That's it.
Isn't a wacko party really likely to run out of possible canadidates well before a mainstream one does?
That is a really good point.
Life is too short to proofread.
It's not even keeping the services you formerly paid for. It's making us pay more for those services by shifting the tax structure from a progressive system (in which those who can afford to pay more, do) to a non-progressive system.
Ultimately this out of control deficit spending transfers the negative balance to the middle class. The shortsighted folk who talk about the bush "tax cuts" don't understand that it wasn't a tax cut, it was a tax shift. By shifting the tax burden from the federal to the state and local governments, the bush has ultimately made us and our children pay more for those services (while ensuring that his campaign contributors will pay less).
Notes From Under *nix: blas.phemo.us
It's obvious the person or persons fixing the vote were insufficiently trained. We badly need to set up a federal agency to train and certify these personnel to prevent this type of states' bumbling of our plans from ever happening again.
That's not entirely true - otherwise we wouldn't have any use for ECC or parity. Computers can make "mistakes" in as much as data can be corrupted by physical processes that having nothing to do with the intended or programmed operation.
Technicalities aside, none of the election problems are about counting accuracy, neither human, nor mechanical, nor electronic. That's not the point. All measurements have an associated accuracy. It's how we deal with it that counts. If the margin of the election is of a size that given the error rate of the system there's a "reasonable" probability that the outcome is in error (1 sigma, 13% probability of error, say, given the error rate of the technology used) then a run-off election should be automatic, even if there's only two candidates in both elections. No matter what the voting technology. A 5% threashold would be statistically supportable.
All sampling systems have a margin of error. It's a 9th grade science mistake to get an F for submitting a graph of plant growth or whatever without any error bars. We seem to suffer from cognitive dissonance in refusing to admit there's an inescapable margin of error, and thereby not accommodating for it.
In 2000, FL and several other states should have held run-off elections between W and G after the first election found them at a "statistical tie". It's not clear which way it would have gone after that, but whoever thereby won would actually have been a democratically elected president, rather than one technically appointed by a divisive judicial coup.
Anyway, the critical failure regarding DREs is the lack of recognition that they are fallible. How do we deal with critical systems that might fail? We create an audit trail so if something goes wrong, we have a chance of undoing the error, or at least figuring out what failed and fixing it, and at the very least knowing that something did in fact go wrong so we can try again.
The systems shipped by Diebold and ESS etc are both intrinsically fallible and intrinsically inauditable, which is intolerable. Further, if a voter has reason to doubt the impartiality of a company that has, for example, pledged to deliver it's electoral votes to the republican in the next election to be run on it's own vote counting equipment, they might have some reason to doubt the veracity of the black-box tallying process and that undermines the authority of democracy. It is important, therefore, even if it were proven technically unnecessary, to provide voters with the familiar indicator of fairness provided by a human-readable, authoritative, tangible ballot.
We've gone through a lot of effort convincing ourselves, and by force much of the world, that having a brainwashed electorate choose one or the other corporate flack as titular head of the country is the best and fairest form of government on the planet (and it may well be, alas); at the very least we can apply basic 9th grade science to finding out whether tweedle dee or tweedle dum won the popularity contest.
Missed or uncounted votes on an electronic machine is analagous to someone turning in a blank voting card on one that isn't completed correctly. Get over yourselves. Using electronic voting isn't going to make the sky fall.
INSIGHTFUL
But we're not talking about properly designed ballot and election systems (voting systems) are we?
Optical counter exist in my district, and there's NO way for me to determine which way it counts my vote.
I fully agree with this I, Cringly column on this topic. Basically, he argues that paper voting is superior and cheaper that any fancy machinery. And from my experience here in Austria where we do just that, I fully agree.
You should go here and read about the over 100 separate cases where electronic voting has had problems, and in many cases those problems led to election reversals. (There's links on the right side to the chapters of the book they wrote; chapter 2 has quite a number of examples in it.)
