Ohio's Alternative to Diebold Machines May Be Equally Bad

phorest writes "One would have thought the choice of Ohio lawmakers to move away from Diebold touch-screen voting terminals would be welcomed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Instead, the group is warning the elections board that their alternative might be illegal under state laws. 'The main dispute is whether a central optical scan of ballots at the board's headquarters downtown would result in votes not being counted on ballots that are incorrectly filled out. The ACLU believes the intent of election law is to ensure voters can be notified immediately of a voting error and be able to make a second-chance vote.'"

Comments

You'd think ...

[BrianRoach]

That voting just simply couldn't be this complicated. ::shaking head::

- Roach

Re:You'd think ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't the candidates just roshambo for it or something?

Re:You'd think ...

[gfxguy]

No matter what method is selected, someone will whine about it.

Re:You'd think ...

[gfxguy]

Which method is that? Every method had people complaining about it, from fill-in-the-dot optical scan cards (like this one) to butterfly ballots (like Florida) to machines that were supposed to fix the butterfly "dimpled but not fully popped out" problem (like the voting booths where you flip the switches and pull the big handle down to punch your ballot). They were all "rigged" or subject to interpretation or something.

The only other alternative is the "check this box" kind, which requires human counting (again subject to rigging) and takes ages to count. Now, I can wait a day - even a week, for my election results, but with a large turnout it would take even longer than that, and then there'd be less time to certify and recount if there was a problem.

Again, people complain every single election; maybe you don't remember it, maybe sometimes it's worse than others. There's nothing new here, it's happened since the dawn of... uh... electing... things.

Re:You'd think ...

[palegray.net]

Voting as a concept never has been complicated. However, you have to consider the fact that a huge portion of the American voting public cannot name:

1. The Vice President

2. The Speaker of the House

3. Their own state governor.

4. Any member of Congress.

When this is your voting public, how do you expect them to (a) understand, or (b) work up the gumption to care about voting issues? To most people, something's not an issue if they don't see it on headline news at 6.

Re:You'd think ...

[iocat]

I actualy RTFA (well, I didn't, but I read the summary pretty closely) and I think the deal is this. In San Francisco, as an example, you make a very black line across a thingee to mark your choice (it's idiot proof). Then you stick it in a machine, which just checks it (at least) for being filled out correctly (didn't vote for two people for president, etc.). I'm not 100% sure if it actually tallies a vote. If the machine discovers you filled the ballot out wrong, they should revoke your voting privledge for being a total moron, but in fact it spits it out to give you another chance.

In Ohio, they don't want to have to have those checking machines at the voting place, just at the HQ. The ACLU is all "wahwahwah, morons must be given a second chance," but honestly, it's just lip flapping, IMHO. Honestly, if you can't fill out a scantron form, you don't deserve to have your vote counted.

Re:You'd think ...

[Sique]

The Florida voting system hat those lever machines that try to cut holes into the ballot to count them later with an electromechanical reader, a system created and first used for public census, invented by Hermann Hollerith and base for IBMs rise to power.

One problem was that hundreds and thousands of those ballots hat the cut off paper still dangling on it, or that some were only slightly cut, but at several places (as if the voter had a second thought and pulled another lever, but none of them consequently enough).

The main arguments against paper-and-pencil-voting seem to be:

1) The ballots can't be counted fast enough for the Late News to report the results.
2) People with disabilities such as blind people need help to vote and can't check the results themselves.

Argument 1) doesn't hold in my humble opinion. I would rather like to have correct results than early reported ones. Being able to watch the count was in my own country (the former East Germany) the base for all later convictions of Voting Fraud for the leading figures of the former communist government. Also some other frauds (like the one during the voting for the town council of Dachau near Munich) were detected because people were able to compare their own counting results from the public count with the ones later reported by the Voting Commission.

Argument 2) raises a valid point, because Braille printed ballots are much larger than normal prints, and some german towns have already ballots printed on half a square meter of paper. Printing them additionally with Braille further would increase them. On the other hand it was allowed anyway to just cut out that part of the ballot with the votes one had casted and throw everything else in a shredder. So this is still possible.

