ACLU of Ohio Sues To Block Paper Ballots

Apu writes in to inform us that the ACLU is trying to block an Ohio county from moving from touchscreen voting machines back to paper ballots. While it may seem like Cuyahoga County — which includes Cleveland — is moving in a good direction from the perspective of ballot security, the system chosen tabulates all votes at a central location. This means that voters don't get notified if their ballot contains errors, and thus they have no chance to correct it. The ACLU of Ohio is asking a federal judge for an injunction against any election in Cuyahoga County it they move to the new system.

Comments

Voting is a serious activity

[benzapp]

If someone cannot take the time to devote a minimum amount of effort to fill out a ballot properly, perhaps they should not vote at all.

A frivolous lawsuit.

Disenfranchising the minuscule number of people who cannot fill out a paper ballot pails in comparison with the threat posed by computerized voting systems. The ACLU has their priorities all wrong.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[bytta]

Of course voting is serious. But traceability is a big part of a fair election.

Why American voters put up with a system that does not give them the chance of a recount (or even confirming that the terminal cast your vote correctly), is beyond me...

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[Microlith]

If someone cannot take the time to devote a minimum amount of effort to fill out a ballot properly, perhaps they should not vote at all.

No, they should be notified of their error immediately and be allowed to correct it. You are wholly wrong here.

A bad system vs. a bad system. Except the paper ballot system is likely easily corrected by pulling the scanner machines out of the centralized location and placing them in the polling venues. In stark contrast the systemic flaws seemingly designed into most electronic voting systems.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[Icarus1919]

Wait, I can't remember anymore, are we for or against paper ballots, or for or against touch screen?

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[SuseLover]

...is moving in a good direction from the perspective of ballot security, the system chosen tabulates all votes at a central location.

I don't think "central location" is a good way to tabulate the votes though. It would be easier to manipulate votes at a single location by a few people than it would if the tally is distributed across many people and locations, plus it distributes the work load in parallel so that sub-totals are quick. At least it would be much harder to hide with so many different personnel involved.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[riseoftheindividual]

I have to agree. Centralized vote counting? Forget people trying to correct their mistakes for a moment(I do think that's important though), how in the hell can people independently validate the vote tallies? In my state, the vote tallies for each precinct at the end of the day are posted outside of the voting stations. There are numerous individuals representing numerous interests who go around and count those tallies. I'm not saying my state's system is perfect or anything, but there is a degree of transparency in our system that I just can't see a central counting system ever having. Is it as "efficient"? No, but this isn't mass production in a free market for christ's sake, this is the vote of the people of our republic deciding the future of our government.

Getting back to the error getting corrected at the polling place... I saw this on several occasions having grown up in a neighborhood with a lot of seniors. When you have trembling hands, mistakes can be made. I don't see why having trembling hands should mean their vote gets disqualified as if that means they're stupid or something. There's a lot of valid physical ailments people can have that might lead to a mistake, and I personally have seen optical scanners onsite at polling stations catch them and allow the person to correct them.

Voting is indeed a serious activity, serious enough to warrant a system that concerns itself with making sure that everyone's vote gets counted accurately whether they make a mistake or not.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[joggle]

Ideally people would fill out a paper ballot. It would then be scanned by an optical scanner at the polling station and print out the official ballot (confirming your choices on a screen first I guess). You would then deposit the ballot that was printed out. Touch screens would still be in place for blind people so that they can fill out a ballot without assistance. These would also print out ballots, replacing the step of filling one out with plain old pen and paper with using the computer.

I don't know if it's necessary to print out a copy of your ballot, but it seems that could be a nice fail-safe to ensure that it will always scan correctly since it would essentially be a perfectly filled out ballot. Also, having two copies of each ballot may help prevent any voting fraud (only the computer-generated ballot would be counted in the election of course, keeping the other copy to verify the results with random samples).

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, I can't remember anymore, are we for or against paper ballots, or for or against touch screen?

We're against stupid shit, which includes machines where nobody can confirm whether they're reporting the correct numbers or not, as well as having people (who, as blackboxvoting discovered, may or may not meet the legal requirements) truck boxes of ballots to a central counting station where a few (if not "one") people get to "count" the ballots in privacy and comfort.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[eviloverlordx]

We're for and against paper ballots, and for and against touch screens - As long as the outcome is the one we want.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[_KiTA_]

If someone cannot take the time to devote a minimum amount of effort to fill out a ballot properly, perhaps they should not vote at all.

A frivolous lawsuit.

Disenfranchising the minuscule number of people who cannot fill out a paper ballot pails in comparison with the threat posed by computerized voting systems. The ACLU has their priorities all wrong.


That's not the point. The point is pulling all these in a central database makes it absolutely trivial to rig an election. There's a reason people are asking for a paper TRAIL not just paper ballots.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[beadfulthings]

People don't need to be disenfranchised if they can't fill out a paper ballot. It's quite possible to set up a procedure where the paper ballot is filled in, block by block, by an election official working with the voter, and in the presence of two election judges. The ballot is then reviewed by all concerned. It's a reasonably fair and impartial method, and a private area can be set up at the polling place to accommodate such voters. The presence of the two judges (one from each party) provides a substantial assurance that the ballot will be completed in accordance with the voter's requirements. I've seen this done many times over the years in my own precinct. Ironically, in my own state (Maryland), a goodly majority of the visually impaired citizens who were interviewed for a recent newspaper article have expressed a preference for the paper ballot. They cite exactly the same doubts about electronic voting as the rest of the population.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[erroneus]

Is it really too hard to imagine what it's like not to care about things like voting? It has long been observed that the people of the US regard themselves as powerless to change anything at all. Commonly spoken expressions such as "you can't fight city hall" have dated back more than four decades and probably more. The fact that the US civil war and the American Revolution war of the 18th century happened shows that many things have changed but not the least of which is where the center of power actually lies.

We just don't have the correct amount of oppression or corruption from our government yet. We're actually quite a long way from that point at the moment. But one sign of that tipping point approaching is when hundreds are made to suffer when a few act. That is to point out that when the Revolutionary war happened, there really weren't that many people acting in revolt. But when they did, the oppressive and corrupt government was to come down on everyone which ACTUALLY made the war start. There were plenty of people loyal to England and the British Empire. There were lots more who were indifferent and only cared about their daily lives. But that all changed when these indifferent people became victims of war, then they had to fight or die.

So you see, we're rather far away from that point. To make revolution even more unlikely, our educational system churns out products good enough to be workers, but not quite good enough to think for themselves, and there is certainly no real emphasis on history because if there were any, even the 'workers' would be able to realize there are some pretty big problems going on.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[afidel]

The problem is, the computerized system ALREADY centralizes the vote counting, and in a MUCH less transparent way. The memory cards containing the vote tallies from the machines are brought to the board of elections and the votes downloaded to the server there (the server that repeatedly crashed during the last election causing the switch to scantron ballots). Now both parties have numerous people there overseeing the process and if they think there is something wrong they will of course ask for a hand recount where the ballots are tallied twice by a representative from each party. My problem with the ACLU petition is that NO system can be idiot proofed and so demanding a perfect system before we can switch off the damned electronic machines is asnine. Sure if there was time and money ideally they could get scantron machines for each polling station and train the poll workers to use them but there isn't and I think it's MUCH less dangerous to a fair and transparent election to go with the proposed scantron method. If this lawsuit proceeds it's likely I will be disenfranchised from the primary election (because I seriously doubt there is time to lineup all the technicians needed to oversee the electronic machines in time) and I am pissed about that.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[Anonymous Coward]

We're actually quite a long way from that point at the moment.

Ha!

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[QuantumRiff]

Having your vote tallied by someone in running a machine in front of you defeats the whole purpose of confidentiality. They know exactly what I voted for, since they are right there at the machine. I would be against having my neighbor run my vote through a machine. (And if you can't expect the people to vote correctly, you certainly can't expect them to run it through a machine correctly, you would need someone "trained" to do it)

In oregon, all votes are mailed back to each respective county clerk. The mailing envelope is opened, (it has your name and signature on it) and saved separately. Then the "secrecy envelope" is opened, with your ballot in it. Then you can know that your vote was counted, but they don't know what you voted for. Then, a team of people go over the ballots to count them (along with machines as well). Every vote that is handled has to have 3 people present while it is handled, to ensure fairness. (I believe that they can't all be of the same party). Paper ballots are never destroyed, so recounts are easy, and votes are verifiable. The whole process is really stinking easy, no driving to locations to vote on a day you have a bunch of meetings, school, etc. HUGE voter turnout. Basically, the whole state does voting the way that most states do "absentee" voting.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[ConceptJunkie]

It seems everyone thinks it's no longer possible to run an election. I don't know how it managed to work for the last 200-some years in the U.S....

And yes, I do have a problem when our system needs so much work to account for people who are barely functional. The average voter isn't sufficiently educated, and when you get someone who can't even figure out how fill out a ballot, does voting even mean anything?

It's almost impossible to make an informed decision with access to all the resources in the world because there is little or no correlation between the candidates representation of themselves and what they actually intend to do if elected.

The system is bottoming out at the lowest common denominator.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[mikael]

If the casino industry can get the user interface to a digital slot machine so simple that a child can play, how difficult can it be to get a digital voting machine to get a valid vote?

You haven't seen some of the ballot papers used in Scotland. To save money, the polling stations chose to have two votes on one ballot paper. On the left column, you had twenty candidates, of which you had to select in order of preference. On the right column, you had a smaller number of candidates of which you could only pick one. The result? 100,000 spoilt ballot papers

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[uvajed_ekil]

If someone cannot take the time to devote a minimum amount of effort to fill out a ballot properly, perhaps they should not vote at all. A frivolous lawsuit. Disenfranchising the minuscule number of people who cannot fill out a paper ballot pails in comparison with the threat posed by computerized voting systems. The ACLU has their priorities all wrong.

