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House To Vote On Paper Trail and OSS Voting Bill
Spamicles writes "A vote is imminent for the bill that is a direct response to problems in the 2006 elections. This legislation would create a paper trail for elections, require a manual audit of every federal election, and open the source code of voting software in certain circumstances. The bill currently has 216 co-sponsors and is expected to be brought to the floor of the House and passed any day."
I'm Canadian, and currently we use pen and paper ballots counted by hand. I'm not going to say our voting process is problem free, but it seems to have a lot less problems then what exists in the US system. Seems to me like fighting for OSS and paper trails in the voting process is the wrong battle, and that you should be fighting to go back to paper, hand counted votes. It's a lot more transparent to the voters that things are being messed with. With software and computers thrown into the mix, most voters have no idea how to verify that the voting is done in a reliable manner.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Some Congresscritters and/or their staff must be reading Slashdot. These are all things that more than one of us has suggested.
Now just one more thing, guys: make the entire system run on Linux or other F/OSS operating system. That will eliminate the use of viruses targeted at the easily-cracked Windows operating system from the McDonald's of operating system vendors (Microsoft).
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Im with you on the free but it takes more than 10 minutes now and why should 10 minuted or half an hour make a difference? should voting not have more of a commitment then say the dmv?
Problem is that since Election Day is not a holiday in the USA, taking an hour out of the day to vote can be nearly impossible if your boss is a prick. And job security is something that matters a great deal to the working poor (as it means nearly as much to the working non-poor). Further, bosses in jobs worked by the working poor tend to be more aware of the greater leverage they have over their workers, and are in this specific way more likely to be pricks. Not to mention the fact that in such jobs, bosses and workers have different political interests (due to different economic class) and consequently wildly divergent political affiliations, and so there is no earthy reason why such a boss would want to make it easier for their employees to vote.
As a result, in those communities that are enlightened enough to have polling hours extend significantly past the workday hours, those who must vote after work must vote along with everyone else in the same situation; polling lines swell precisely at the times that people leave work, and remain long from that time until polls close. People not so restricted in their schedule can easily vote during the day, enjoying a miniscule cost in time compared to their working compatriots.
It is not a question of commitment; it is a question of actual discrepancy in the degree of hardship, risk, and cost necessary to cast what is an equally-weighted vote. A vote that is equal in value should also be equal in cost. More numerous and strategicaly located polling places would make it easier to achieve equal cost by reducing line length and thus making it easier to justify work-leave to go vote (as time spent would be a great deal less), or barring that, relieve the after-work vote rush so that the person unlucky enough to have to work all day can vote with approximately as much ease as a person not so burdened.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.