Slashdot Mirror
Florida Literally Scraps Touch-Screen Voting
Kaseijin writes "Florida Governor Charlie Crist is getting his wish. The New York Times reports the state will replace touch-screen voting machines with optical-scan models by July 1, 2008 — the most aggressive timetable of any jurisdiciton rethinking this approach to voting. The touch-screen machines most likely will be sold to other jurisdictions or stripped for parts."
I think we should buy one for each Slashdot 10th anniversary party and smash them.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
"The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
Stripped for parts? Am I the only one thinking there won't be much of a demand for those? :/
At first I was equating optical to retinal scan voting -- "Sorry, the correct choice was --" "AHHH! MY EYES!" In more rational terms, this is good, there should be a paper trail which is key to our voting process. You fill the circle in with a marker, slide the ballot in the dealy, it counts, and you can do a manual recount if needed. That's what is truly required.
There are enough problems with arguments about whether a vote should be counted or not as it is, in any system. With optical scanning of a ballot paper, surely there will be arguments about whether what the scanner counts as a vote or not is actually the correct definition of what is a vote or not? The voting system is likely to be attacked by people who disagree with its definitions whatever it is.
The main advantage of the optical scanning system is it leaves a paper trail. If there is a dispute at the end of the election, it is possible to manually recount the ballots. Compare with the touch-screen voting, where no independent verification is possible. The ballots are also plain pieces of paper, so there's no issue of hanging chads or dislodging chads during a recount as in certain elections in the past.
As opposed to figuratively?
Nope. Not on the ones I have used.
1) you fill them out with a special black pen.
2) if you make a mistake, ask for new sheet and start again.
3) you place it into the optical scanner.
4) Green Light - your ballot is correct and you are done.
5) Red Light - you get a new ballot and start again.
Advantages:
Positive and Negative feedback if the ballot is clean and correct.
Voter SEES what is they choose, clearly.
Disadvantages:
Paper pile. But need only until election is confirmed.
I'm stunned that in the first place a system that could not be 100% audited was allowed to be used in the first place! Seriously, even though politicians don't seem to give a damn what you think the voting process is supposed to be a key-stone of democracy. If you can't trust the ballots you can't trust the system. It's fundamental.
Shh.
Also won't matter since Florida voters can't seem to figure out the whole voting thing anyways...
Aggh,someone had to ask it.
Leave the gun, take the cannolis.
As a Canadian, I've never voted with anything other than a paper ballot, and I have never had a reason to question the voting process as a result.
Is that you can design the voting form in such a way to fix one of the fundamental problems with democracy. You can make it confusing enough that those with insufficient I.Q. are able only to spoil their ballots, thereby improving the overall level of decision making by the then elected government.
Deleted
.. I take along my PERMENANT marker and place a HUGE BLACK [X] on the SCREEN :)
http://www.rense.com/general79/wdx1.htm
Sometimes you have to take the time to figure out what the real problems are and address them properly before pissing your money away on waste and potential changes that make things worse. In the case of lever machines and pucnh cards, the replacements were a waste of money and possibly made things worse. Sadly, the real problems were "figured out" long ago, and Congress merely told jurisdictions to take action quickly.
Unfortunately, there were missteps in many jurisdictions. The reasons for the missteps are up for debate, and are very politically charged, but basically includes:
- Inept analysis and decision making
- Poor/non-existent understanding of the voting process and related technologies
- Failure to include any independent experts
In short, their inability to execute wasn't due to the timeline - it was due to the fact that many people who were supposed to be responsible and capable in the area of voting turned out to be inept political appointees who only knew how to listen to the vendors' sales pitch. Instead of involving unbiased experts, they instead portrayed themselves as "experts" and made very poor decisions.However, to be fair, many districts around the country did make great decisions in upgrading their voting process and related technologies. I think you'll find that those districts performed detailed analysis and included unbiased experts before making a decision.
Why do they always involve some type of machine to do the counting in the US? Is there a shortage of volunteers to do the counting?
I would never trust a system like that. At the very least, the machine-counted vote should be confirmed later (but before the election is officially confirmed) by a manual count, no matter if there is a dispute or not.
In Sweden, the ballots are counted by volunteers in the precincts on election night under the supervision of observers from the parties and interested citizens (anyone can observe the counting), and the vote is later confirmed when it's counted by the counties, again under the supervision of observers.
The latter process takes several days (it starts on the day after the election) but counting in the precincts is usually done by the end of the day.
You are aware that it was Bush's campaign that filed the first court challenges to the Florida ballots, right?
I'm sure you'll happily apply the entire rest of your comment to Bush now that you know he's the one who caused the inevitable Caesar.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
I just drew penises all over the ballet sheet. Accomplishes the same thing, takes less effort.
How is filling in a bubble, oval or line next to your choice 'far less intuitive to the user than a touch screen system'? People have been filling out standardized tests for years.
In addition, it's far easier to handle breakdowns - the markers, whether pen, pencil, or felt, can be replaced quickly and easily. They don't go bad often if they're of a decent quality. Paper ballots are pre-printed and can be replaced. You can have a lot of optical scanners, if one goes down, disregard it's count, feed the ballots it's collected into another(back at HQ).
I've heard of down rates being over 10% with the touch screen machines. Vote counts being outright lost, or worse, corrupted.
I don't read AC A human right
BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!
Oh you poor beguiled Floridians. You've just been taken for the old bait and switch. If you had paid attention to the debacle of the last presidential election you would know that it was the optical scanners that were compromised, not the touch screens! An in-depth statistical analysis was undertaken by a mathematics professor of the exit polls compared to the "counted" tally. A vast number of anomalies showed up in Ohio in districts with optical scanners. Calculating the odds of those discrepancies show that it was less likely for Bush to have won that election than for him to have been hit by lighting and win the lottery on the same day (paraphrasing of course).
:T:R:A:N:S:
is to turn a few of them over to so of the crackers, reverse compile them, and lets see exactly how many bugs there are? In particular, I want to know, were the elections valid. For that reason, I suspect that the courts and the pubs will fight the idea of turning ANY of those over to an academians or crackers.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
(As stated by others in this thread) There is no need for an expensive middle-man in the voting process. Having comparatively delicate machines involved adds no security to the process.
My reason for making the suggestion about transforming DREs into very expensive pencils is that local governments are notorious for their inability to face the economic "sunk cost" problem: They claim that they paid lots of very limited money for the machines and they insist on Getting Their Moneys Worth. They also say that getting ballots printed is Very Expensive.
My wife and I, along with our friends in the hand-counted-paper-ballots coummunity are having a difficult time getting past the local election officials who just love their precious machines and think of paper ballots as backward and out of date. They Want To Be Perfectly Modern Government Officials.
Nearly every computer professional or security professional that is asked about electronic voting answers that it's either insecure or too expensive. Statements to that effect accelerate as they flow between the ears of local election officials.
Here's further support for your thesis:
I've stated elsewhere in this thread and other places that electronic machines constitute a perfect way to bias voting paterns in a perfectly legal way: Favored/wealthy precincts are allocated plenty of voting machines, while unfavored/not-wealthy precincts receive inadequate allocations. The result is that some voters have a strong time-based disincentive from voting. This amounts, in my opinion, to a denial of the vote to selected groups of people.