WRONG. Why can't the system used be better than the touchscreen system that runs on voodoo and responds with winks and nods, AND be better than the scanned paper ballot system? EVERY vote should be counted. I'm not sure how their system differs from the one we used recently in Summit County (Akron, Ohio area, adjacent to Cuyahoga County), but I think the one I used last checked for errors when we submitted our ballots by feeding them into a scanner of some sort. I don't know if this officially counted my vote then, but I seem to remember it giving feedback that the ballot was accepted. If I hadn't had a fever of 104F I would have paid more attention to that, but I was busy trying to see straight and not pass out in line.

ANY voting and tabulation system that leaves a paper trail is better than ANY similar system that does not, in my opinion. Cuyahoga County screwed up in more ways than one in recent elections, so the ACLU (and all the friends and family I have in the county) want to make damn sure they fix their shit as well as possible this time. I've heard the tales of HOURS-long lines, broken machines, a lack of staff who knew how to operated the machines, and serious result irregularities in Cuyahoga County, so this isn't just about disenfranchising a few numbskulls. The ACLU has their priorities perfectly in order.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[illegalcortex]

While I agree with most of your posts, I have to question the education aspect. First off, I think if you look at the educational system in place pre-revolution, you have to admit it's a bit lacking. Especially for the "workers" you talked about. I think it's much more likely today that some son of a working class family will get an education that allows them to think on the level of the revolutionary thinkers. I think in revolutionary times, the lack of education more likely allowed the "thinkers" to be able to control and direct the population towards rebellion. Second, it was the wealthy that actually got any kind of good education in revolutionary times. The wealthy can still get such an education. Things haven't really changed that much in those terms.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[uvajed_ekil]

I don't think "central location" is a good way to tabulate the votes though. It would be easier to manipulate votes at a single location by a few people than it would if the tally is distributed across many people and locations, plus it distributes the work load in parallel so that sub-totals are quick. At least it would be much harder to hide with so many different personnel involved.

The idea of the central tabulation facility scared me a bit, but I wasn't sure exactly why. Now that I've thought about it, it seems that it would indeed be much easier to tamper with totals, and to achieve a desired result without making the numbers from any one ward or precinct look too suspicious - a little bit here, a little bit there, a few over there, and bingo: you have changed enough votes to flop a close race the other way.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[whoever57]

No, they should be notified of their error immediately and be allowed to correct it. You are wholly wrong here.

So, according to the ACLU, all ballots were unconstitutional until the introduction of computers into voting?

The ACLU has got it wrong here, it's not just a case of one bad versus another bad, it is a case of one system where people who don't notice their mistakes will have their votes disqualified versus a system that is open to tampering on a massive scale. The ACLU (and you) need to develop a sense of perspective.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[1000baseFX]

Not to wrong, There are 10's of millions of absentee ballots cast in almost every election held and yet this issue is not brought up and you know full well that many of those are discounted because of the issues the Ohio ACLU is trying to force upon Cuyahoga County. Why don't they bitch about those "disenfranchised" voters?
hmmm?

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[uvajed_ekil]

ALong the lines of this, there is a procedure in Ohio to assist the blind or those who can not otherwise utilize a normal ballot themselves. I'm not sure how this works entirely, but there is an understanding that not everyone can work a regular ballot, whether for some physical or cognitive impairment that would not make them legally incompetent or otherwise ineligible to vote. There are conditions that prevent people form being able to read effectively, but that would not necessarily preclude them from being intelligent.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[Anonymous Coward]

If someone cannot take the time to devote a minimum amount of effort to fill out a ballot properly, perhaps they should not vote at all. Yeah, great idea. After all, it's not as if the Right Sort of People are going to be disenfranchised by this. And let's bring back some of those literacy tests while we're at it, maybe even some poll taxes.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[STrinity]

No, they should be notified of their error immediately and be allowed to correct it.

Sorry, but anonymous voting is more important than disenfranchising people who can't follow instructions.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[uvajed_ekil]

If the casino industry can get the user interface to a digital slot machine so simple that a child can play, how difficult can it be to get a digital voting machine to get a valid vote?

I'm not sure how to compare slot machines to voting machines. With slot machines, you generally give away your money and are then told how much you can have back, if any, without any choice of your own.

Oh wait, now I see!!! Voting machines can operate in the same way: you give it your input, then it decides what to do next! This perfectly illustrates the potential problem with closed-source voting machines that produce no paper trail. You give your money to the tax man rather than to the voting machine, but the end result is similar: you lose control of what happens to! A good analogy after all.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[TubeSteak]

Paper ballots are never destroyed, so recounts are easy, and votes are verifiable. Never destroyed?
Where are you from that they have the last 50 years worth of ballots saved?

Ballots get destroyed after a set amount of time that (AFAIK) varies depending on the municipal/county/state law.

For example, there was a big fuss over the Ohio ballots from the 2004 election, because their destruction date was set for Sept 2006*, but the 'there were election problems' folks still wanted to do more recounts. IIRC, they delayed the destruction, but I don't recall what was finally done with the ballots.

Some States put the 200 &/or 2004 ballots in the state archives in order to preserve them.

*Federal law permits destruction no sooner than 22 months after the Presidential election

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[rpillala]

Except that the story of the American revolution is taught throughout the k-12 years. Often I find that the real lessons of history go over kids' heads because of an emphasis on dates, names, places, facts. Content knowledge that is necessary but not sufficient. Kids' knowledge and understanding of historical events doesn't equip them to look around and see when similar events and situations are coming to pass. Pattern recognition is generally regarded as a math skill, and in math classes we mostly use visual and numeric patterns for illustration.

Since I started teaching in 1997 I've noticed that calls for interdisciplinary education (for the kids) and cross curricular connections have given way to emphasis on bare competence on tests of a pretty low standard. Our state's NCLB compliance test for high school math is in Algebra I, which isn't even high school math really. This could be just a difference between middle and high school, but even that is telling. When students reach high school, no one really talks about interrelationships between bodies of knowledge. Math class should be the most direct contact with the mental skill of abstraction but it's less and less so.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[kmac06]

Having your vote tallied by someone in running a machine in front of you defeats the whole purpose of confidentiality. They know exactly what I voted for, since they are right there at the machine. That's how it was when I voted in '06, but there was no confidentiality issue. The ballot was optical (fill-in-the-bubble), and when I was done I put it back in this little folder or under a cover sheet or something, and then gave it to one of the poll operators, who then fed it into the machine right in front of me, with the cover still on it so she couldn't see. The machine verified the ballot was filled out correctly and I was done.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[Tacvek]

Indeed. But with a little common sense, and the willingness to devote an entire day to the issue (make election day a national holiday) then it seems entirely possible to have the system quite transparent. I never got any response to my last message about a highly sane voting system (at least prior to the centralized summing of the votes from the precints). I will post it again. If I could get any comments on it, I would appreciate it.

This will assume an electronic ballot making machine. Please note it is not a voting machine. It does not attempt to store any information, but merely prints out a ballot. The ballot it prints out will have 2 parts, a human readible portion, and a machine readable portion (using some form of bar code technology or something similar). If somehow the two portions do not agree, the human readable part will prevail. That is because the human readable portion is the part the voter most likely verified.

Now for the way the vote counting works, it works by machine tallying with human oversight. There is a projection screen showing a running tally of the votes. There is also a projector. Each ballot is place on the projector one at a time to allow the audience to see the human readable votes on it. Then the ballot's bar code is scanned, and the vote tallies on the screen update. The audience can thus easily verify that the changes to the running tally match the human readable votes on the ballot. (In a many issue ballot, not everybody would be able to track every issue, but as long as at least a few people from the audience track each issue, things should be fine). People would be watching to be sure that the tallies increase only by one with each vote, never change except when a vote is scanned, and no vote is ever scanned more than once. Lack of a vote on an issue can also be tallied to ensure the sum of the votes and lack of votes tallied is equal to the total number of ballots. The precinct's final certified counts for all the issues would be presented to the audience so they can verify that it does indeed match the final tallies. Then it can be sealed, and sent on. This system would make the entire process up to the precinct level completely transparent.

Obviously this does not eliminate problems occurring at higher levels, but it does seem to work very well for the rest of it. Also note that there is noting about this system that truly requires electronic devices. The ballots could be filled out by hand, and the ballot tally process could be done using a bunch of regular old mechanical counting devices, (the odometer like ones that increase each time the button is pushed). However, here the electronics would be not be black boxes at all. They would simply be helping to speed up the process some. In fact that is quite desirable at the vote counting portion, as the speed is fast enough so that the audience does not fall asleep, but slow enough that the audience an still verify that the tallying is still correct.

Looking forward to any critiques of this system.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[uhlume]

Try reading the full sentence, next time: the summary is alluding to the same point. (Hint: the word you seem to have overlooked is "While".)

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[erroneus]

I often wish I had chosen the more noble path of the educator, but I felt then as I feel today that my ideas and potential practices would not be well received by administration. And yes, the bare emphasis on competence is exactly what is wrong with what's going on in education today.

And as far as history goes, we're missing out on the best available information in understanding human behavior and reducing human tragedy both now and in the future. Instead, we continue to hold ourselves as 'mysterious' and 'unpredictable' and count every disaster as unique, unprecedented and/or unpredictable. None of this is true.

Hindsight is NOT 20/20 when viewed through the lenses of our educational system.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen, brother! I don't know of a "right to change your vote" in this country. You vote, you turn in the ballot, and if you made a mistake, then live with it.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[TubeSteak]

It has long been observed that the people of the US regard themselves as powerless to change anything at all. Commonly spoken expressions such as "you can't fight city hall" have dated back more than four decades and probably more. "you can't fight city hall" was copyrighted in 1946. The Great Depression had only "ended" a few years earlier and the country had moved right into WWII, with the strict rules and rationing that went along with it. Back then, millions of Americans were literally powerless to change anything.