Re:You'd think ...

[vertinox]

Now, I can wait a day - even a week, for my election results,

So if they can't count the votes in a week, its OK to have someone in power who stole the election? And to top it off, how about someone who puts lives in harms way because they are the commander in chief?

Seriously, I'd be fine waiting for a month or two and maybe even longer to determine who is correctly elected president of the United States.

Secondly, if it was done by hand you have to remember only 50,000,000 people voted in 2004 for the presidential election. If you were to hand count the votes by an official. If an official was responsible for counting 1000 votes then you would only need 50,000 people nation wide helping out.

Which means you'd only need 1,000 officials per state which is a drop in the bucket.

Of course it wouldn't work exactly like that... California, NY, and Texas would need a great deal of vote counters and RI and Alaska would not, but vote counting by hand would not be that difficult if you distributed it correctly. You wouldn't need a month, but at the most 2 weeks and I think the wait is worth it.

The problem is that most Americans are impatient, but don't realize the election affects them for the next four years.

Simple = Better

[Goalie_Ca]

In canada we have a piece of paper with a check box for each candidate. They manually count it and results are known by the end of the evening. Recounts are done by the next day. Not expensive, not confusing, it leaves a paper trail, and it is as physically secure as any computer box could ever get.

Re:Simple = Better

[flyingfsck]

It scales perfectly with population count. India is the world's largest democracy and they still use mostly paper ballots.

Re:Simple = Better

[fm6]

Any process scales if you don't care about the quality of the result. Vote rigging is rampant in India, and all that hand-counting is often blamed.

There's also the slight difference in the cost of labor in India versus the U.S.

Re:Simple = Better

[SydShamino]

I really don't mean to flame, but every single voting issue thread attracts at least one post from someone explaining how Canada votes, and how simple it is, and how the U.S. could just do it the same way. Most of the time this post gets modded up insightful.

About half the time, someone responds, explaining how U.S. elections are more complicated than those in Canada, because U.S. elections usually feature a dozen or more separate items to vote on; in addition to national elections (up to three at a time), there can be a dozen state, county, and municipal elections, plus votes on city propositions, bond packages, and constitutional amendments (almost every year in Texas). It's simply not possible to count all of this quickly and accurately by hand in one day.

To this post, someone from Canada usually responds, asking why we have to vote on all that stuff, and wondering why we don't let our elected officials decide some of that for us.

To which someone else responds, pointing out that our system of government doesn't work the same as Canada's; once we elect someone we are pretty much stuck with them for two, four, or six years, so if our officials start doing things we don't like, we don't have the opportunity to call new elections and replace them. We also only have two viable political parties, so it's less likely that we agree with our elected representatives on every issue. Thus, we like to have a chance to directly vote on more items than most other countries. Also, to increase the likelihood of high voter turnout, we combine elections to minimize the number of election days. In Texas, I believe there can only be three election days a year: the March primaries (if needed), and the May and November general elections.

------

So, in summary, this concept and its responses have been beaten to death. If you feel the same way I do, do as I will and start modding all "Canada votes like this, why doesn't the U.S., too?" redundant.

Re:Simple = Better

[fm6]

I don't argue with cats!

Re:Simple = Better

[Roger W Moore]

We have the same system in the UK and it works fine for higher population densities (200 times that of Canada) just fine. From what I understand of the US system it was perfect for coping with the communication system of the 18th century but come on guys it's the 21st century now! In fact I think the US system was actually best summed up by one of your past presidents (Carter IIRC) who stated that if a dictatorship adopted the US system it would not be recognised as fully democratic by the UN.

Re:Simple = Better

[can56]

"once we elect someone we are pretty much stuck with them for two, four, or six years, so if our officials start doing things we don't like, we don't have the opportunity to call new elections and replace them."

Do you believe that Canadians have the opportunity to boot elected officials we don't like at any time??

Narf

Oh Please....

[idiotnot]

If that's the standard, then every method used is probably illegal. How can a voter verify he pulled the correct level? Handwritten ballots can't be relied upon, either.

