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Florida to Scrap Touch Screen Voting?
AlHunt writes "Florida Governor Charlie Crist is calling on the Florida Legislature to spend $30M to replace the troublesome touch screen voting machines with an optical scan system that allows a voter to mark an oval next to a candidate's name before slipping a ballot into an electronic reader."
...because I know it when I see it.
I think one is certainly due - faulty, unreliable equipment that failed to deliver as promised.
Oh right, poll worker says: Democrats use blue ink, Republicans use pencils.
Hmm.. here's a thought - why don't we give out slips of paper with the names of the candidates on them, then you CIRCLE your candidate.. and then (get this) PEOPLE count up the ballots. Woah.. and SOOO much more expensive right?
-GiH
What should be the easiest thing to do in the world, and the richest country on earth, not to mention the world's shining example of democracy, can't even get that right.
I mean, we all know that Florida voters have a perfect track record of meaningfully, unambiguously, carefully, and thoughtfully placing a mark next to the right name. Yes, the scanner will kick out the badly marked ones... but I seem to recall they've been down that road before. What they hell is wrong with touch screen machines with a spit-out paper trail? Yeesh.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
ssia
\.
I think the problem is that the system is defrauded by the government itself *cough*bush*cough* with a paper system or a touch-screen system when the votes AREN'T TALLIED BY REAL PEOPLE.
Look at the scene in Fahrenheit 911 where they show a recount finding a whole stack of identical votes stuck together and inserted into the tallying system. Do you think pencil would rule that out? HUMAN COUNTING FIXES THAT.
People will not have confidence in the voting system for a very long time, dubya made sure of that.
----
speaking of very long time
Ace
Remember the old punch-card machines coders used 30 years ago?
You could punch them out with a punching machine or with a single-hole punch, it didn't matter.
Do the same with ballots:
Let people fill in an optical scan ballot by hand OR give them a touch screen that will mark the ballot for them.
You get all the advantages of the touch-screen, including multiple languages, different ballots in the same polling place, accessibility for the blind and disabled, and more and you keep the advantages of optical-scan ballots, including a voter-verified paper ballot and a way to vote if the electricity goes out.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
If it can be made to work reliably and securely, electronic voting is by far the best way to go as it offers the possibility of having a much more direct democracy instead of democracy-by-proxy as we have now.
Consider this. You only get one vote every few years, which is then supposed to show your support for every decision your elected representative makes. It would be much better if you could vote on all the major issues, such as major bills, decisions to start wars, etc. With a physical based voting system though, it would be all but impossible to do this as the amount of effort to collect votes is enormous - hence we have political representatives we vote for who act as proxies for our wishes, and hopefully make decisions that the majority of the people would wish for. As we all know, this is often not the case. (eg. Copyright extention)
Now that nearly everyone has a computer (in developed countries) or has easy access to one via internet cafe's, libraries, etc. then imagine what it would be like if you could directly vote (via te internet) on bills such as say, the patriot act or extending copyright, instead of having to depend on some guy to make that vote for you? Apart from anything else, it would take a lot of the current power away from special interest lobby groups (read:big business), as they would have to convince a large slice of the population on how to vote, instead of a small group of senators etc. You would still need a body of lawmakers to put forward bills and propositions, but the general public would have much greater control over the acceptance or rejection of those bills.
The challenge of course would be:
1) ensuring everyone only got one vote, (say, through the use of a hardware keygen or something) and
2) your votes remain anonymous. I don't personally believe this is as valuable as being able to vote on every bill, and would happily sacrifice a little theoretical anonymity for a more direct democracy.
The ACLU fought against this exact kind of move in California - the use of paper ballots vs the use of electronic ballots - because according to them, electronic ballots are "twice as accurate" and the use of paper ballots would disenfranchise voters. According to the left and the ACLU in 2003, "punch cards are unfit for use" and are all for electronic voting.
i was there when they did this, and MAN... they were insistent that paper ballots go into the dustbin of history because of their error rates and their propensity to "confuse minority voters". Their words, not mine.
So, i guess that the governor of Florida should get his lawyers ready for this... taking their state back into the dark ages...
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
Touch screens, opticals ballots, retinal scanners, genetic typing... it doesn't matter what electronic system we decide is best and most foolproof. Because there will always be some fool who will allege that damn dirty "hackers" cheated their candidate out of winning.
