Slashdot Mirror
India Starts All-Electronic National Elections
fantomas writes "Forget the problems of e-voting in a state in some middling sized western country as recently reported by Slashdot. The world's largest democracy is about to go to the polling stations and vote for a new government using all-electronic voting systems. Will it work? Will the USA follow if all goes to plan? Can any readers from India comment on how it seems to be going?"
How would they know if they have screwed up votes? The ballots read like the Python Spam Skit:
Place your vote:
Egg and Singh
Egg Bacon and Singh
Egg Bacon Sausage and Singh
Singh Bacon Sausage and Singh
Singh Egg Singh Singh Bacon and Singh
Singh Sausage Singh Singh Bacon Singh Tomato and Singh
Lobster Thermidor a Crevette with a mornay sauce served in a Provencale manner with shallots and aubergines garnished with truffle pate, brandy and with a fried egg on top and Singh
Just a joke, lads. In India "Singh" is like "Smith" in the West.
Sanjay Goatse
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
"helicopters, bullock carts and elephants were all used to ferry the machines to the remotest corners of India."
An elephant carrying a voting machine. Even in my wildest dreams I never would have thought of that.
Evolution or ID?
...lets hope they don't out source their election to a certain American company.
I just hope nothing goes wrong and they need to call tech support because it's probably been outsourced to India and they'll have a hard time understanding the thick accents. Oh wait...
Pat Buchanan of course.
there's no place like ~
India has just announced that they will be outsourcing all government officials and associated elections to the United States.
An unamed individual was quoted saying, "This is a very positive move for India. The savings will be good for our country because the US has the most skilled politicians that can be bought for the lowest price."
Back to you Kent.
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
Sure it will work, they don't have a state called Florida!
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
I guess this is better than the old system. A hand count. I can just see them saying "Ok, everyone just keep your arm raised a little longer"
Ah, progress
Evolution or ID?
More likely to be elected as US president.. Oh Wait!
raj
Sarovar.org Hosting for open source projects in Indi
None can beat Americans in items 3, 4, 5 though. By any chance, have you been to the immigration section of any airport lately?
Will it work?
Oh, yes.
The officials responsible for the decision to use electronic voting will herald its use as part of India's grand entry into the technology revolution.
Companies providing the equipment will highlight its features, talking about security and speed with which results are available.
Winners of the elections will be too elated to spend time dwelling on the nuts and bolts of the technology used to bring them to power.
Losers of the elections will call into question any irregularities as well as the inherent problems with the electronic voting machines that motivated some of the world's best computer scientists to disapprove of electronic voting.
More complaining will occur for closer elections. Media coverage of the complaining will vary depending on how close the elections are.
In the end we'll all accept the inevitable results:
[Damn! Applied the wrong firmware again!]
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I hope Diebold rememberd to localize the voting software on those machines since Dubya seems to be having a hard enough time running this country.
See subject.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.