The expression literally means "you can't fight bureaucracy" and this was true in an age where compliance was considered patriotic... Not to mention that this was right around the time McCarthyism was building up to a full head of steam.

Bureaucracy has not changed much since those times, but Government has.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[Ironsides]

Critique: Time required. It would take days to have to manually display a single ballot at a time. There is really no reason not to use a machine to count the ballots. In fact, these machines already exist and have been used for years. Actually, they have been used for over a Century since at least the 1900 census.

One of the ways they double-check the machine is by feeding through a random sampling of ballots and checking the totals on the sample.

Correction:
Obviously this does not eliminate problems occurring at other levels

Ballot switching/stuffing is still not resolved and can occur at a 'lower' level.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[GodfatherofSoul]

The problem isn't PAPER BALLOTS (nice job editors)! It's another "silently failing" system just as that used to disenfranchise voters in Florida circa 2000. And, it's not just an issue of voter error. The machine could malfunction and you wouldn't know it.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[Ironsides]

Actually, it would make it easier. In a close election, one would only need to manipulate one or two of the local locations to change the outcome. Having multiple locations means that you have more chances to find an 'agreeable' location. A central counting facility is easier to watch than multiple facilities.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[uhlume]

Voting is a serious activity. And the objective of that serious activity is an expression of one's political will, not a demonstration of one's proficiency at making marks in boxes. You fucking tool.

Please explain why someone's (in)ability to accurately mark a ballot on the first try should be more relevant to the practice of democracy than the vote they intended to cast.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[1u3hr]

No, they should be notified of their error immediately and be allowed to correct it. You are wholly wrong here.

With old-fashioned paper votes, you never got feedback if you fucked up. I worked as a poll clerk in a few elections in Australia. The "spoiled votes", invalid for whatever reason, were 1 or 2%. Many of these were obviously deliberate -- no numbers or ticks at all. Only a very small number looked like real errors. And these were on quite complex senate voting forms with 50 or more candidates.

Anyone who might have a problem filling out a form, because of visual or physical disability, can ask for help. Voting clerks aren't supposed to do this, but if asked they usually will help you fill out the form. Or bring a relative or friend.

My personal opinion is if someone can't work out how to put ticks in boxes correctly, tough. Take it seriously or stay home.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[ChromaticDragon]

Umm...

I think you need to practice some (self-)education yourself.

Go back and investigate literacy rates in the New England colonies circa 1750. You'll very likely be surprised. Hint - it was very likely the highest anywhere in the world at that time.

Next, go and grab a handful of the essays and debates of the time. It shouldn't be difficult. People were debating the merits of rebellion in person and in print all over the place back then. Once you have a good number of these treatises, essays and debates, I want you to ponder whether the son of some (average) working class family today would even be able to read these at all, much less properly analyze, criticize or "think at that level". Again, I imagine you'll be rather surprised.

The Revolutionary War was NOT the result of a few thinkers manipulating the crowds, although I think you can make a strong case of that sort of thing happening here and there (cough.. cough... Boston Tea Party... cough.. cough..). Many people in many corners of the colonies were very ready for independence. Indeed, it was almost certainly inevitable.

As an example, go and research the origins of the Declaration of Independence. You'll find it's hard to do so since there were many, many such declarations being passed all over the colonies by various representative bodies.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[1u3hr]

Getting back to the error getting corrected at the polling place... I saw this on several occasions having grown up in a neighborhood with a lot of seniors. When you have trembling hands, mistakes can be made

I worked as a poll clerk a few years (decades....) ago. Any elderly people who had a problem marking their ballot could ask for help. They would be allowed to take someone into the booth to help them, a friend, family, or even a the poll clerks might help, though thay were not striclty supposed to. In any case, if they made a mistake they could just ask for a new ballot.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[zotz]

"In oregon, all votes are mailed back to each respective county clerk."

And how do you ensure a secret ballot in the system you outlined? If the voter wants it to be non-secret or is being pressured to prove his ballot by some third party...

all the best,

drew

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[Ironsides]

You haven't seen some of the ballot papers used in Scotland. To save money, the polling stations chose to have two votes on one ballot paper. On the left column, you had twenty candidates, of which you had to select in order of preference. On the right column, you had a smaller number of candidates of which you could only pick one. The result? 100,000 spoilt ballot papers

You must not be from the U.S. In most states, we vote on something every year, not just every four. Last year, I voted on at least 8 things with one or two of them involving voting for multiple people for a board. In the U.S., we are used to voting for multiple things on a single ballot.

Here are the election results for that year. We had two bond issues, a state senator, a state delegate, soil and water director (vote for three), County Clerk, County Attorney, County Sheriff, Chairman of Board of Supervisors, Board Representative, School Board (vote for three), School Board local.

Ok, 12 issues and we voted for three people in two of them. There were a few more things to vote on than usual, but not a lot more.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[slapout]

That's the way we do it here, except that we stick the ballot in the machine ourselves.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[erroneus]

[x] "Compliance" is patriotic
[x] Americans are powerless to change anything

Yeah, I'd say those are both true today.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[Tacvek]

Critique: Time required. It would take days to have to manually display a single ballot at a time. There is really no reason not to use a machine to count the ballots. In fact, these machines already exist and have been used for years. Actually, they have been used for over a Century since at least the 1900 census.

One of the ways they double-check the machine is by feeding through a random sampling of ballots and checking the totals on the sample.

Correction:
Obviously this does not eliminate problems occurring at other levels

Ballot switching/stuffing is still not resolved and can occur at a 'lower' level. Well then work at a lower level. Do the initial counts at the polling place. There is no reason for that not to be feasible. It should certainly not take more than a few hours at most average-sized polling places. Then the task is adding a column of numbers at each higher level (the sums get passed onto the next higher level). That is well known skill, and one that can eailly be checked by other concerned parties.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[Ironsides]

That two weeks is for counting at the polling places. The poling places serve a few thousand people each.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[Dhalka226]

If someone cannot take the time to devote a minimum amount of effort to fill out a ballot properly, perhaps they should not vote at all.

You're on an awfully high horse, and for no particular reason. Mistakes happen every day. Ask a teacher how often a student accidentally skips a question, particularly on forms like the Scantron where they are often presented with large vertical lists of bubbles. Ask them how many times they've seen a student accidentally bubble in two options on the same line. You're going to get a lot of observations of these mistakes and more.

It doesn't make these people idiots or mean they were careless. It doesn't mean they aren't passionate, informed voters. It certainly doesn't mean that their votes shouldn't be counted. That's what the ACLU is fighting for. They want every vote possible to be counted. They want a system where a ballot is verified at the polling place where it can be corrected before it is sent along to be counted, where any errors would be final and potentially fatal for the ballot.

This system exists already. Cook County in Illinois uses punch-card ballots, but at the end you fed your ballot into a machine for validation. It would alert you to both an overvote (you voted more than once for something) and an undervote (you didn't vote for something). At that point it was your option: you could drop the ballot in the box, not casting your vote for a position (undervote) or having one discarded (due to overvote), or you could correct the problem, at worst, by being provided another ballot.

What exactly is wrong with that? Ensuring that every vote possible be counted is central to democracy, and it's certainly not frivolous. (Don't get me started about how they treat absentee ballots.)

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[wwejason]

I don't know why each county in Ohio has to do its own thing. I live in Hamilton County (Cincinnati) and here we use paper ballots. You color in the boxes on the double sided, large print ballot. Then you stick it into a scanner at the polling station. Every polling place has at least one scanner. The scanner ensures that there are no errors. On the screen, the user who inserts the ballot either sees a green checkmark and a thank you message or a red x and it spits the ballot back out. The ballots do get counted at a central location, but the voter also gets immediate feedback to make sure that they voted properly.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[mrosgood]

Bzzt! Wrong!

If someone cannot take the time to devote a minimum amount of effort to fill out a ballot properly, perhaps they should not vote at all.

You have exactly no idea what you're talking about.

A mistake, sometimes by the voter, does not mean you lose the right to vote. Just like you don't lose the right to free speech when you just make things up.

I'd like to hear you explain to my grandmother, or a quadriplegic, why their votes won't be counted because they didn't have the necessary skills to color little circles correctly.

Let me explain some things to you, and all the people who modded you up...

My county, King County WA, was manually duplicating 14% of mail ballots during the elections of 2006. That means the votes are copied from the original ballot to a crisp, fresh new ballot, which is then tabulated. Things improved for while. Then our last general election, the dupe rate was over 10%.

Why are ballots duplicated? Because we're a "voter intent" state.

Yes, but why are the ballots duplicated? Because the op-scans (we currently use Diebold's AccuVote OS) can't correctly scan the votes.

Why can't the votes be scanned? A zillion reasons:

- Write-in candidates can't be op-scanned.
- Diebold, who manufacturers the ballots, messes up the printing, so the timing marks aren't in register.
- Poor card stock could be used to produce the ballots.
- The voter used the wrong color of ink or a pencil.
- The voter changed their mind.
- The ballot got mutilated in the mail.
- Etc.

Disenfranchising the minuscule number of people who cannot fill out a paper ballot pails in comparison with the threat posed by computerized voting systems. The ACLU has their priorities all wrong.

OhMyActingHead. You are so wrong, in so many ways, in just this one sentence, I don't know where to begin. In the interests of my blood pressure, I'll limit myself to just three (3) points.

#1 - Disenfranchising any voter is unconstitutional and a felony.

First, you argue that loosing the right to vote is the voter's fault. Then, you dismiss systematic disenfranchisement (due the method of election administration) as no big deal. Which is it?

Further, with our "first past the post" elections, one vote is all it takes. And this is more common than anyone realizes. In King County, every general election for years has had a mandatory recount because the results were so tight. In about 1/2 of the recounts, the official result gets flipped. You may be familiar with our 2004 Governor's race, Gregoire vs Rossi?