VOTE!
See what happens when you finally get rid of Jeb Bush.
You said All of that doubt is removed if you allow only the machine to mark the ballot....
What I had in mind is 1 or 2 ballot-marking machines per polling site and many no-machine voting booths for people to mark their ballot by hand.
The machines would be for those who needed or wanted to use them.
Most people would probably prefer to mark it themselves as it is more familiar.
States will prefer fewer machines per polling place because it is a LOT cheaper. Needless to say, Diebold won't be recommending this solution.
What the Governor wants is exactly what we do here in New Hampshire.
The tallying is instantaneous, the technology is proven (scantron tests in every school in the country) and the paper trail is there.
If they ever want voting in Florida to cease being a national joke this is the way to do it.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
As other people have pointed out, there is a compromise position: you could have electronic consoles to actually enter the vote, but which produce a paper receipt that's then put into a scanner to be counted. That way you get basically all the advantages of e-voting, with the benefits of optical-scan, but without having to have voters actually write anything on the cards. (Because, apparently, as a society we are incapable of writing and following simple instructions anymore. Not that this surprises me.)
Paperless voting was a huge mistake, but touchscreen voting itself wasn't a bad idea. There's no need to get rid of the things from this very expensive experiment that we apparently conducted that worked, just the parts that didn't.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I can now predict the winner of the 2008 presidential race is Al Gore (or other Democrat, preferably Gore).
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Crist save us!
1 (short ton / firkin) = 89.1432354 slugs / keg
I understand there might still be some people in the everglades who still live in open-air chickee huts with no utility services, so a real voting machine is a necessity. Here's what I figure should be done to get the best machine system:
I am getting sick of *cough*democrats*cough* always complaining about voting systems. They will never be happy with any system that is used.
I think Electoral College should be unrestricted. It's really them who elect officials. State laws always make them vote with the people. They should vote however they choose.
\
If someone wants to cheat, they're going to find a way to do it.
Rather than waste more money trying to prevent somthing that can not be prevented, why not make it easier to be thrown out of office according to public polls ?
That way, if they cheat, they're going to have to cheat alot more often, which will take time to do & have a noticable effect on the job they do.
Nobody is going to cheat for them for free, they'd run out of money sooner or later.
Frankly, as long as I never see a ballot that goes,
1) Party rep A
2) Party rep B
3) Increase the size of your penis
I really don't care how they keep track of how many clowns can fit in a car.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
...stop people from voting, have a change of government. See what happens when you complain about the price of tea? Bring the US back to Monarch rule. Works for the British, if and when we don't vote, the backup system of government kicks in. We RAIG our governing process. Redundant Array Inexpensive Governments. When that kicks in we don't need to vote and life is simpler. If you're wondering why we don't use the backup then, its because it uses too much power.
Jonathanjk.com
Recall it was the butterfly ballot, where the check mark needed to be placed alternate left and right sides. The basic list of checkboxes approach has always worked fine.
The counting of votes must be observed by humans. Since people can't see electrons moving, no electronic vote counting should ever take place.
I'm willing to wait for election results. Isn't that a worthwhile price for democracy?
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
The challenge of course would be:
1) ensuring everyone only got one vote, (say, through the use of a hardware keygen or something)
Ahh yes, because digital electronic security is something the human race is capable of.
Listen: Any time you introduce leverage into a voting system (like digital electronic vote counting, for example), that exact same leverage can be used to game the system.
Let the vote be counted by human hands. I'm willing to wait for it. Who's with me?
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
+1 witty, +1 sarcastic and +1 insightful.
In Soviet Russia, our new overlords are belong to all your base.
CONFUSE MINORITY VOTERS?!?!?!
.....yadda.....yadda.....yadaa.....
Jeeezus, they'll say anything nowadays. The ACLU thnks that anything negative that happens to minorities is directly attributable to, or ultimately caused by, racist white people.