The point is, it's not just Florida. Florida just got the attention in 2000 because the entire state's electoral votes were delivered to Bush instead of Gore due to voting hijinks (or so the theory goes). The handful of companies that supply the bulk of electronic voting machines for the U.S. have a terrible track record. Plus, the machines' inner workings are kept secret, meaning that there's absolutely no way for voters to be sure that the elections are being carried out fairly.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Personal responsiblity is for suckers and fools. Smart people form corporations and shirk all personal responsiblity.
War is necrophilia.
Then why did you replace them at all?
They election officials record (seperately) how many people cast votes on each machine. At the end of the day, you know if all of your numbers match up.
What do you do if they don't match up? If one of the "electronic odometers" barfs between the periodic checks, how do you determeine what votes were cast in between?
That's not "funny", that's scary!
You have a slightly different idea of low-tech than I do, but then I started voting making big X's on a ballot with names printed on it.
I truly fail to see why you're so enamoured of this system you describe; I can only assume you've never had any extremely close races in your county, because you've described no mechanism for a recount.
From your description there is is no way for an official to correct errors, either in the old mechanical system (e.g. a mechanical counter jams right after a periodic review) or the new (faulty electronic counter ceases recording votes).
You've replaced a bad (because unverifiable) system with another just as bad and possibly worse.
You can twist statistics to say anything that you want, but in the end the numbers don't lie.
No, they don't. So you'll agree then that the 20,000 African-Americans is tens of thousands. Or would "thousands upon thousands" be more acceptable? Or "hundreds of hundreds"?
How about "significantly more than 537"?
Choice excerpts from the BBC transcript:
Any more nit-picking?
-jdm
"Lord, it seems so simple."
I agree! But it's like that scene from 'It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, World' where they try to split up the shares of the treasure.
"We figured it seventeen different ways, and every time we figured it it was no good, because no matter how we figured it somebody didn't like the way we figured it. So now there's only one way to figure it, and that is every man - including the old bag - for himself."
Whether it's greed for gold or lust for power, it's all sillyness in the end.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Firstly after the user makes their vote, and before the vote is printed store the vote.
Then read the vote back and print it.
Have the internal paper printout go past a clear window viewable to the voter, The viewer has two buttons which work on a much more fundemental level then the voting software.
If the user says ok, the vote is considered to be verified.
If the use selects error, the machine must be checked by an election official to see if it was user error, or machine error.
Like all automated taks, the machine will handle upwards of 95% of tasks. But a human must be available to fix what the machine can't.
We could stop giving billions of dollars away to other countries before our own is in shape.
I too would like to see our country run an isolationist foreign policy. Seeing how there are no major political, economic, or military connections in our world, I don't think this would come back to bite us in the ass later. Let's also start some massive social welfare programs while we're at it.
How? Got an intelligence meter?
Got a link for that negative correlation? Rich people live longer, and collect a lot more Social Security, as well as a lot more corporate welfare.
The machine in question is an ESS iVotronic.
This machine has a large red vote button at the top of the machine that will glow red once the ballot is complete. Every voting machine has three (3) large posters in it telling people in English, Spanish, and Creole that they must complete the ballot and press the flashing red button to complete their vote.
If a voter walks away from the machine without hitting the button, the vote monitors will try to catch them before they leave and ask that they complete the voting process.
If someone leaves the poll before completing the vote, the voting supervisor and assistant supervisor will go to the machine, and press the "next page" button until they reach the end of the ballot. They will then submit the ballot by pressing the vote button for the voter. They will not change existing vote selections in any way, and people present are welcome to witness that process.
What is then submitted is a ballot with votes, but not for all questions. Please note that even the voter themselves is not required to make a selection for every ballot question. If I wanted to vote, and yet left every ballot question unanswered, it would still be a legal vote. A waste of time, but still a legal vote.