#2 - How do you think ballots at central count are counted? Pixies?

Central count, and mail balloting in particular, is the functional equivalent as using touchscreen voting machines.

- No more voter privacy.
- No more public vote count.
- No more auditability.
- Secret vote counting software on proprietary machines.
- No more election integrity.
- Both systems are huge expensive.
- Both systems are unreliable.

#3 - The single most reliable way available today is to count ballots is to use precinct-based optical scanners.

Central count, either with mail balloting or Ohio's proposed system of counting poll ballots at a central location, disenfranchises voters. The biggest reason is because you loose the "second chance" feature. That's the op-scan feature that was disabled in Florida's predominately Democratic, African-American precincts during the 2000 election.

Why the "second chance" feature disabled? Because not allowing voters to correct their mistakes effectively disenfranchises them. And in Florida, if any part of the ballot is unreadable, the whole ballot is tossed. (I don't know what Ohio's rules are.)

---

So, in summary, your opinions in this matter are a) unfortuna

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[JimBobJoe]

but I don't recall what was finally done with the ballots.

The current Secretary of State ordered them retained.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[mrosgood]

If by "HUGE voter turnout", you mean systematically disenfranchises voters and causes a long-term decline in voter turnout, then yea, the Oregon system of force mail voting is terrific.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[rtb61]

Of course in Australia every state and every polling station follows the same principle, if a citizen stuffs it up on one election, they can ensure the next time around they will not make the same mistake. State and federal elections are all run the same way, largely at the same polling stations, counted in the same manner, and ballots are largely similar.

No matter what happens practice generally will help to resolve any problems and most students are taught about voting, ballots etc. in primary school. Uniformity and keep it simple stupid, helps to create a clear, open and mostly honest system.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[mpe]

If someone cannot take the time to devote a minimum amount of effort to fill out a ballot properly, perhaps they should not vote at all.

It's also perfectly possible that a voter would want to deliberatly fill out a ballot paper "incorrectly". Especially if options like "none of the above" are missing or the instructions state something like "pick 3 from this list of candidates", but the voter thinks somewhere between 0 and 2 of the candidates are fit for the job.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[sumdumass]

I don't think this move is about making sure people can check their vote before casting it as much as it is leaving a level of controversy on the table.

It seems that since 2000, creating controversy or pointing it out has been a way to gain support, donations, notoriety, and whatever else some people see as an advantage to them. I'm not going to limit this to political partied either, we have seen supposed community leaders fly in from two states away to give a speech on how "you got screwed" and pass the collection plate around. One could say there is big money, and lots of power when controversies exist.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[mpe]

A bad system vs. a bad system. Except the paper ballot system is likely easily corrected by pulling the scanner machines out of the centralized location and placing them in the polling venues.

What happens if the machine and/or it's supply of electricity fails. All someone who wants to disrupt the election needs to do is switch the power off.
If you want secure elections the first thing to do is to have ballots counted by people in as public a way as possible. The kind of machines which are useful here include video cameras.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[Thyrteen]

Hmm.. it's probably about 4 decades. Didn't the CIA kill Guevara about '67? Revolution's dead, man. where have you been? :D

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[servognome]

Next, go and grab a handful of the essays and debates of the time. It shouldn't be difficult. People were debating the merits of rebellion in person and in print all over the place back then

Surf the net and read some blogs and you'll see the exact same thing happening now.

I want you to ponder whether the son of some (average) working class family today would even be able to read these at all, much less properly analyze, criticize or "think at that level". Again, I imagine you'll be rather surprised.

I would guess its the same as before, pretty much everybody will have an opionion, but only a few really understand all the subtleties. Even the leaders couldn't agree on what they were really fighting for - See the failure of the Articles of Confederation and the differences between Hamilton & Jefferson leading to the two party system.

The Revolutionary War was NOT the result of a few thinkers manipulating the crowds, although I think you can make a strong case of that sort of thing happening here and there (cough.. cough... Boston Tea Party... cough.. cough..). Many people in many corners of the colonies were very ready for independence. Indeed, it was almost certainly inevitable.

All wars are the result of a few thinkers manipulating the crowds, notice how most of the fighters are young & poor - the easiest people to manipulate.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[instarx]

Having your vote tallied by someone in running a machine in front of you defeats the whole purpose of confidentiality. They know exactly what I voted for, since they are right there at the machine. I would be against having my neighbor run my vote through a machine. (And if you can't expect the people to vote correctly, you certainly can't expect them to run it through a machine correctly, you would need someone "trained" to do it) I can't believe you have ever actually voted, or at least ever voted using a paper ballot that is scanned. Poll workers don't look at your ballot or know how you voted, the sheets are fed into a scanner upside down by the poll worker and a counter increments to let you know your ballot was scanned correctly. If there is a problem with your ballot (not necessarily equated with "not being able to fill out a ballot properly"), you will know it and the error can be corrected before you leave because until your ballot has been scanned you have not yet voted and your ballot is still in your possession.

You really ought to know more about what you are talking about before you dismiss scanned paper ballots as not confidential. And by the way, in the US votes are secret, not confidential.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[Man On Pink Corner]

Bureaucracy has not changed much since those times, but Government has.

Correct. Back in the day, the Civil Defense people would give you a radiation meter and teach you how to use it. You were encouraged to do your part to keep Elm Street safe from the Red Menace.

Now, in 2007, the Communists are gone, and the New York city council wants to prohibit the ownership of unregistered Geiger counters.

I think I liked the Cold War better. At least you knew who your enemies were.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[The One and Only]

I worked as a poll clerk in a few elections in Australia. The "spoiled votes", invalid for whatever reason, were 1 or 2%. Many of these were obviously deliberate -- no numbers or ticks at all.

Well if you're in a country that throws people into jail for not voting and you honestly don't like any of the candidates, of course you're going to submit a blank ballot. Do you at least correctly handle the ballot if someone only votes on some of the seats?

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[Arbitor Elegantorum]

I am an election judge in Chicago. We use Optical-scan paper ballots plus one touchscreen machine per precinct, which is mostly used by the blind with a set of headphones. We have gone to the expense of placing a scanner in each of our hundreds of polling places. Its great advantage is that the system identifies ambiguous ballots immediately, while the voter is still there.

In 2004 a lady ticked next to the wrong candidate, so she ticked the right one, circled one of the ticks and put an X next to it, then pushed it thru the scanner. It was promptly rejected. If it had been a hand-count ballot we would have had to devine her intent by ESP, or reject her ballot. As it was, we gave her a new one to fill out (she was pissed), and we marked her original "spoiled" and put it in the correct envelope so our tallies of ballots issued would match.

I might also point out that the scanner does not show a tally when a ballot is submitted. It only shows that a valid ballot was submitted. In some of our elections there are nearly 100 names on the ticket, so nobody can really see who you voted for. After the polls close we bundle up the ballots in a sealed bag, take the chip from the scanner, and transmit the results to HQ. The ballots and the chip are returned to the collection station by one Repub and one Dem judge. We only see a cumulative total at the end of the night. Write-ins? Fine, if you keep the writing in one specific area. Such ballots are dropped by the scanner into a different compartment, and we hand-tally those votes later. Your non-write-in choices are caught by the scanner.

So much of the commentary over the last few years on the voting problem has been by people who have no idea of how elections are actually run. I encourage all of you not just to sign up for poll-watching, but to volunteer as a judge in your area. You will meet your neighbors, help the common weal, and bring your own integrity to the process. The problem isn't hackable machines, the problem is hackable people.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[gurps_npc]

You do not understand the concept of frivolous law suit. You may disagree with the idea behind the lawsuit, but it is hardly obvious.

Part of the problem here is you are making a really STUPID assumption:

That the paper ballots are designed to be clear and easy to use.

While yes it is usually possible to design a clear and easy to use paper ballot, that is not always the case. While the most obvious recent example is the famed Buterfly ballot of Florida, it is VERY easy to design a ballot that is dificult to understand if you want to do that. Simply offseting the check boxes by 1/4 of the line height can do a lot to make it hard to understand correctly

More importantly, what you are proposing is that ballots be some kind of intellegence test. But intelligence tests for ballots were declared ILLEGAL, back when they were mainly used to disenfranchise poor ex-slaves and their descendents.

So sorry, but your proposed reasoning is not only foolish but has in fact been judged wrong by the Supreme Court of the US.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[illegalcortex]

Go back and research it yourself. Measuring of literacy rates from that era is specious enough to be thrown out completely. One popular method is looking at how many people signed their name versus putting an X. It's very shaky ground, indeed. Not to mention that often when you find articles like on Wikipedia, they'll mishmash measurements that are sometimes based solely on white adult males. And if that wasn't enough, do you actually KNOW what the literacy rate is supposed to be in the US now, under our supposedly horrible education system? 99%. Yes, 99%. That's as of 2003.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html

But all of that is really beside the point. While literacy rates in the colonies may possibly have been as high as some of the sketchy measurements suggest, it doesn't tell you much beyond whether a person could read or write. You go on to say Once you have a good number of these treatises, essays and debates, I want you to ponder whether the son of some (average) working class family today would even be able to read these at all, much less properly analyze, criticize or "think at that level". But you haven't shown whether the some of some (average) working class family of colonial times could have read, analyzed, criticized or "thought at that level." You're just basing it on what you FEEL was the situation back then.

I think beyond saying that there definitely were people in the working class back then and today that would be able to do all those things, beyond that you are extrapolating wildly. You may say the same of my original post and that would be a fair criticism.

But I still stand by my statement about the modern accessibility of a good education, one beyond just literacy an basic math and teaching historical context and fostering critical thinking. And that accessibility extends not just to white males, but to those of all races and of both genders. It's still hard to work your way up from the bottom economic rung of society, but it's MUCH more likely today than at any other point in the history of the planet.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[zippthorne]

Literacy tests aren't bad because they were used to keep the illiterate from voting, but because they were intended to keep blacks from voting. At a time, I believe, when they were also endeavoring to prevent them from learning to read and using more complicated samples for people they didn't want voting.