Optical scans have historically been regarded as the best, and practically everyone who went to school since 1960 has filled out a scantron sheet.

The ACLU is a bit off base here, IMO.

Off topic....the "Related Links" this time were interesting.

Compare prices on YRO Products

What, exactly is a YRO product?

Re:Oh Please....

[Kilz]

Im an election judge in cook county IL. We have touch screens and paper ballots. When a voter fills out the paper ballot it is feed into a scanner that checks for errors like no votes in a race, or to many people voted in a race. The scanner returns the ballot on error. The voter is told that there may be a problem with the ballot and asked if they want a new ballot. If they want a new ballot, the old one gets SPOILED written in big letters on it and placed in the spoiled ballot envelope. If they dont want a new ballot , the ballot is reinserted and any races with to many votes or no votes in a race may not be counted in that race. The rest of the votes on it are counted.

Could someone tell me why we need it at all?

[Opportunist]

Paper - pen - checkbox - count

What the hell is wrong with that system? It's in effect in nearly every other country. What is so terribly different in the US that this system won't work as flawlessly as it works everywhere else? Pardon the blunt question, but is it too hard to find enough people intelligent enough to effing count slips of paper?

What the hell is the deal about it all? We're wasting billions of dollars every year on worthless junk, flying our politicians around to pointless debates and toilet seats to boot. I don't think spending a few bucks to get good ol' paper elections done, which are tried, proven and simply and plainly working, is going to break the budget's back!

Re:Could someone tell me why we need it at all?

[flyingfsck]

The problem is that USAsians votes on every gawddamm thing on the same day. The rest of the world has the good sense to have separate ballots for separate levels of government.

Re:Could someone tell me why we need it at all?

[Frosty Piss]

Paper - pen - checkbox - count

What the hell is wrong with that system?

Paper ballots are soooo... last century.

And among a significant percentage of the US population, especially those in charge of huge piles of public money, everything is always "better" when done with technology. And did I mention the huge pile of money these people have to spend? Everybody likes new toys!

No. Electronic. Voting. Ever.

[circletimessquare]

it is a seriously dumb idea. increases attack vectors, makes something that is inherently transparent opaque

paper

pencil

optical scanner

end of fucking problem

really

i expect this wisdom to enter the brain of bureaucrats everywhere sometime around 2050

hopefully we won't be a theocracy or fascism by then, hastened along by malignant voting schemes

Re:No. Electronic. Voting. Ever.

[fm6]

paper

pencil

optical scanner

end of fucking problem

Sigh. Everyone points to paper ballots as a guarantee that votes will be properly counted. May I point out that rigged elections predate electronic voting by many centuries?

Ok, so your hybrid system allows you to double check. But when do you double check? If we can't trust the electronic system (and if we did, what's the point in having a dead tree backup?) then you end up with the loser demanding a hand count every time. So you might as well do it by hand to begin with. Except that's too expensive.

It doesn't even matter what process you use to count ballots. What matters is that the process occur out in the open. It's as easy to do that with electronic voting as with paper ballots. Easier even, because it's easier to track the workflow. Harder to repeat the 1960 voting in Chicago, where the ballot boxes took a suspicious amount of time in transit.

Re:No. Electronic. Voting. Ever.

[Lumpy]

i expect this wisdom to enter the brain of bureaucrats everywhere sometime around 2050

You sir are an Optimist.

Re:No. Electronic. Voting. Ever.

[Daniel Dvorkin]

I don't think anyone claims that using paper ballots is a sure-fire guarantee that fraud won't take place. But electronic voting machines make fraud easier, and it's absurd to pretend otherwise. With paper ballots, you have to have a much larger number of people in on the scheme to change a large number of votes and cover your tracks afterward.

Re:No. Electronic. Voting. Ever.

[fm6]

With paper ballots, you have to have a much larger number of people in on the scheme to change a large number of votes and cover your tracks afterward.

Only because you have a lot of people monitoring the process. Give me 5 minutes alone with a ballot box, and I promise you a surprising shift in votes for that precinct. But there are a ton of people who are busy making sure I don't get that 5 minutes.