Those of us who work elections go to GREAT lengths to assist every voter, and we let them know that if they have any questions during the voting process, to just ask and we will answer their questions. Of course this applies only to the voting process. We can't answer "who should I vote for" types of questions, because that would be unethical.
For everyone saying that this is "yet another example" of voting problems in Florida, IT IS NOT. The vote went fine, and some voters submitted incomplete ballots. It happens, and it is their choice, even if it seems illogical to some of us. This was NOT a case of the machines not counting votes, it's a case of voters not casting them in the first place. Linking to misinformed Reuters type news stories doesn't give anyone the truth on this...
--- Generation X: The first generation to have SIG lines inferior to their parents... ---
Remember instant replay?
Solution:
Add a jennycam inside the ballot booth. Better yet add 2 more from different angles and with zoom capability. The hire a couple of retired NFL referees (there's plenty in FL).
Problem solved. Now we all can now what was granny's intent to vote.
1. Candidate A
2. Candidate B
3. She's fell asleep (sound the 3 minute warning!)
4. She had a seizure and hit buttons A and B at the same time. "Refs, we need you to make the call!"
5. She fell and can't get up!
6. Hey, wait a minute! granny died 30 years ago! We now have proof that the dead can vote! (They just cant push the button) Ref, how do you call this one?
Take a few seconds to appreciate the irony of the most fanatic support for gun control coming from Democratic Congresscritters representing urban areas, though I think this is actually the work of some unknown GOP operative who saw an opportunity to screw the Democrats in the wake of the Kennedy Assassinations.
Your racist fantasies aside, blacks really aren't any dumber than whites, and at the time these tests were invented, a poor black was on the average no more illiterate than the average poor white and no more or less likely to fail a literacy test.
The problem with the tests weren't that they were set up to favor any specific group, it's that the exemptions were, i.e. if one's parents were allowed to vote or if a voter had voted in previous elections, one could vote without taking the tests.
With respect to your bullshit about " would imaging that if Eskimos created an intelligence test that you would fail it quite dramatically.", that's an irrelevant piece of crap almost worthy of Karl Rove. The knowledge base required to cast an intelligent vote is based on American history and knowledge of our form of government, it is specific to this culture, and an objective test can be put together.
Sample questions:
Who is the President?
Who are your Senators?
Who is your Congressman?
[insert 7 similar questions here, and 6/10 passes. I'm not even suggesting that the question "Did Saddam have anything to do with 9/11?" with an automatic fail to anyone who says YES be asked]
Simple, objective stuff, which can be answered by anyone willing to spend 5 minutes with the leaflets various political organizations would put together in response to this before taking the test. The drivers' license exam is far more difficult, and 5 minutes behind the wheel will convince you that there are plenty of licensed tards on the roads.
Do you want anybody who doesn't know things like this voting?
If the literacy test is ever reinstituted (unlikely, we wouldn't want the Religious Right to be excluded wholesale from the voting process) and I have anything to do with it, feel free to pick the "Cowboy Neal" option on all the questions.
Tech Public Policy stuff
In the 2000 election, the machines most certainly were not identical. Many different technologies and machines were used, one point that the "conservative" Republicans made in the briefs to argue that the Florida Supreme Court decision should be reversed on equal opportunity grounds.
In particular, affluent communities tended to use mark-sense, while less affluent communities tended to use punch-cards. Even less affluent communities had older machines in greater disrepair.
All of these points were very well documented for the person who insists on reading things closely.
Florida is not the only place where electronic voting isn't working well. Fairfax County Virginia, high tech and relatively affluent, can't get it right either.
(brief anonymous registration required)
Some of these problems are probably caused by the same stupid voters who couldn't fill in the right bubble, or couldn't figure out how to punch a hole in a sheet of paper. Why did anyone think they'd do better sitting in front of a computer?
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
I agree, and that is one thing I brought up during the "tests" of these machines here in Pinellas.
The paper output is one thing, however, I would feel more comfortable with a slip, showing the votes I placed, that I would put in the ballot box as a the backup.