The idea of everyone having a say conflicts with the obvious utility of rejecting those who don't understand the issues or don't really care about them. If I had my druthers, I'd run a poll the week before the election and everyone who said they were "undecided" on the main candidate, and couldn't describe any of the referendums would automatically have their voting registration suspended for that year.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[SCHecklerX]

Next, go and grab a handful of the essays and debates of the time. It shouldn't be difficult. People were debating the merits of rebellion in person and in print all over the place back then. Once you have a good number of these treatises, essays and debates, I want you to ponder whether the son of some (average) working class family today would even be able to read these at all, much less properly analyze, criticize or "think at that level". Again, I imagine you'll be rather surprised.

I blame computers.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[Phroggy]

What happens if the machine and/or it's supply of electricity fails. All someone who wants to disrupt the election needs to do is switch the power off. That's why we're talking about using paper ballots. They can be machine-counted for convenience and speed, but manually counted if anything goes wrong.

Touch screen systems should be available to fill out paper ballots for you, because they're easier to use, can flag errors before you cast your ballot, can offer more interactive information about candidates and issues, and can easily support a non-visual interface and multiple languages. If there's a problem, though, it should be possible to fill out paper ballots by hand.

Two different machines, each with an alternative: one to fill out the ballot, and one to count it. It's not that complicated.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[Guspaz]

How exactly would they get notified of their error? The idea behind a secret ballot is that nobody but the voter sees the ballot at a point where the person voting can be identified.

In Canadian federal elections, NOBODY sees your ballot after it is first handed to you, until they break the seal on the ballot boxes for tabulation. And at that point, there's no way of tying a particular ballot to a particular person. As soon as the voter fills in their ballot, the voter folds it in a specific way before leaving the booth, and it remains so folded as they walk over to the ballot box and insert it into the slot.

Any system that allows for notifying a voter that they made an error is a flawed and dangerous democratic process. I'm shocked that this is an accepted practice in the US.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[1u3hr]

Well if you're in a country that throws people into jail for not voting and you honestly don't like any of the candidates, of course you're going to submit a blank ballot. Do you at least correctly handle the ballot if someone only votes on some of the seats?

The "correct" way to handle an incomplete ballot is to reject it. But for those with short attention spans you can just tick one box to indicate you want to follow a party ticket.

And I don't think anyone has been thrown in jail for not voting. It's a small fine, $20 or so. I think that getting 95% of the population to participate in democratic elections is well worth the imposition.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[The One and Only]

The "correct" way to handle an incomplete ballot is to reject it.

So if I don't support any of the candidates for Position A, I'm disenfranchised when I do want to vote for Position B?

And I don't think anyone has been thrown in jail for not voting. It's a small fine, $20 or so. I think that getting 95% of the population to participate in democratic elections is well worth the imposition.

I certainly don't think getting 95% of the population to participate in democratic elections is desirable, either as a means or as an end, and I find the use of force to do so repugnant.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[Touvan]

Putting many badly programmed scanner machines (all programmed the same way) all over the state does not help this problem. They can be programmed to simply miscount the bad pages, and spit out a message saying "confirmed".

There is no form of machine that can do justice to the vote counting process.

Only human hand counted ballots are acceptable, as these are the hardest to manipulate (meaning you need a lot of people to do it, instead of just a few programmers). Also it's cheaper. I just don't get this machine fetish we in the US seem to have for voting.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[adwarf]

We used these the last time I voted. Basically you fill out a paper ballot and bring it to a scanner. The old guy there tells you to feed it in and you do so. The counter on the scanner increases by 1 telling you that the ballot was accepted. If there was an error the counter doesn't increase and the ballot is spit out. You shred it and do a new one. It stays anonymous, it doesn't tell anyone who you voted for, just that your ballot can be counted.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[benzapp]

I hope you feel better about yourself now that you've written this incredibly tedious and pointless post.

Truth be told, I don't even believe in democracy. The bigger question is why would a smart man like you believe the future of humanity should be the subject of a popularity contest?

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[mrosgood]

Truth be told, I don't even believe in democracy.

Nice.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[1u3hr]

So if I don't support any of the candidates for Position A, I'm disenfranchised when I do want to vote for Position B?

No, because they will be on separate ballots. So you can spoil the one you don't care about. Though for the senate when several seats are being filled you do have to choose several candidates.

I certainly don't think getting 95% of the population to participate in democratic elections is desirable, either as a means or as an end, and I find the use of force to do so repugnant.

Yes, the US system where 50% of the population is effectively disenfranchised is so much more democratic. And "use of force"? If you choose not to participate you can turn up and put in a blank ballot, or just let your voting registration lapse, or at worst pay $20. Fortunately most Australians care about their country enough to turn up once every three years.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[nguy]

And I don't think anyone has been thrown in jail for not voting. It's a small fine, $20 or so. I think that getting 95% of the population to participate in democratic elections is well worth the imposition.

Well, political scientists are divided on that.

Generally, if you don't care which candidate wins, there's no point in voting. That's the usual case in US elections, and it is both rational and democratic.

In addition, if you aren't informed enough to make a decision, you shouldn't vote. To me, 95% voter turnout means that many people who are probably quite uninformed still participate in the elections, and that's actually a bad thing.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[nguy]

Yes, the US system where 50% of the population is effectively disenfranchised is so much more democratic

First of all, "the population" has nothing to do with it, what matters is eligible voters.

People who don't vote in the US generally do so by choice. And, yes, a 50% voter turnout is both democratic and rational.

There is a significant percentage of eligible voters that are actually disenfranchised in the US (i.e., can't vote even though they want to), but I see no reason to believe that that percentage is higher than in Australia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout

Fortunately most Australians care about their country enough to turn up once every three years.

Yeah, Australia and East Germany.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[1u3hr]

Fortunately most Australians care about their country enough to turn up once every three years.
Yeah, Australia and East Germany.

How can you take pride in the fact that half your country can't be bothered to turn up and vote? It's thanks to that attitude that not just you, but the whole damn world, has had to put up with GWB.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[1u3hr]

Generally, if you don't care which candidate wins, there's no point in voting. That's the usual case in US elections, and it is both rational and democratic.

If you truly don't care, you can just put a blank ballot in the box. The thing is that knowing that you have to turn up, most people will then make the effort to think about the issues. And it stops large organised groups of zealots, who are good at organising their followers, to getting representation far beyond their proportion of population. (Such as gun nuts and evangelicals in the US.) It keeps the government more representative of the population as a whole, which is what "democracy" is supposed to be about.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[nguy]

How can you take pride in the fact that half your country can't be bothered to turn up and vote? It's thanks to that attitude that not just you, but the whole damn world, has had to put up with GWB.

The majority of Americans wanted GWB and they got him. The 40% or so that didn't vote just didn't care. It's not the outcome I like, I think the people who voted for him were stupid, but it certainly is democratic.

I also really don't see why Australians would be complaining about GWB. Bush has been a disaster for the US: he has ruined the US economy, he has bankrupted the US government, and he has dragged the name of the US through the mud.

But what problems exactly have Australians suffered under GWB? If anything, Bush's ineptness at foreign policy and at handling the economy has given Europe, Australia, and Asia a lot more power in the long run.

Re:Voting is a serious activity

[ConceptJunkie]

It seems feasible except that the time and effort involved would be something like an order of magnitude more than is required now. However, your idea could be the basis of something really good, except for the fact that it will never happen. They'll have to try every half-assed and no-assed idea they can come up with first, and that will take as long as the Republic will continue to exist.

Tough

[davidwr]

If you mis-mark your ballot and you know it they should give you a new one. If they don't then sue.

If you forget to double-check your ballot for non-votes, double-votes, stray marks, incorrect votes, etc. before you drop it in the box that's your problem. [flamebait]You've got a brain, use it[/flamebait].

It's convenient if the ballot box spits out obviously spoiled ballots but no machine can detect all errors. We've voted for 200 years with paper ballots that didn't get counted completely because someone voted for two candidates in a given race. If you accidentally voted R instead of D or vice-versa the machine isn't going to be able to read your mind.

Re:Tough

[techno-vampire]

f you mis-mark your ballot and you know it they should give you a new one. If they don't then sue.

They do, in California. You can get up to two replacements if needed.

Re:Tough

[Firethorn]

My memory is a bit fuzzy, but I think the limit up here is 8. It'd take some dedicated screw-ups to mess up that many ballots.

In addition, it shouldn't take too much effort to have the machine spit out ballots with anomalies for hand counting.

The other concern is balancing handicapped access and anonymity. Still, touch screens aren't exactly friendly to the visually impaired by default either.

Secret motto

[Wylfing]

Ohio! Committed to throwing elections since 1803!

Re:Secret motto

[0xABADC0DA]

So they obviously are really, really committed to vote fraud in Ohio. If this doesn't work out, could I suggest:

* Voters drop their ballot in the box themselves, instead a poll worker has to 'reset' the voting booth after the voter leaves by taking the vote and dropping it in the box before the next voter uses it.

* Some voters get special "not" votes, where they select all the candidate they DON"T want to vote for rather than the on they DO want to vote for. Which ballot they get can be at the discretion of the poll workers, and look identical.

* Have two sets of boxes to drop votes into, marked "republican" and "democrat". If your vote was not filed in the correct box it doesn't count. Also, the "democrat" box is half the size.

* At closing, the votes are tallied separately by each poll worker. They each write their counts on a piece of paper and drop it in a hat. One is pulled out of the hat and that is the official tally. Then the votes are shredded so they can't be tampered with. ... seriously, wtf ohio?

Re:Secret motto

[JimBobJoe]

Ohio! Committed to throwing elections since 1803!

I've told people here that I see no problem with the Secretary of State having a campaign reminding Ohioans to vote by saying things like: "Your vote counts! It's worth at least four California votes and six Texas votes!"

