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?"

Comments

Python..

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Python..

[mwood]

We already did. If you truly don't know or care who is best suited to run things, you can just pull the lever with the cute donkey or elephant on it (whichever one your daddy taught you to pull) and be happy.

Anyway the majority of us in the U.S. are semiliterate. Otherwise how would we know which bottle says, "Coke," and which, "Pepsi?" Now, *that* would be a calamity, wouldn't it?

Some of us can even spell correctly without help.

Re:Python..

[alphakappa]

Just a joke, lads. In India "Singh" is like "Smith" in the West.

In north India, that is. In the south "Singh" is a martian.

elephants

[millahtime]

"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.

In other news...

[weeboo0104]

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.

Answers In Advance

[4of12]

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:

• U.S. Republicans will win Mumbai
• Indian's BJP will win Flordia

[Damn! Applied the wrong firmware again!]

President John F. Curry

[AtariAmarok]

We're outsourcing the president?!?

See subject.