ACLU = Arguably Confused Liberal Underworld
However, I have managed to separate intelligent liberals from the extremists. Yes, they DO exist. Also, if the minority voters don't bother to learn English in our society, why should they be able to control it's direction? Are the ballots written in Morse code or something? No, they are written in English. Also, how is the inability to fill in a box, put a hole through a preforated paper punch card, or follow a straight line something that is minority race specific? There is absolutely NO way anybody could connect that as being race-related. Unless they are implying that minorities aren't mentally and physically capable of completing such a simple task, but I would seriously doubt that is what they are saying, but they would probably blast anybody who raised that question..... Using race as an excuse is a poor argument, and just makes people care that much less each time they play the race card when they don't get there way. Yes, there are some race related issues in today's society, but the *ability* to vote isn't one of them. Of course, if some scientist were to actually validate that minorities were incapable of the task of voting, the ACLU would probably brand that researcher a racist, even though his findings validated their claims.
There is absolutely no reason that anybody can't execute the simple task of voting, unless they are either retarded, physically handicapped, or have some other legitimate, seriously incapacitating illness/deficiency. Race HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. All races are equally capable of the task of voting.
But alas, since I am white (Italian, but technically Caucasian, even though I am brown) I must be a racist and Evil and such and all bad things that happen to minorities are all my fault and I am a bad person because of what I just said......
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Another option is the method used here in Sweden - the straight paper ballot, placed into an envelope, and then placed into the voting box by the voter him/her/itself, after officials check your name in the the voting register and eye your voter ID card (mailed out a few weeks earlier) and photo ID.
;) )
Ballots are picked up by the voter outside of the voting booth (there is a table available with all flavors) or brought in yourself. (Parties usually mail out their ballots prior to the election). Also, major parties will have their people outside, handing out ballots. Alternatively, you can just vote write-in by spelling out the party name on a blank ballot. (This results in "The Donald Duck Party", etc. garnering a few votes every year...
One envelope per election (regional, local, national, referendums, etc.)
Pros: Very simple, very unambigous (no "hanging chads" possible), straight paper trail, etc. Electronic tampering virtually impossible. Voter identity is assured.
Cons: Electoral secrecy compromised to some degree(although not fatally) if ballots stored out in the open. Sabotage against ballot storage is possible, and happens (I.e. snagging the ballots of "the enemy"). Voter ID requirements will garner cries of "voter suppression" from the usual suspects, not as TV-friendly (counting the votes takes some time).
Hopefully, this time, they'll get it right.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Just so you all know, the capital building here is in the shape of a phallus. Just saying. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_State_Capitol
Just to set the stage for how bizarre Florida is for politics. Janet Reno ran against Jeb. My brother took a picture with her at an appearance at the Florida-Miami game and he said she smelled like moth balls.
Just put a camera that looks over peoples shoulders and tracks who votes for who. There all fixed :)
run by the League of Women Vote Stealers, err I mean Voters. We use it in Michigan, the Mississippi of the North. They don't let anyone to watch the counting.
The best thing to come out of Michigan, besides Accuvote, is I-75 South.
An Optical Scan System certainly sounds like the way to go for all sorts of reasons. Around here, we call our Optical Scan System "eyeballs", but that's probably just one of those odd Australian language quirks.
Might it not be cheaper and simpler, and better for democracy in the long run, to replace the touchscreen voting machines with a number of heavy, opaque boxes, each having a lid which can be padlocked shut and in which is a single slot which can be covered with a flap and sealed with a wire seal; into which voters would drop pieces of paper, upon which they have written a number next to each candidate's name, for subsequent counting by hand in the presence of candidates and their representatives?
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
It's great to paint everything the ACLU does with a one colored brush isn't it? Every ACLU chapter MUST be extremist based on that one case!
How many fulltime jobs can one man have?
If you want to combine the best of both worlds, you have to do it right. A vote can be entered electronically, but then it must be printed on a paper ballot which is reviewed by the voter before accepting. The paper ballot must then be declared THE official record in all cases of dispute. The vote can be tallied electronically by the machine it was initially entered into, but it must be immediately audited that night at each polling site by counting at least a set percentage (between 10% and 100%) of all paper ballots printed at that location, chosen completely at random. Any statistically significant difference between the paper audit and the electronic count should trigger a full paper ballot count (and if it happens repeatedly, an investigation).
This is why you need a paper trail.
You can have the machine print out a little card with a bar code, use fancy scanners, whatever.... but you MUST HAVE a full paper trail or the machine is useless.
No sig today...
The whole state of Florida is shaped like a phallus...
The tomorrow of the 1970s! My state has had machines like this since I was a toddler.