By the same token, you can design an electronic voting system so that every step is an open book. And I promise you that a zillion geeks and computer scientist will have nothing better to do than spend hours picking nits with your system. This is a level of double-checking no paper system can claim.

Any system is trustworthy to the degree that it is transparent.

Re:No. Electronic. Voting. Ever.

[klevenstein]

We have that exact system in New Mexico.

After 2004, we formed a voter advocacy group in NM to study the problem.

Now, if you don't think this is a crucial issue for the future of our government (and consequentially, your entire future in this country), you haven't been paying attention.

We studied the various systems, looked for vulnerabilities, and came up with a legislative proposal that resulted in this system. We educated Governor Richards about it, and got it implemented in time to use it for the 2006 elections.

It works.

You cannot game this system without an unprecedented conspiracy, and even then, it would certainly be discovered. We also have random accuracy checks to track if anything weird is happening, and this is a critical part of the system. A certain political party that I won't name (but it's initials are GOP) doesn't like real voting to happen, and they tried to block it, but to no avail. It passed our Democratic-led legislature with flying colors.

You might think I'm just writing this to toot my horn. That would be wrong. I'm trying to show that citizens can do something if they work at it. None of us were getting paid or getting any benefits other than good elections in our state.

Get involved, if you care about the future of democratic government, which is essentially America's future.

Re:No. Electronic. Voting. Ever.

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Five minutes alone with a ballot box, and you can change the count for that ballot box; it may be enough to change the results for the precinct (or it may not) but it probably won't be enough to throw a statewide election. Five minutes (or much less) of entering commands to an electronic voting system, and you damn sure can change the results of a statewide election, and furthermore, you can do it in a way that leaves no physical evidence. The "every step is an open book" and the "zillion geeks and computer scientist [who] have nothing better to do than spend hours picking nits with your system" idea is a red herring, since electronic voting systems aren't designed that way and probably never will be. They're all proprietary, with the inner workings protected as a trade secret, and given the insane state of US IP law and corporate/governmental mutual backscratching, that's not going to change.

The most reasonable assumption is that at some point, no matter what voting system you use, someone will compromise it at some point, so the best thing to do is design the system so that the least damage will result. Paper ballots fit this requirement much better than electronic systems do.

Re:No. Electronic. Voting. Ever.

[laron]

>Give me 5 minutes alone with a ballot box, and I promise you a surprising shift in votes for that precinct.

And why on earth should you ever be alone with the ballot box? Not to mention that the box should be locked and sealed anyway.

After the last voter has voted and the polling station closes, you dump the ballots on a large table and start counting. Everyone is allowed to stay and watch: party representatives, concerned citizens, international observers...
You can even add a surveillance camera or three.

Bullshit

[Senjutsu]

And Ohio, alone, has a third of Canada's population. In large precincts, this is becoming impractical, if not impossible. I'm sure it'd work in smaller cities in the US, too. Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is complete and utter bullshit. Ohio has fewer total voters than Ontario, but paper ballots work in Ontario. Ohio's largest city by metropolitan population, Cleveland, has a population of 2,114,155, doesn't hold a candle to the metropolitan population of Toronto, 5,555,912, and yet paper ballots work in Toronto. Paper ballots work. They work in small populations, and they work in big populations. This "abloo abloo abloo the US alone is too big for paper ballots" meme needs to die. It's utter bullshit.

Re:Bullshit

[rtb61]

It is the very definition of modern corporate marketing. Computerised voting is only needed to inflate the profit margins of politically biased corporations. The unimaginably stupid idea of second chance voting is ludicrous. Voting is meant to be secret and anonymous but some corporate slug comes up the the marketing bull shit of checking peoples votes, which is inherently the most anti-democratic obscene idea.

Corrupting election based upon manual systems requires a huge amount of effort and in countries where there is even a minimum of honest election auditing, more often than not, gets found out and the anti-democracy offenders get prosecuted.

Electronic voting allows for the mass corruption of elections and is most often supported by corporate executives for exactly that reason.

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

I call bullshit.

