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Counting Glitches In Washington Governor Race
Fjornir writes "With 19 votes currently seperating the challenger from the incumbent in Washington state's race for governor, local news sites sites are reporting more glitches in the process for counting votes. This one, which has been described alternately as 'computer problems' and 'human error' as I've watched the story unfold, caused 6,200 ballots to be counted twice. This raises the question -- how many 'isolated incidents' are there going to be before we admit we have a 'real problem' on our hands?" Votes must be certified today, and a difference of less than 2,000 means an automatic statewide recount. If the difference is less than 150, that recount will be by hand (which is hard for the voting machines that have no paper trail). Update: 11/18 05:46 GMT by P : One candidate finished with a lead of 261, so the statewide recount will not be by hand, and should be completed before Thanksgiving.
I flippantly voted for the Republican because I didn't think a Republican had a chance of winning in Washington. That was stupid. My vote really counted this time, and I wasted it.
"how many 'isolated incidents' are there going to be before we admit we have a 'real problem' on our hands?"
Well I'd say 'we' already have admitted we have a problem on our hands...
I am a Washingtonian, and I voted. Let me voice my opinion of the problems.
Yes, it's a problem when you accidently count votes twice. The 93% voting turnout should have been the first red flag of the human error.
The race wouldn't be so close if they simply allowed IRV or Rank Choice Voting. I voted for Ruth Bennett, and would have chose Chris second.
And I find it very funny that we might have to wait until Christmas to finally find out the final results.
You know I'm not perfect I create errors all the time. That is why we have test users and a nice long development cycle, we don't expect my first draft of a program to run right out the blocks. Now normally these election officials have 2 weeks to find out all the problems that happened and fix them. The scarier thing would be if the problem was never found, intentionally. We need to lay off and let the officials do their job, they don't even get paid good enough to be critizied the world over for not doing good enough
If the final vote count is within the margin of uncountable votes (for whatever reason), shouldn't the challenger win? After all, the incumbent had the opportunity to make sure this didn't happen and he clearly botched that.
I propose a new voting system.
Each person goes to a polling station in their county where they identify themselves through their identity papers. A mark is made on the paper as well as the person. This mark is made in such a way it cannot be removed. People who have voted are secluded. For one day every four years the country shutsdown. No double voting. No travel.
You know have three checks. The voter does the first check of course. The checker does the second and the voter checks the checkers has read it right. You now have the count on the counter wich can be so simple there is no way to cheat. it can be a pure mechanic device with the mechanism open for checkers to see (not for everyone to see or else you could see by the turning wich vote a person has cast. You also got a paper trail wich you know only contains correct votes.
The current system fails for two reasons. people can cast the wrong vote or unclear votes. This should be eliminated.
A vote should always be assured to be 100% accurate. Start adding interpretation to how each ballot was cast and you get the america of today.
Sure sure, most of this is to extreme to pass but at the moment democracy in the west is becoming a joke. And no not just america. The netherlands is busy tearing itself apart with a totally ineffective goverment style wich policy has and continues to be to wait things out and hope they go away on their own.
Remember that while we are stuggling with democracy China is marching on without all this mess. Yes democracy is "better" but is this really democracy or just a charade? When the majority of adults have a leader they did not vote for? When election result after election result turns out to be wrong?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Don't forget, that the votes being thrown out can still be claimed.
But since people don't know their vote was thrown out there is no normal way of contacting them.
So, Republicans called only Republicans and Democrats went to each of the Democrats and got signatures. And of course, which nobody knows if its legal. But thats why you vote by mail, because you can't make it in person. Vacation, Business travel, or any other reason.
Also, I'm tired of all the problems with counting votes, bad enough we have machines that have *Glitches* and looses votes, or gives votes to the wrong person. It's not a fucking *Glitch* its a fucking failure! It's job is to count votes with 100% success. Thats like calling a lung machine that stops a *Glitch*...
No paper trail, too short of time to count votes, machines that don't work, processes that don't work, human error and fraud.
This is why everyone is pissed off, we know votes are being tampered with. Every time you do a recount, the vote count CHANGES!
I live in Washington and voted by touch screen. I have no proof where my vote was cast, and I must trust the machine?! No wonder people also turn in paper ballots.
In an age where powerful people are commiting fraud, why is it hard to believe that our votes are being corrupted?
Oh look, Ohio had some fraud, couldnt happen in our state. Pffft.
I'm from Washington, and I'd like to point out that neither Rossi or Gregoire is currently the governor of Washington. Thus this is not a "Challenger vs. Incumbent" type of thing. FYI the current governor is Gary Locke.