Oh Bother

[arizwebfoot]

Like the ACLU is the shining torch bearer for all that is right and good in this country. How is someone's "civil liberties" encroached by using a paper ballot? Next they're gonna be gluing chicken feathers on bullfrogs and trying to teach them to fly.

Re:Oh Bother

[Actually, I do RTFA]

How is someone's "civil liberties" encroached by using a paper ballot?

They aren't. It's an incorrect heading (surprise). The ACLU is objecting to voters not knowing that the paper ballot they filled out will not scan correctly. They want the scantrons (or similar devices) at the polls, so you can verify that the ballot can be read. As is, no record will by made of the ballots until they are at a central location.

Re:Oh Bother

[uvajed_ekil]

Like the ACLU is the shining torch bearer for all that is right and good in this country. How is someone's "civil liberties" encroached by using a paper ballot? Next they're gonna be gluing chicken feathers on bullfrogs and trying to teach them to fly.

For the 800,000th time, it ISN'T that paper ballots are bad, it's that a crappy system that may or may not count all votes correctly IS bad. Why settle for a slightly less crappy system when a better system could easily be put in place? Did Rush Limbaugh rant against paper today, or something? I don't support everything the ACLU says or does, but I'm also not afraid to support their position if it is the right position. Your comment is absurd.

Re:Oh Bother

[pjp6259]

How is someone's "civil liberties" encroached by using a paper ballot?

That's not what this is about. It's about the votes being counted in a central location vs. being counted at the precincts. Fraud is a lot easier to perpetrate if the votes are all counted in one place.

And yet a new five-year study...

[buzzardsbay]

...from three major universities seems to say there's no problem at all with electronic voting and people trust it MORE than paper ballots.

Re:And yet a new five-year study...

[Rakishi]

And lots of security experts disagree, I trust security experts to analyze security over five political science majors and one user interaction computer scientist.

Re:And yet a new five-year study...

[mrv20]

That article also seems to imply that people got warm fuzzy feelings about it simply because it looks more high-tech than paper ballots.

The security of the voting system is not validated simply because the users like the interface more. A more helpful and accessible interface is a welcome improvement but not if it compromises the underlying ability to count the votes in a verifiable manner.

Re:And yet a new five-year study...

[Zymergy]

"People" are not who should be the ones to determine "security" no matter how Warm & Fuzzy they feel about said technology.
I want a unique timestamped paper receipt which I can look up later to verify my actual votes! NOTE: This *IS ALREADY IN PLACE* with retail credit/debit card sales.

I want the NSA (yes, them. http://www.nsa.gov/home_html.cfm ) to certify ANY electronic voting apparatus used in the US and to further guarantee its accuracy.
This means they would be one the ones doing the recounts along with an certified third party (or two) paid for by each region/state choosing to use electronic voting.

I would like all records including the evidence (in-situ timestamps generated printed paper vote ballot recipts) be available for and dispute review.
Each electronic voter would be issued a unique identifier number on their receipt at the time of their voting, that way they could login into a secure web server with that number to review their vote selections. There would also be a dispute console available for any discrepancies. Metrics revealed from the 'disputes' submitted would indicate a problem. This would be a more ideal way to merge the speed of 'paperless' electronic voting technologies with the exacting re-countability of 'paper' voting methods.
I get a receipt that is both unique and timestamped when I purchase a single pack of gum at the grocery store with my Debit Card.
Why are there no accountable unique and timestamped receipts provided to every electronic voter and some secure method with which they could later review them?
I believe that the NSA has both the technical knowledge and resources to set up said secure verification of-your-vote web servers.
If it works for retail transactions, why not for voting? Heck... Mastercard/Visa and the NSA could team up and develop a FAST *and* far more secure electronic voting system with paper receipts user verification. I'd even pay the Card companies their 1%-3% cuts for that kind of reliability!
The real problem here is that there are too many cooks with too many agendas in the voting methodology kitchen!!!

Re:And yet a new five-year study...

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you actually read the article you are referencing?? The university studies only claim the machines get high marks in voter confidence and satisfaction (i.e. usability). It says nothing about receiving solid marks in accuracy and even talks about dropping accuracy rates when elections get complicated. Plus this little gem:

According to the study, all of the voting methods tested were susceptible to various types of voter error, including missed votes and voting for the wrong candidate. Mod that dude down, he is not informative at all.

Re:And yet a new five-year study...

[LordLucless]

Because, you know, as long as people TRUST it, it doesn't matter if it ACTUALLY works.

Re:And yet a new five-year study...

[uncqual]

I want a unique timestamped paper receipt which I can look up later to verify my actual votes!
...
they could login into a secure web server with that number to review their vote selections

Allowing a voter to verify their vote "after the fact" from any location (or by direct examination of a receipt that leaves the polling place with them) makes vote-buying (or coercion) much too easy. Albeit, this is already a problem with absentee ballots, but we should not make it worse. However, there are schemes that would allow a voter to verify their vote privately at centralized secure locations (and allow them to contest the counting of their vote based on their receipt if they are willing to give up their "private ballot" privileges to do so) using encryption and election judges where various bits of key material are provided by (1) the voter, (2) randomly (and printed only on the voter receipt), and (3) by "election judges".

Re:And yet a new five-year study...

[Anonymous Coward]

Read reflections on trusting trust. Electronic voting is insecure.

Re:And yet a new five-year study...

[Zymergy]

I get what you are saying about the potential for vote buying... and it is a Valid point.
But as a voter, that is so much less of a fear to me than the ability for someone or an entity to be able to electronically rig an election (if not just part). Allowing the voter to lookup to "verify" their vote choices *after the fact* is the point!
How do I know if my vote was electronically changed to a different choice than the one I made? Buy looking it up!
Using statistics to prove a system is secure sure sounds like telling an individual their vote does not count. I want to look mine up! After all the money spent on political ads and other advertising, there's no way for a specific voter to vbe able to verify their vote? Even my local cable company can look up mt account and verify what choices I made on my channel and data plan selections. I have had some of those changed without mt permission, I verified my choices and resolved the error. Verification is key to trust.
Now if someone or some entity is paying others for their votes and they want to use the 'verification' system to prove who they voted for... that's abuse and is already against the law in the US.

If I can account for my exact 'choices' and 'values' made at precise times and locations with a simple credit card receipt NOW, why not for my electronic vote!!!??
There is a real reason we do not have an accountable system in place. What could it be?
Furthermore, we need to verify identity with a fingerprint (or other not-exclusive-to-an-ID-Card biometric information) when we vote to ensure multiple voting abuses do not take place. Wait a minute... I do this *already* with my fingerprint whenever I cash a check at my local bank.. Why not for voting too??

Voting IS a National Security issue and therefore falls under the territorial umbrella of the NSA (just as cryptography strength verification or even how to securely up your Computer). http://www.nsa.gov/snac/
With the proven fraud methods illegal aliens (and legal aliens) have used before to vote in US elections, self-identification is also essential. (Just like with credit card use! Ever been asked for your Picture ID when using your credit card? Why not with voting?)
With current electronic voting systems I remain unconvinced that there is not the ability to alter the voting data after I make my choice.
I say prove it. What better way then to provide the voting citizen the ability to look up their data individually from a unique number given at the time of voting?
->Bruce Schneier's excellent essay addresses the real need for electronic voting devices to have: Accuracy, Anonymity, Scalability, and Speed. http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2004/11/the_problem_wit.html

If illegal vote buying takes place after the fact because users can look up their unique number given at the time of voting, pass harsh laws that make any adjudged vote selling a instant federal felony conviction unexpungeable from their permanent arrest records (felons in the US lose their right to vote, although certain former trial-lawyer politicians have been quietly seeking ways to allow non-citizens and felons to be able vote.)
You rarely hear about the theft of US Mail, and nobody in the criminal world wants a US Mail Fraud conviction. There are very harsh penalties for messing with the USPS.

Present electronic voting systems are unaccountable and therefore it might be hard to fint a security flaw and exploit it to alter the voting data (or to just change the data), but it is just too easy to get away with it!
There MUST be a permanent and unalterable when-cast vote record created *and* a way for each voter to verify that their data made it into the system precisely as they cast it. The Anonymity portion of my proposal is that the printed number is linked to what the vote choices were, not to the user's name.
The

Re:And yet a new five-year study...

[Rakishi]

Some would agree, after all a variant of this kept bush in office for two terms now.

Re:And yet a new five-year study...

[GalacticCmdr]

I get what you are saying about the potential for vote buying... and it is a Valid point. But as a voter, that is so much less of a fear to me than the ability for someone or an entity to be able to electronically rig an election (if not just part). Allowing the voter to lookup to "verify" their vote choices *after the fact* is the point! How do I know if my vote was electronically changed to a different choice than the one I made? Buy looking it up! Using statistics to prove a system is secure sure sounds like telling an individual their vote does not count. I want to look mine up! After all the money spent on political ads and other advertising, there's no way for a specific voter to vbe able to verify their vote? Even my local cable company can look up mt account and verify what choices I made on my channel and data plan selections. I have had some of those changed without mt permission, I verified my choices and resolved the error. Verification is key to trust.

Of course the system would never show you one thing - yet tabulate something else. That is sheer madness to think something like that could even happen. That is nothing more than false security, which is far worse than no security - because you have your "timestamped" ticket that you feel you have true security.

Re:And yet a new five-year study...

[zotz]

"Why are there no accountable unique and timestamped receipts provided to every electronic voter and some secure method with which they could later review them?"

So that they can't be forced to vote a certain way or else?

all the best,

drew

Re:And yet a new five-year study...

[Zymergy]

I thought about the bait-and-switch database possibility. There would have to be a non-volatile record taken at the time of voting (kept for recounts and encoded, encrypted, etc..) And that would match information in the "voting receipt" about the voting choices. "Trust' in the NSA's confirmation site that one could verify with their receipt would also be required. Running the system on open-source software and encryption that whose source code is easily attainable by the community might assist security of and its development.