Australia has complex ballots as well - potentially far more complex than yours. We do use manually-counted paper ballots. We deal with it by breaking them up into separate ballot papers, which are counted separately, and indeed into separate elections as well. So we have separate federal, state, and occasionally even local elections, along with separate referendums where required.

A federal election has two separate ballot papers. One for electing the local member of parliament, and one for the senate.

In the case of the MP ballot, all voters are required to cast a vote for each candidate, in order of preference. That means that this ballot contains a list of around ten candidates, numbered starting from 1 for the first choice. This is the simplest of the two.

Here is what it looks like

The senate ballot contains a list of everyone running for a senate seat. There are two options - vote for a single party and use their choices for the rest of the senate seats, or number each runner in order of preference.

Here is that one looks like. Bear in mind that the real one is much larger, and has many more options than that sample.

Every citizen is required to vote. Voter turnout is therefore somewhere higher than 99%. Since everyone must vote, we have a system designed to make every vote count. In the case of the MPs, your vote eventually ends up going to one of the two major parties anyway - as each candidate is eliminated, their votes are reallocated according to voter preference. In the case of the senate, the guy with the most votes gets a seat, and their votes are reallocated among the remaining candidates according to voter preferences, and this repeats until all candidates are eliminated.

This is all done manually.

10 years ago called they want their tech back

[davidwr]

Well before the fiasco of 2000, I voted in a precinct that had a local optical-ballot counter.

You filled in an optical-scan ballot and put it in the machine.

If the machine detected an over-vote or a spoiled ballot it spit it out. This was a clue to check your ballot for errors.

If you insisted on voting that way anyways there was a manual override.

It didn't care about undervotes, it rightly counted those as abstentions.

At the end of the day, the election judge turned a key and it spit out an unofficial total for that precinct.

All the ballots and machines went to a local or county counting location where the ballots were officially removed from the machines and officially counted.

It was easy to compare the official and unofficial counts to spot for irregularities.

Very simple very easy very quick very accurate. The only thing missing was machine-assisted voting for those who couldn't read or mark an optical ballot.

lawsuits

[ArchieBunker]

If the US govt implemented this idea then everyone who was illiterate or born without arms would sue under the disability act.

Re:Okay, I know this is America, but ...

[Actually, I do RTFA]

How, exactly, can there be a voting error in the first place? The voter votes. Done. The voter "made a mistake?" Same answer: "Done. Try better next time, sir."

Voting error usually means that there was some problem, technical or otherwise, that prevented the voter from communicating the vote to the tabulator. This can be as sinister as intentionally losing ballots that vote for an opposing party. It can also be as benign as the voter accidentally checking one box, erasing it, and checking another box, and the OCR machine has trouble reading it. Basically, the ACLU wants the ballots scanned in such a way as a mechanical problem that causes the ballot not to be read to lead to the ballot being destroyed, and the voter given a new one. Or, in other words, scanned on the way out of th polling place.

Lastly, there are many forms of voting that allow people to change their votes as the voting is ongoing. However, these are iterative contests, such as run-offs. The only reason not to allow someone to change their vote at any time over election day is the possibility (110%) of fraud and abuse of the system.

Re:Persistent need to leave holes

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

Why do we even need "code"? My aunt works at the town hall of a small town of about 600 people, when election time comes around they fill out a piece of paper and it goes into a wooden box. When the voting is over, an official counts the ballots by hand. I'm pretty sure we've been voting since before we had computers, but I did go to public schools I could be wrong... why not check out what we did 30-50 years ago and.. well, do that?

My letter to the ACLU

[Daniel Dvorkin]

I've been an ACLU member for years, and I was just about to renew my membership when this came up. Here's what I sent them:

===

The Associated Press reports today that the ACLU is pressing Cuyahoga County, Ohio, not to go through with a planned switch from electronic voting machines to optical-scan paper ballots. This is a terrible position to take, and it is honestly enough to make me question whether or not I should renew my membership for the year.