Let me just say, before someone says it and MEANS it:
<redneck>Dem damn liberal democrat whiners need to shutup and accept the ass-whuppin' they got or get the hell outta here.</redneck>
The post says there's an incumbent in the race, but there isn't. The current governor, Gary Locke (D), chose not to run again, so both Gregoire (D) and Rossi (R) are challengers.
This could be a good thing. If enough "small" problems like this crop up, maybe that will help give some momentum to the idea that we need to audit the living hell out of the entire 2004 election. Not with an eye toward overturning Dubya's win or anything drastic like that, but with an eye toward finding and fixing any and all problems before the next run. I just don't see how that's anything other than common sense; we've done a fairly drastic overhaul of our electoral system over the past few years, so who could possibly say with a straight face that checking its accuracy after the fact is not absolutely essential?
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
our state name correctly! Washington State! It's not very often that the word "Washington" appears in news stories and actually refers to our state, so it would be nice if when it did it was at least capitalized correctly.
Comment of the year
The race is between Chris Gregoire (D) and Dino Rossi (R), both vying to replace the outgoing Gary Locke.
You're right. Without third party candidates, nothing will keep the top two in line.
IRV (also RCV) or Condorcet, or nearly anything else, is better than our current plurality system. IRV would simply be nothing more than having multiple primaries at once, elimanting the weakest candidate each time.
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Here's how the election will be happening in the following years in Washington State. We'll have a primary, in which anyone can vote for any specific candidate they wish. The top two plurality candidates will end up going onto the general election. So it's very likely that two Democrats will be listed on the ballot.
You know, something troubles me. Whenever weird "accidents" happen, like a block of votes being counted twice, the party that benefits is always the Republicans. There have been at many confirmed voting errors in Florida and Ohio alone, and all of them, when fixed, help Democrats and hurt Republicans.
That's backwards thinking: we can't get a handle on it now, so we should make it more complicated?
Generate paper ballots however you want - sharpie-and-paper, hanging chad, Diebold, it really doesn't matter as long as the voter can see, before they put it in the box, that their choices are marked how they expected.
Then count the paper ballots electronically. It's faster and generally more reliable than when people do it.
Take a random sample of the original ballots from each precinct. Compare that sample to the electronic tally. Recount by hand if there's a significant difference.
sigs, as if you care.
How about feature?
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I am a Washington State voter, and my whole county (Snohomish) uses the same type of voting machine. Other counties are different. But here you can watch the little ticker-tape coming out of the back of each machine. I don't know how the votes are encoded, but there is definitely a paper audit trail.
I'm actually concerned about the accuracy of the recount, since it is likely to be hand-counted (required by law when the difference is below some threshold -- I don't know the specifics.) Despite any bugs in the electronic systems that may or may not affect the count, hand-counting pretty much guarantees a certain margin of error.
Anyone ever tried to accurately count a stack of ten thousand pieces of paper, dividing them into two separate piles in the process? I screw up occassionally just separating puzzle pieces into separate groups of edge and center pieces -- for small (100 piece) jigsaw puzzles!
I realize this isn't the same as electoral fusion, but look at what Paul Richmond did. He unofficially dropped out of the attorney general race in Washington State, then endorsed Deborah Senn. He did this cause Sidran lost the primary.
http://richmond4ag.com/
Could you see your vote and verify it was the vote you cast on that little ticker tape?
If you cannot see your vote being recorded on the tape, then the tape is no good really because it does not actually record what you did.
The tape contains a record of what the machine decided to record. It may or may not be based on what you, the voter, actually did.
The only acceptable systems are those that leave a voter verified paper trail. Without that, no trustworthy recount is possible...
Blogging because I can...
Second is that the current governor is Chinese. No doubt, many Chinese hackers attempted to break into the e-voting machines to alter the results in favor of the Chinese governor.
The solution is to void the current election, re-run it, and discard the e-voting machine.
I'm making the same assumptions that many are making (and in fact I have made) that when votes are undercounted in counties that vote Democratic or votes are overcounted in counties that vote Republican, it tends to benefit Republicans. Likewise, in Palm Beach there were 88,000 more votes than voters. (I.e., votes were overcounted.) Since Kerry votes outnumbered Bush votes 3:2, it seems logical that counting votes twice in Palm Beach would tend to benefit Kerry. Unfortunately, no one (that I know of) has reported exactly how the actual count changed the discrepancy (if this is even actually known), but that would seem to support the liberal media conspiracy theory, wouldn't it?
You'll notice that I mentioned in my previous post that I used the qualifier almost to modify definitely. I.e., I acknowledged that the article did not make it crystal clear that the error benefited Democrats, just that logical assumptions would lead one to that conclusion.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Voting should be done alone with YOUR vote only known to you. If it is impossible for this to happen then at least you should make sure that the person who knows YOUR vote doesn't know you or you will ever come to depend on.