Minds far wiser have pondered this issue for some time. Paper ballots DO appear to be the best solution for reasons not immediately apparent. If only the ACLU could see this too.

Re:And yet a new five-year study...

[uncqual]

I think I'm more concerned about coercion than actual 'retail' vote buying as the latter is completely illegal and is likely to get revealed when done on a scale necessary to actually throw a national election. Although, since vote buying would have better ROI if clear-text receipts were issued as the purchaser could easily be sure they got what they paid for, the temptation to engage in it would probably be higher.

We are in complete agreement that voters should be able to verify how their vote was counted - we just disagree on the method. My method prevents introducing a new avenue for coercion and vote buying at the expense of requiring more effort (both on the part of the voter and the election board) and more infrastructure for each vote that is verified. Since in an all electronic system (where human errors are virtually eliminated) a single voter who can show that their vote was not counted properly proves there's a problem or corruption, I don't think the additional effort on the part of the voter (and, hence, less voters who will verify their votes) is a problem to the integrity of the election. I would agree that the extra effort required by my method would reduce the number of individual voters who would feel all warm and fuzzy that their vote was counted correctly - but the most concerned of these voters would occasionally verify their vote to feel a bit warmer and fuzzier.

Due to the increased cost of vote verification using my method, it may be necessary to limit the number of verifications allowed. Perhaps if more voters request verification than the system can reasonably handle, each candidate would be given a "quota" of verifications where they get to pick that many specific voters who will have their ballots verified before certification of the election results. Note that even with such limitations, this would would still result in an infinitely higher degree of vote cast vs. vote counted verification than has ever been available before using any system utilized in the United States.

Re:And yet a new five-year study...

[soupforare]

...only claim the machines get high marks in voter confidence and satisfaction...

Hey, works for JD Power.

Re:And yet a new five-year study...

[buzzardsbay]

Did I read it?.... Amusing. I wrote it.

huh?

[thatskinnyguy]

Wait a minute... a government lobbying agency is actually suing for the use of Diebold machines. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around that one. And the reasoning? Stupid errors that have happened since voting on paper existed. Someone in the ACLU has got to be on the take.

Re:huh?

[southpolesammy]

Diebold is headquartered in the Akron-Canton area, which is a mere 40 miles down I-77 from Cleveland. Cleveland and surrounding Cuyahoga county make widespread use of Diebold voting machines.

My tinfoil hat is telling me that there might be some local interests involved here....

Re:huh?

[thatskinnyguy]

To be more precise, it sits on the Stark/Summit County line in North Canton. I just moved from Stark County. I used to drive past Diebold every day on my way to work.

At least paper can't lie.

[Coopjust]

With paper, if you didn't vote for the candidate you intended to...it's your fault and visible if you follow the directions.

With a compromised e-voting machine, you could walk in and have the machine say "Thanks for voting for candidate A" while it adds a vote for candidate B.

Re:At least paper can't lie.

[Sciros]

Heh, well, paper maybe doesn't lie, but paper also doesn't choose the president. The Electoral College does. If you're worried about corruption/compromising in the system, there's probably enough nodes between the paper and the EC to worry about that you shouldn't feel safe just because you're marking paper rather than pressing a touch screen.

Re:At least paper can't lie.

[garcia]

But the people, tabulating them in a centralized location, can and will lie just as bad as the machine that is hiding your voting record from you. Remember, it only takes one person to fuck with a e-voting machine but it only takes a few more people to fuck with centralized vote counting. Money works people.

Keep it decentralized and get over this "instantaneous statistics" bullshit that everyone is so fucking hyped up about. Who cares if you have to wait till the next day to find out who won? You have to put up with the bastard for at least four years, what's the difference if it takes a little longer to find out which one you are slowly going to learn to despise?

Re:At least paper can't lie.

[ProteusQ]

Red herring, offsides, 10 yard penalty, still first down.

But don't worry, most people still don't realize that the ACLU is to free speech what the RIAA is to music distribution.

Re:At least paper can't lie.

[Microlith]

While the EC may do the actual voting, I sincerely doubt they would actively vote against the populace of the state. So long as the votes of the citizens is accurate, any countermanding by the EC would be blatant and visible, and (hopefully) swiftly corrected.

Re:At least paper can't lie.

[Rayonic]

Indeed, paper can't lie! Unless your paper ballot gets thrown away or vandalized, or more ballots get stuffed into the process at some point. Where do you think the phrase "ballot stuffing" originated from?

It is simplistic to think that PAPER = SECURE, just because it's paper.

Re:At least paper can't lie.

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't know people were in an uproar about instant results. Plenty of people vote for American Idol and you have to wait an entire day for those results.

Re:At least paper can't lie.

[Sciros]

The EC members aren't counting ballots in front of your face and voting, though. None of the current voting methods are totally foolproof, which is my point.

Re:At least paper can't lie.

[erlenic]

Unfaithful electors are fairly common. There was one in 2004, who put Edwards for POTUS and Kerry for VP. I don't believe it's ever had an effect on the outcome though. Wikipedia has more information.

Re:At least paper can't lie.

[insanecarbonbasedlif]

You're right where they want you.

I mean, you still think votes count! That's amazing enough, but even more astounding is that you think there are good faith actors in power who would be willing to risk their own necks to refranchise the masses.

I'm tired of it all. Electronic, paper, centralized counting or decentralized counting, it can all be secure and auditable, or insecure and fraud-riddled. Guess which type benefits the people in power more? If you think secure and auditable, you're scoring pretty high on the naivometer.

Re:At least paper can't lie.

[insanecarbonbasedlif]

It is simplistic to think that PAPER = SECURE, just because it's paper. You would think, as a site for geeks, there would be more people on slashdot that understand that. The comments and moderation show otherwise. The implication that any digital system is inherently less secure than any paper system is inherently Luddite, all the way down.

Re:At least paper can't lie.

[lenski]

The implication that any digital system is inherently less secure than any paper system is inherently Luddite, all the way down.

Your focus is too narrow. Nobody says "paper ballots are secure". We say "it's far more difficult to swing an election with paper ballots without it being detected and corrected than with electronic systems."

For an individual precinct, it can be argued that paper is subject to (within an order of magnitude) similar levels of manipulation for particular insiders as electronic systems.

However, to really swing an entire election, the decentralized nature of paper ballots requires the concerted cooperation of a far larger population of manipulators with inside access to the ballots' chain of custody. On the other hand, a single easter egg in one version of voting system software can allow one *voter* in each of several, possibly many, precincts to secretly engage the easter egg's incantation to swing that machine's vote totals.

So paper requires concerted effort by many insiders with the concomitant increase in likelihood of one of them screwing up and spilling the beans. Electronic voting systems require a collection of non-insiders to engage a secretly emplaced easter egg to modify entire elections. There is a possibility of detection there too, but it is significantly more difficult.

Electronic voting systems have already been used to affect an election: In central Ohio where I live, districts and precincts with a statistical democratic bias (metropolitan and progressive districts) had reduced allocation of voting machines, while outlying areas that tend republican had appropriate allocation. The result, widely reported, was lines of multiple hours in one case and rarely more than minutes in the other. Voting occurred on a work day, and many people simply could not or would not wait to vote because they had to get back to work.

To claim that people like me are luddites is entirely stupid, by the way. My code has been working in the signalling and switching systems (both STP and NCP) the long distance network for 15 years, has been running cockpit avionics communications for 25 years, and I am at present involved in several autonomous UAV flight control projects.

There are people who really want to manipulate elections and are trying to establish a context in which their manipulations could be done with the minimum probability of detection. The people who run and monitor elections are not embedded system developers with years of experience in authentication and security. They would be very hard pressed to detect, much less respond to, a situation where sophisticated election system developers could be manipulating the process. Note further that the election system vendors steadfastly refuse to show their code to anyone. That makes me very suspicious.

During the late 90's, the Nevada Gaming commission's slot machines were hacked by an insider who used his diagnostic validation unit to insert easter eggs in slot machines. His hack was not discovered for many months (I forget exactly how long it lasted). The Nevada Gaming Commission is loaded with money, expert developers, and a strong economic desire to avoide even a hint of dishonesty, and were hacked. Compare that to Boards of Elections who are overworked, underpaid, have very limited budgets, and absolutely ZERO experience in system security.

Re:At least paper can't lie.

[Zordak]

So, I'm assuming that you can point to some instance in recent history where an elector flagrantly voted against his or her state and changed the outcome of the election (and no, Florida in 2000 doesn't count, no matter how bitter the whiny Democrats still are about it; the Republican electors all voted for Bush like they were supposed to after the election was certified).

Re:At least paper can't lie.

[insanecarbonbasedlif]

You assume a lot. In addition to your assumption that I will provide proof for a specific scenario laid out according to your interesting rules, you assume that such events will be flagrant and singular (that is, not systemic). I don't consider those to be safe assumptions.

Re:At least paper can't lie.

[instarx]

With paper, if you didn't vote for the candidate you intended to...it's your fault and visible if you follow the directions. With a compromised e-voting machine, you could walk in and have the machine say "Thanks for voting for candidate A" while it adds a vote for candidate B. Although I agree with your overall premise, your first statement is not entirely true. The design of paper ballots makes a big difference in the ease or difficulty of voting for your candidate. I have seen examples of ballots that were so poorly designed no one could tell who they were really voting for. A common example everyone can relate to are ATM machines. How many times have you used an ATM machine where you needed to push a particular button to continue, but the arrow on the screen pointed to the space between two buttons? Even on a paper ballot if it isn't clear which check-box goes with a candidate's name it isn't the voter's fault if errors are made.

That was the problem with the butterfly ballots in Florida - it wasn't that people were too stupid to vote, but that the check boxes were not aligned with the candidates' names. That was not the voters' fault and it wasn't at all obvious that many were casting their votes for the wrong person.