While I appreciate the ACLU's hard work for voting rights in many areas, the simple fact is that electronic voting machines may be the single most pressing problem our electoral system faces. They are by their very nature unaccountable and amenable to large-scale election fraud. Any move to abandon these machines (which are manufactured and operated almost exclusively by private companies with right-wing ties) should be applauded, not suppressed. This is an issue of particular note in Ohio, given that electronic voting machine fraud in that state in 2004 may well have been responsible for the outcome of that year's Presidential race, with its terrible consequences for our nation.

I sincerely hope that the ACLU will reverse its position on this case and take a strong stand in favor of paper ballots. Silence on this issue is a barely acceptable position for America's leading civil rights organization; supporting the wrong side in this battle is not acceptable at all, to me and I suspect to many other people who have supported the ACLU for years. If the ACLU persists in opposing the planned Cuyahoga County move, I will regretfully conclude that I can no longer support this great organization.

One thng you need: software freedom

[jbn-o]

It's not that difficult. But people in positions of political power are disincentivized from doing the right thing. This includes talking to technical people who advocate for free software voting machines so that we can end up with machines that produce voter-verifiable paper ballots which are stored for manual counting and are built on a free software system so that the county/state can get programmers they can trust when things don't work correctly. Having a choice of proprietors is just picking your monopolist and then hoping they'll do what you want when the contract is signed.

Instead of spending millions on a new proprietary system that will not adequately address local needs issues (and thus cause great embarrassment for the clerks who chose them), they could spend money (even with other states and counties) developing voting machines they can maintain and inspect as much as they like. Counties and states can purchase the required black box testing themselves, they don't need ES&S, Diebold, etc. to do this for them.

In this particular case, the ACLU's fear—voters not being immediately notified that their ballots are invalid—can be dealt with by a computer which scans (but doesn't count) their paper voter-verified ballot. Not only can most voters have an opportunity to read their paper ballot, they could plug in a pair of headphones into the computer and have the computer read them their ballot back and then determine if that comports with their intended vote. Then after this proofing (human and/or computer) each voter has a reasonable expectation that their ballot is valid and accurately reflects their intention.

I was part of the appointed group that recommended a set of voting machines for Champaign County, Illinois' elected County Board. Due to some not-completely-honest measures about only hearing from "approved" vendors, and a bunch of poor choices, I was pushed into picking the least-worst which happened to be a set of ES&S machines (one scanned and/or produced a paper voter-verifiable ballot, the other counted that paper ballot and physically retained it in a locked cabinet). Champaign County ended up with ES&S machines, only one of which had been approved for use by the state (in the state's bound-to-be-bullshit testing regime). The hurdles to overcome aren't ridiculously difficult. It will be hard to get some people to understand that it's beneficial to have local control over the voting machine so the machines can be reprogrammed to meet local needs (including changing the software to accommodate non-first-past-the-post voting, and generally fixing bugs or adding enhancements a county decides they want after the voting hardware contract is signed).

One thing that would really help (nothing like the power of a good example) is a free software voting machine that works just like the ES&S paper ballot scanning machines. These machines have a remarkably simple interface, good and adjustable voice, clear display, and headphone jacks. But these machines run on proprietary software which ES&S isn't willing to relicense (despite being their customer). So you're stuck with them for "support" and that means hoping they'll share your county's idea of what your voting system should do.

Re:Persistent need to leave holes

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

It works for more than 600 people, and I'm sure there's no county in the US that has 600 million people in it.

Define democracy.

[palegray.net]

"Democracy is a system of government whereby the people get no better than they deserve."

Yes, democracy is the best system of government available. Still, the question isn't one of "is the general population aware of voting issues", it's "does the general population actually care about voting issues"... That question leads to some pretty depressing answers.

Concur

[happyslayer]

I was in the same position: Asked to come in as a technical consultant to look over the proposals for the electronic voting system to be used.

Again, it was "least deficient" when I made my final recommendation. ES&S at least tried to look like they were supplying a system that following the boilerplate RFP (Request for Proposals, a govt term meaning "I want a system to do this; waddaya got?"). One item that particularly stood out was the following:

• RFP specified a three-tier database system. (For non-geeks, it means that the database and front-end GUI were separated by a third system that "translates" between what the user wants and what the system supplies.)
• ES&S stated that theirs was a three-tier database system with "blah-blah-blah".
• Diebold stated that their system was a "two-tier, three-tier, or n-tier system" depending upon the customer's setup.