Certain countries were womens rights are not respected it is well known that the husband is in the voting boot with the wife controlling wether she votes the way he wants to. Oh but he is only there to help because she can't read. YEAH RIGHT.
Poll workers are also usually local. Local means you might feel presured to vote the way of the majority. Why do you think voting is supposed to be anonymous? Foreigners you will never see again are the closest I can think off to ensure no pressure on the voter.
Also by using foreigners you show that america is not afraid to be tested. The netherlands has a pretty good history on fair elections and have foreign observers.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The problem with paper trails is that you have to have people to handle the paper.
Don't get me wrong, I WANT a paper trail, but I've been intimately involved enough in the mechanics of the voting system that I know a LOT of things have to change.
Ever notice who your election judges are? Old retired people, unemployed people, high school drop-outs, etc. Why? Because we expect them to be at the polls at 5:30 am to set up and open at 6, then stay until 8pm after closing at 7 and doing all the things that need to be done. And we pay them rather well for that - $85 for the whole day!
If we value our voting system, we need to treat it like National Guard and Reserve duty: your employer must let you off to do it, (not just vote, working the polls, too) and then we should pay people $200 a day to do it. Then we would get qualified people who could not only properly handle the system, but actually (and accurately!) count the paper ballots 1 polling place at a time.
HexaByte - he's a square and a half!
From what I remember form my schooling, the executives (governors, presidents, mayors) carry out/enforce the laws. The legislature makes the laws. As for the judicial branch, I forget exactly what their job is, but we all know what it is.
Election of judges: In my opinion, perhaps we shouldn't use the plurality method to elect judges. Perhaps STV, Single Transferrable Voting, should be used, or something that allows a better proportional representation to prevent the tyranny of the majority.
Arson and murder: Here's my comment. There is an intent to kill if you knowingly set a building on fire that contains people in it. There is no intent to kill if it's like abandoned or whatever. Setting a school on fire at night, no intent to kill. Setting a school on fire during the day, intent to kill. Perhaps the arson laws need modified a bit.
Strategic voting doesn't do anything of the sort. I believe you're confusing voting strategy with campaigning strategy, and further assuming that a winning campaign strategy should be for a candidate to appeal to the majority of voters instead of their base. And that's a risky assumption.
I further suspect that you may not really understand the issue at hand because your comment states both a belief that we need not remove the strategic aspect of voting (an opinion that necessarily allows for the possibility of such removal) and a belief that all voting is strategic (a belief that necessarily disallows the possibility of separation). So I will attempt to outline the issue as I understand it so that we may have a common ground for discussion.
When people talk about the need to remove the strategic vote, what they mean is they want to remove or reduce the circumstances under which a voter must choose between voting for the candidate they personally favor (their sincere choice) and a candidate they think might win (their strategic choice). Such situations are common when using First-Past-The-Post (A.K.A. plurality voting) methods where voters casting ballots for their sincere choice often feel that their vote is "being thrown away" if it's going towards a candidate who has no reasonable chance of winning. And so instead they often cast their ballot strategically for a less desirable candidate who is more likely to win. This in turn leads to a less representative government, which is bad, because representative government is the goal of democracy! It's because of this that advocacy of other voting methods that offer no incentive to vote strategically is gradually increasing.
Want to learn more about different voting methods? This isn't a bad place to start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_system
Go to KPRC Radio on the web and listen to live streaming audio from the "Savage Nation", hosted by Michael Savage. It is live during 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM EST.
Locke is stepping down.
Here's how I think it has worked.
Previously, and declared illegal: September primary, we could vote for any specific candidate we wishes, regardless of party, and the top plurality winner from each party went on. Problem: Democrat running unopposed? Then Democrats could vote for the worst Republican listed in that race.
Last primary, and everyone hated it: People had to choose a party and vote only under that. No more crossing party lines in each race. Top plurality winner from each party went on. Problem: People wanted to vote on the candidate, not the party.
Future system we'll use: People can cross party lines, and the top two plurality winners REGARDLESS of party go onto the general election. Problem: May or may not hurt third party candidates, and issues come up cause some races may see Democrat vs. Democrat. It violates a party's wish to be represented.
If we don't fix it now we will not have another opertunity. all branches of the gov are now 0wn3d yo. No other issue matters. Get off the couch.
Fraud Uncovered - Government Watch
www.fugw.org
Now come on, be honest.
The whole thing can be summarized like this.
Democrats are looking for anyone or anything but themselves to blame for their loss. It cannot be their message it must be either stupid people, hacked machines, or voter intimidation.
Fortunately for them there are enough conspiracy nuts to make even the most idiot ideas float.