But a few counties did jump on the "OMG GWB WAS ELECTED TEH MACHINES IS DEFECTIVE!11" bandwagon in 2001 and replace their old system with new machinery. All of them encountered problems in the next state election. One county lost 4,000+ votes due to the defective design of their shiny new techno-marvels. They had no verifiable record to rely on for a recount.
I don't understand why authorities in the US insist on using voting machines. From my experience, I worked several times as NGO election observer on voting sites in my country (Croatia), and we had no problem with getting all the paper ballots and counting them. On practically every voting site in the country, there were (beside government appointed members) one representative from each political party and one or more NGO observers. Each of us had the chance to review the site and ballot boxes prior to voting, see them sealed, be present during opening of the boxes and counting and recount them himself. Also, each of us had to sign the final report and any observed irregularities.
I can assure that voting (at least on our site) was fair, since at the table were basically 7 people, and no two people there trusted each other:)
With all that, we managed to count all 1000 ballots for our site within 2-3 hours, and all the ballots were counted at least three times. Such system, in country of 4 million people enables us to get 90% of the sites processed by midnight of the voting day. Further, all the ballots are kept for one year, available for anyone's request for recount. I don't believe it's much different in any European country.
Has anyone checked to see how much stock the governor has in the state's largest #2-Pencil manufacturer?
Error:
As a Floridian, I can tell you that touch-screen voting has never been popular for the very reason that Crist proposes - people want to know that their vote is counted. A paper ballot allows recounts, but also allows the voter to double-check their work -- in fact, they can more easily review their entire vote just before they cast the ballot.
Unfortunately, it appears the touch-screen companies have avoided the obvious solution: Printers. Allow the voter to use the touch-screen, but have the official ballot be printed for the voter. This should virtually eliminate mistakes on the marking of the ballot, and the electronic counting can still provide a rapid count. Naturally, the software still needs to be open source, but that's another issue...
Scripto and Sharpie give hearty thanks!
The only thing new in this world is the history that you don't know.[Harry Truman]
Too Complicated.
After all, they're "traditionally more accurate" than counting votes, or so we've been told...
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
I think that could work quite well, actually.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Does it really matter if we elect a candidate who got 47% of the vote instead of what that got 48%? If we really want to fix the electoral system we need to figure out why the hell so many people voted for George W. Bush a second time after he screwed up so bad the first time. Everything else pales in comparison to that.
Where I live near Melbourne, Florida we have been using this system for a long time. The money must be to change the systems in the lower IQ areas of the state.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
What, you can't come up with anything new to say?
We dont use the touch screens everywhere, although we have them in every precinct. In our entire precinct with thousands of voters we usually have under 3 voters use the touch screens. The rest of our county is simular. We use the Diebold machines. They print out reciepts, have a sealed memory card and the results are sent in via modem right after election. The machines are a big waste of money.
In Nebraska we have scantron sheets ... just like the SAT or ACT but with bigger bubbles and, barring a poorly written tax referendum, no algebra or geometry. They work fine, can be handcounted if needed (though I don't recall a time when they ever were), and everyone here seems intelligent enough to make use of them properly.
In a voting scenario, a credit card, social security number, name, and address info are what I'd say are at least a part of what should be asked for. [reiterating the above system in a different scenario] The Government gives every voter who requests to commit their sole vote an encryption algorithm (i.e. gnuPG or modern PGP) to encrypt their ballot vote and send this ballot vote to the government who have the unique decoding key to their encoding. I think this could be done systematically with the ssl package.
For people whose votes get corrupted, they could use voter machines. Finishing up my last post, in florida why switch a decent touch system for another decent system that suffers the same flaw in paper consumption (considering that the touch screen's had printers added with them) receipt is to be printed. The touch screens have potential.
A large part (all?) of Michigan uses systems like this. In Grand Rapids, where I worked as a poll worker last November, each precinct has one machine. Available interfaces include touchscreen, audio prompts, and sip-puff device. It's intended for people with disabilities, but there's no restriction on who can use it.
I could make a secure touch screen voting program in very little time. All you do is touch the name of who you want to vote for. How much easier could it be? I don't understand the need for all this bullshit. Optical scan machines? That is far more difficult than using a simple, well designed touch screen interface. Just touch the fucking name of the person you want to vote for!!! It really can get no more simple than this.
nothing
"with an optical scan system that allows a voter to mark an oval next to a candidate's name before slipping a ballot into an electronic reader."