Now, this is a geeky point of contention, but to me, it said that Diebold's marketing folks were just throwing in crap to make it sound like they were fulfilling the requirement. I recommended that Diebold should not be used because of their marketing double-speak.

(To finish up, I was told by the Election Board that they were already bound to a solution if they wanted funding: "If we don't buy the system the state wants, we won't get the funds to do the upgrade at all, and we will not be in compliance." Being that this was on Kenneth Blackwell's watch as Secretary of State, I wasn't surprised, only mildly disappointed.)

But, bad purchase aside, Scioto County, OH now uses optical scanners at each of the polling places. The voter gets immediate feedback on problems, and this point of contention never came up. (*chuckle* Not even going to touch all the other problems...)

As an Ohioan, my first question would be "What the fsck is going on up in Cleveland?!?" But, as a voter in these times, I am, again, only mildly disappointed.

Fraud proof?

[nem75]

"It's not the votes that count. It's who counts the votes."

Old Stalin was not the first and not the last to know this. It doesn't matter what kind of elaborate systems you think up to make elections fraud proof - in the end there will always be successful efforts to change the results, no matter what you do.

So you might as well stay with the pen & paper method. At least there the evidence of fraud is a bit harder to get rid of then opposed to changing some numbers in a machine.

What the fuck is wrong with you people?

[ajs318]

Simple solution:

Count the fucking ballots by fucking hand in the fucking polling station in the fucking presence of the fucking candidates.

There is no machinery, therefore no systemic failure modes that are not universally comprehensible. By definition, none of the candidates trust each other; so they'll all be watching extra-hard in case anyone else makes a mistake. There are more than one person there, so disputes can be resolved easily: if a majority cannot agree that a ballot is correctly filled, it is rejected. No ballots can get lost because they stayed in the polling station the whole time. The process can be parallelised in each polling station, so the final result is available as soon as the slowest count is completed.

Re:Persistent need to leave holes

[bigpat]

Why do we even need "code"? My aunt works at the town hall of a small town of about 600 people, when election time comes around they fill out a piece of paper and it goes into a wooden box. When the voting is over, an official counts the ballots by hand. I'm pretty sure we've been voting since before we had computers, but I did go to public schools I could be wrong... why not check out what we did 30-50 years ago and.. well, do that? I suspect most people reading what you wrote will say to themselves 'How quaint, only 600 people' and then move on, but they may lose the point that maybe the government shouldn't be trying to scale the polling places to handle more than a relatively small number of people at the precinct level. If States simply capped the size of a polling place to handle a few thousand registered voters, then a lot of these problems go away and you just need to worry about finding volunteers to staff the polling places (which could be made an obligation like jury service). How many more elections do we have to see where large population centers are effectively disenfranchised by hours long waits at polling places which try to "serve" tens of thousands of voters on election day. My polling place serves under 4000 registered voters (with much fewer that actually vote) with optical scan paper ballots. With a realistically manageable number of people there are never serious waits to vote and people are in and out in a few minutes.

Cap the number of registered voters allowed per precinct per election worker and per actual polling station and eliminate the inequalities and bullshit. Eliminate the publicly paid for partisan primaries if you want to save money.

Seems like a simple management principle to me, don't manufacture efficiencies of scale at the expense of the quality of what you are trying to do. In other words, treat people like people and not like just another cog in the wheel.

Has anyone here actually ever voted?

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We use precincts to divide these large numbers into manageable units, like the 600 person town cited above.

There are very simple manual fixes to the system, but that largely ignores the other problems with the American voting system, namely the lack of run-off features which encourage voting for a likable candidate rather than a perceived front-runner.

What I rather like as a fix however is a system like the British have used for a long time where the party in the majority elects a representative to lead them. Much more democratic and less subject to manipulation in general.

Unfortunately this kind of change will require a rather substantial constitutional amendment, not likely to happen unless you do start voting and actually demand a change.