I don't know about the rest of Florida, but here in Volusia County that's exactly what's been in place since at least 2004.
Between the political hacks and cronies and the flat out retarded voters, it doesn't seem to matter how you tally the non-votes in Florida. I say they just put it up for a lottery.
This is not the end all solution that is it being sold as.
Instead of hanging chads, we will now have elderly and others who can not mark a ballot with a marker so as to be accepted by the scantron machines. This will cause the machines to reject the ballot and the voter will either have to wait in line and get another, or they will leave in frustration.
I do not understand the need for a 'paper trail' in this sense. When a voter feeds the scantron their ballot, there is NO voter verification that takes place. The voter assumes that the vote was counted properly by the system. Only in a recount will the paper trail be of any value. Therefore if a machine is acting improperly in reading the ballots, nobody would be the wiser unless a recount were to take place along and an audit of the machines. This leaves us in the same position we are in with the touchscreen machines. Voters STILL can not verify their votes counted after feeding it into the scantron machine. The state needs to use a system in which the voter can verify their votes were tallied after casting their votes.
Near the end of that special the Supervisor of Elections for Leon County Florida (Tallahassee) did a demo trial of their optical-scan machines and allowed hacker Harri Hursti to supply the memory card for the demo. Mr. Hursti had discovered that there was a hook for executable code in the memory card, which is certainly a serious problem as you probably realize. Of course, the election was completely hacked (go watch the video, it's on Google Video) using a randomly selected optical scan machine made by Diebold.
The memory cards on these machines are supposed to be functionally equivalent to a floppy or a flash memory stick, yet the machines themselves have been programmed to go to a secret location in them, check for executable code, and to execute that code if found. Which is to say that they are designed from the ground up to facilitate fraud. Can you think of any other explanation for this?
Oh, and in Florida we already use optical scan machines in several counties. And we already have a law (pushed by Jeb Bush) which makes it illegal to look at the paper used without a court order. Just try to get that court order. Fat chance.
Mussolini was right, the merging of corporate and government interests has definite advantages . . . for a few. Our politicians can't begin to get elected without corporate money and support, so their interests are definitely merged. And look how easy it was to get rid of those pesky elections. And we haven't had any curbs on "trusts" since Reagan stopped all anti-trust enforcement. And the economy is doing so well too! Just ask them over at Halliburton, or GE, or any of the other war mongers.
And Americans sleep in front of their TVs.
Those of you in the rest of the world, take a good look at the people of the United States, this Christian country, and the fine example of "morality" we portray. Martin Luthor King, Jr. said it well: "He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it." and "He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it."
Have a nice day.
BillyDoc
The average joe knows nothing about the best practices of governance. As such, all you'll get with direct democracy is mob rule. The founders were well aware of this and tried to find the best way to give the "average joe" power, without that same person running the government into the sh'tter.
Democracy-by-proxy works best when people's _interests_ are represented, which I would argue is far more successful in portional representation elections. (No, America doesn't have these!) Portional representation is where you vote for a party, and then the party decides who to hand out the seats to. For example, (using Florida as an example) if there are 100 state senators, and 13.7% voted for the Green Party, 13 seats would be filled by whoever the Green Party thought would best represent and enforce their party beliefs.
I'd argue that our current system is flawed. Namely the House of Representatives is not representative of the country's true interests. Anyone only filling an office for 2 years should be elected via portional representation. Without portional representation, their term is too short to accomplish anything major, and most of the time they are just doing things to get reelected. Portional representation allows the best people a party has to offer to rise to the top and stay there much easier, which tends to guarantee and predict the direction that party will head.
This could be seen as a good first step, but I hope no one forgets that there is still likely to be a single, or very small number of points of failure for this kind of system. Paper trails are nice, but are useless if enough of the vote is stolen to prohibit a recount (greater than n%). In the scan card system, the figures are still tallied electronically (and no one will check the counters), and then wired to a central system. This means it's easy for a single person or small number of people to skew an election. The best form of voting is the one that requires the most work to skew, and that means hand counted paper ballots. Somewhere in this whole electronic voting debate, the simple basic fact about humanity, that they will cheat to win, has been forgotten. This debate aught to be centered around which form of voting makes it hardest to cheat. On a related note, to the NAACP, who has supported electronic voting, I have to ask - why do you think electronic voting reduces intimidation of black voters. The answer - because they aren't going to count their votes anyway, because with electronic voting it's easy to steal the election.
http://www.unfocus.com/
best system in the world.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
you actually connect a bar pointing to the candidate's name or yes/no for an issue. So it's not quite filling in an oval. The lines that are draw are quite thick, but a line less than half the width works.
Bryan
This gives us excellent real world test cases as to how optical paper ballots work. It turns out they work pretty well. The electronic recounts in these counties came up with the exact results that were previously reported. The hand counts did as well. Perhaps something about the ballot design had something to do with it, such as having the bubbles to be filled next to the candidates name (what will those Human Factors people think of next!?!) was there when they did this, and MAN... they were insistent that paper ballots go into the dustbin of history because of their error rates and their propensity to "confuse minority voters". Their words, not mine. I don't know how you get from "punch cards are unfit for use" to ALL types of paper ballots are unfit for use. All your links are about punch card machines - ALL of your links. These machines have a "demonstrated record of denying votes." (also from your links). So it was no wonder when the ACLU went to bat for CA citizens remove these systems. I mean, duh, they don't work but we shouldn't worry about it???
So, I also googled "confuse minority voters"... Yeah, their words, not yours. That must be why I only see 5 results, the most popular of which states:
"widespread systematic dirty tricks to confuse minority voters regarding the proper precinct to vote in"
I'm sure that you have some other links to back up your statement, so I would appreciate you posting them.
Since that time (2003 - 2004), we have now had an election with multiple touch screen systems in use across the country. Guess what - they don't perform as well as optical ballots, either. In recognition of that fact the Governor of FL decided that people's votes should actually count, if possible, and is requesting that the most proven tech be used.
I'm sure the ACLU will be up in arms about this, too. After all its more a preference for electrons than cellulose that drives their decision process. It's certainly not a matter of properly counting as many votes as possible. After all, what's a few hundred thousand votes here or there?
If people aren't capable of using a touchscreen with giant labeled buttons, how are they supposed to fill in a bubble and create a greater opportunity for machine error.
No, you think they think that. That's because it's easier for you to bloviate about outrageous caricatures than to actually learn about the world around you. Look how emotionally you reacted to a single unverified comment on Slashdot. Because the previous poster said something that conformed to your cartoonish stereotype, you took it as gospel and made up a bunch of additional slurs to go along with it.
William James said that "A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.". I'm pretty sure he had you in mind.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Instead, the point of democracy is two fold:
1) To get the man in power to spend at least SOME time attempting to figure out what the rest of the country wants. He doesn't have to give them what they want, but he should make an attempt to figure it out.
2) To convince those NOT in power that their is a safe, non-violent way to get into power, so there is no need to raise an army and have a revolution.
Accuracy of the count is almost completely irrelevant, as long as it is within say 2%-4% error, which would be very hard to screw up. But Honesty is supremely important. If ambitious and/or crusading men think the current leaders will cheat and not allow their voice to be heard, they will start a revolution. I would, and I am not that ambitiuous or a crusader.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
That's what I was advising.
You'd use a touchscreen to enter your vote, on nice, big buttons, because apparently a large percentage of people in this country are too retarded to fill in a bubble correctly. Notwithstanding my opinions as to whether such folks should actually be voting, they seem to find electronic screens easier to use.
The electronic kiosk would then print out a paper ballot. The electronic kiosk would be ENTIRELY ISOLATED from the network, in all other respects. It would not count votes. At the end of the day, it would be taken down and put away, and serve no purpose in the tallying. Its sole function is to serve as a sort of glorified pencil, making it easier for people to make a machine-readable mark on a sheet of paper.
The printout that it produces, would show the votes cast by the user, in a form that was simultaneously human and machine-readable. That is, it could not have (say) English printing, and a bar code, because then there is no way for the user to be sure that the bar code doesn't contain something different than their vote. But it could have their vote, written in an easily OCR-ed font, with suitable registration marks around the edges so that it could be easily scanned.
This paper ballot would be taken by the voter, from the kiosk and printer, over to a central tabulating table, where it would be scanned. The paper ballots would then be kept, and would be the official record in the event of a recount.
The only "electronic" part is the means for actually making the marks on the ballots. Frankly, I think this is overkill; I think a well-designed paper ballot could be marked using something like a big bingo-blotter and not give too many people much trouble, but I have in general very little sympathy for people (aside from those with bona fide physical impairments) who just can't figure out how to vote. But if we must make a system that's idiot-usable (not really 'idiot proof,' since it hardly keeps out the idiots), using touchscreens and printers to mark the ballots, rather than pens or punch-outs, might reduce the error rate.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
This is what I've been saying since the mess in 2000. You get electronic collection and a paper trail which not only can be quickly scanned/counted by a dumb-scanner( not much room for hacking ) but you also get something the voter or inspector can visually verify.
:-/
Like I said, I've been saying this since 2000 and all I see is the current mess with first touchscreens with no paper, then they have paper but it can't be scanned and must be read manually for a recount and in all cases, there's never been a verification of the touchscreens across the country. Only in a few places where it became obvous something was 'wrong'.
So GO Florida! At this rate, you might get a reliable/verifiable voting system in another 5-10 years. Way to go.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
This is not a good thing. Analysis of elections over the past eight years clearly indicates that optical scanners have been compromised more than any other form of voting. Why? Becuase the scanners report back to a central server via modem --the communications and the server are easy enough to hack. Plus, no one suspects them. The crooks keep you focused on paper trails for touch screens while the pull old-fashion wool over your heads.
:T:R:A:N:S:
My nation's Army can kick your nation's Army's butt!
ppppbbbzzzzzztttt!
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I can't help but think about all the other people who have touched those screens before me. And with no way to clean them.
Paper ballots -- it's just plain sanitary
That would be interesting. Shit, I'm going to patent it before Tony does.
Jonathanjk.com
The same people who are up in arms against touch screen voting now, are the ones who were up in arms in 2000 about paper voting.
In 2000:
"Confused old people, and illiterate people, accidently voted for the wrong candidate! This is an outrage! We need a new electronic touch screen system so that the illiterate and easily confused can vote! We need to stop these people from stealing our democracy!"
OK, a new system was developed so even people who can't read the name of the candidate can look at the picture of the smiling face from TV and place their vote... the system is totally screwed up, but what were you expecting from a big government contract? It works as well as anything the government provides.
So, now that the system is in place:
"Paper ballots are the only trustworthy method of voting! Electronic machines are too prone to fraud! We need to stop these machines from stealing our democracy!"
Damn, can't we get a consistent arguement? Are we supposed to make voting so damn easy that even the braindead can do it? Or are we supposed to make the process open and transparent and eliminate fraud? Because the two are often mututally exclusive! I don't care which one you choose, as the voting outcome is pretty much decided through campaign finance laws, gerimandering, candidate elgibility requirements, government funding, etc., before a single vote is ever placed... a more accurate voting system won't have any effect on the politicians who are elected. But I don't like having to pay for a new system every time some "activists" don't like the result of an election and decide voting fraud is the problem.
The ACLU fought against this exact kind of move in California - the use of paper ballots vs the use of electronic ballots - because according to them, electronic ballots are "twice as accurate" and the use of paper ballots would disenfranchise voters.
Alameda County's interim solution last election:
- Paper ballots of a fill-in-the-circle, reader-swallows-it-into-ballot-box system. (Don't recall the brand.)
- One leftover Diebold touchscreen machine per polling place for use by the handicapped.
The bulk of the voting has a paper trail for recounts, and the hypothetically cheat-prone Diebold touchscreen machine only has a few of the votes to be goofed around with.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
They just can't handle their mudkips. I bet they accidentally commit incest all the time because they can't see well enough to tell the difference between their wife's dried up, crusty semen receptical and the hairless, smooth vagina of their granddaughters.
This is good because the Dems stole this last election, probably by rigging those machines. How else do you explain the fact that Nanci Pelosi, one of the most left leaning Democrats, is speaker of the house? If all these Dems won by moving to the center, shouldn't a centrist be put in her spot?
And then they can get caught if their county is randomly selected for a hand count and the numbers are seriously off.
Not when the people who do the 'random' hand count are the same people. Then you just 'randomly' select ballots that show no error.
paintball