Re:At least paper can't lie.

[Zordak]

Ok, let's review the discussion. A poster points out that you vote for electors, who behave and vote according to the mandate of those who elected them to the college. Anything else would be flagrant and obvious. You respond that the poster is naive, and seem to think that there is some systemic chicanery in the electoral college. So I challenge you to point to so much as a single instance where an elector has defected and changed the outcome of an election. Before you can have systemic abuse, you have to have at least a single abuse. And again, if the electors were voting contrary to their mandates, it would be blatantly obvious, because people usually know the morning after the election how many electoral votes to expect for each candidate.

The burden of proof is on you. Show me some evidence of this systemic problem in the electoral college, where apparently they get together in a secret back room and secretly throw the election after the people have already voted and expect a certain candidate to win. This is truly a new conspiracy theory for me.

Re:At least paper can't lie.

[insanecarbonbasedlif]

Ok, let's review the discussion. A poster points out that you vote for electors, who behave and vote according to the mandate of those who elected them to the college. Anything else would be flagrant and obvious. Alright, we'll review, (please don't take this the wrong way...) since your reading comprehension is low today - the original post I responded to:

While the EC may do the actual voting, I sincerely doubt they would actively vote against the populace of the state. So long as the votes of the citizens is accurate, any countermanding by the EC would be blatant and visible, and (hopefully) swiftly corrected. Then you say:

You respond that the poster is naive, and seem to think that there is some systemic chicanery in the electoral college. So, for the sake of clarity, I will quote my whole previous post:

You're right where they want you.

I mean, you still think votes count! That's amazing enough, but even more astounding is that you think there are good faith actors in power who would be willing to risk their own necks to refranchise the masses.

I'm tired of it all. Electronic, paper, centralized counting or decentralized counting, it can all be secure and auditable, or insecure and fraud-riddled. Guess which type benefits the people in power more? If you think secure and auditable, you're scoring pretty high on the naivometer. See, the crux of your confusion is that you think I'm talking specifically about the EC. When I say systemic, I refer to the "democratic" process, top to bottom. I was responding to all three points by the original poster:

1.So long as the votes of the citizens is accurate,
2. any countermanding by the EC would be blatant and visible,
3. and (hopefully) swiftly corrected. And my response was to all three things:
1. I don't think the powerful will ever put secure and auditable voting into place, whether via paper or digital, so I don't think that the votes of the citizens will be accurately counted and reported to the general public.
2. I think that the EC is just one tool in a long chain of vote laundering machinery that *ensures* that if the powerful countermand the vote of the citizenry it would not be blatant and visible.
3. I do not think there are any good faith actors who know about the corruption who are willing to risk their own power, lives, and all that, to expose any chicanery.

I'm ignoring everything after the first four sentences of your post, because I honestly don't believe what you seem to think I believe in your statements from sentence 5 on.

don't get do-overs in life

[jupiterssj4]

People need to take the extra second to make sure that they did not make any errors. You don't get second chances in life for many things. On school work, for example, you don't get a do-over, if you screw up, it's your fault, all you need to do is check to make sure you don't mess up. I live in Ohio, just south of Cleveland, and I think the paper ballots with optical scanners are fine, I don't punch the wrong hole and if I do... I guess I shouldn't really be voting. The explanation on the ballots is so high that if you screw up, it's because you are dumb

Re:don't get do-overs in life

[servognome]

The explanation on the ballots is so high that if you screw up, it's because you are dumb

Even the dumb have their rights

Yes!

[jfengel]

We're against all possibility of errors. Defensive programming, dontcha know.

So like good programmers, we're going to leave the current version in place (no matter how buggy it is) rather than upgrade to something else with different bugs until we've got every last possible bug worked out.

Give 'Em Bingo Blotters

[queenb**ch]

Seriously.... give them bingo blotters. Make the ballot look like a bingo card. Even the biggest id10t *ought* to be able to figure that out. If you're not smart enough to figure out *how* to vote, you don't get to. - I'm calling this principle democratic darwinism.

2 cents,

QueenB.

Re:Give 'Em Bingo Blotters

[uvajed_ekil]

I like bingo blotters. We should really work to idiot-proof this, since even idiots are entitled to a vote, and there is no mistaking a big ol' circle in a big box next to a name, one page per contest/issue. Hand counting and reverification is slow, but something like this would be about as simple as it could get. If voting were like that and some idiot decided to draw pictures on his ballot, or pretend the "bingo" game was a "fill up" and marked every box, then oh well, sorry. (Images of Sean Connery on Celebrity Jeopardy suddenly come to mind.)

Re:Give 'Em Bingo Blotters

[sumdumass]

I'm not sure if that would be much better. I used to take my grandmother to bingo at the VFW before she died. This was a once a week thing, every other week (someone else took her in the off weeks). You would be surprised at how many times I have to drop pennies on her cards where she would accidentally dab the wrong spot and blame it on her bifocals.

But that isn't the part I'm thinking off. At least once a night, there would be false bingo alarms where someone either mimicked my grandmother's actions or missed the called box altogether and marked the spot beside it or something. Not everyone there was old, some where in their 30's or younger and the ones screwing up wasn't always old people either. It is just a small sampling but if people who play bingo can screw it up, then there is sure to be a lot of people who don't who will succeed in screwing it up too.

They aren't against paper but Central Count Paper.

[Irvu]

So the title is misleading. The ACLU is filing suit against the county's decision to switch to Centrally-Counted optically scanned ballots where the ballots are filled out at the polling place and sent to a single central warehouse for scanning. They are not against Precinct-Counted optical scanners where they are scanned at the polling place.

The crux of their argument is that central counts unlike precinct count and even mediocre touchscreens offer the user a warning when they overvote or undervote for a race thus warning them that they ballot may not be counted and thus giving them a chance to fix it. Their argument is that this lack of a warning (however poor) is likely to cause many errors that the voters are never aware of.

So strictly speaking they are not against the use of paper ballots (it is my understanding that they favor them) just against this particular type of scanning system.

Remember..2 A's beats double E..or is it 2 pairs?!

[Justabit]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0483726/ Touch screen or ballot paper, just remember to vote early and vote often.

My answer is ...

[Archangel Michael]

Yes.

We're against everything that has errors, so we're against anything distinctly human, which is why we like technolog(&#$#$OOO@ no carrier

In Arizona

[Nom du Keyboard]

In the very backwards state of Arizona, they still use paper ballots. Yet when those ballots are inserted into the ballot box, they go through a visual scanner that kicks the ballot back out immediately if it is improperly marked. While you can choose not to vote on any given ballot issue, accidentally marking more than one vote for an issue will reject the ballot immediately, and you can get a new one on the spot to correct. Paper ballots don't need to have the problems cited here, and obviously have some advantages in recounts afterwards.

Of course, by the ACLU rules, voting Republican is a source of voter error, and reason for the ballot to be rejected.

Re:In Arizona

[Microlith]

Of course, by the ACLU rules, voting Republican is a source of voter error, and reason for the ballot to be rejected.

Good to see you can take a nice, reasoned post and taint it with partisan bullshit. Good job.

Re:In Arizona

[Grishnakh]

Good to see you can take a nice, reasoned post and taint it with partisan bullshit. Good job.

The ACLU is a partisan organization, so I don't see how the GP is doing anything wrong at all. After all, the ACLU claims to be in favor of "civil liberties" (it's in their name, after all), but then they're in favor of gun control, which goes against a very important civil liberty to many Americans. A true civil libertarian (well-known as the shortened form, "libertarian") is adamantly against gun control, and in favor of preserving civil liberties wherever possible. But the ACLU frequently works against civil liberties on this issue and many others; their actual stance is "liberal", not "libertarian". The ACLU, by co-opting the "civil liberties" term but then working against, not for, civil liberties, is the one that is partisan (and dishonest), so taking partisan shots against them is completely fair IMO.

Re:In Arizona

[Microlith]

Whereby "partisan" means "in line with 'conservative republican' philosophy." Am I right?

The ACLU has stated that they are not opposed to reasonable measures of gun control, but they won't say more than that on the issue. They don't cover gun issues at all because the NRA is dedicated to it entirely.

their actual stance is "liberal", not "libertarian"

Liberties, as in freedom. Not this damn epithet "liberal" that people spew out towards anyone they disagree with. And not "libertarian" as in the political party.

What other issues have they worked against civil liberties on?

Re:In Arizona

[Anonymous Coward]

Daily Affirmations by Republican Smalley.

You know, if I found myself constantly defending a belief, even in situations where the belief itself isn't in question, I think I would reconsider my outlook on said subject. Dropping your political "religion" could add 5+ more years on your life, not to mention people won't think you are a moron.

And gosh darn it... people like you, unless they are libs, then they can suck it. --Republican Smalley

Re:In Arizona

[frank_adrian314159]

After all, the ACLU claims to be in favor of "civil liberties" (it's in their name, after all), but then they're in favor of gun control, which goes against a very important civil liberty to many Americans.

The ACLU focuses mainly on First, Fourth, Eighth, and Fifteenth Amendment issues, something you'd know if you actually checked their web site. They also don't do much with Amendments Three, Seven, Nine, and Ten because, for the most part, those are mainly settled law these days. Sadly, with the current administration's actions, they've had to expand into the Fifth and Sixth Amendment actions, too.

They have explicitly not done anything with the Second, because (if you haven't noticed) there is already a rather large national organization taking that particular fight to the courts. In fact, the ACLU is neutral with respect to firearm control unless, for some reason, governments are being discriminatory in their enforcements of these laws and, in most of those cases, it usually results in reducing barriers for particular people obtaining firearms.

You'd have known this if you actually investigated the ACLU rather than echoing right-wing talking points, so you're either ignorant or being purposely dishonest. I don't bitch at the NRA for not defending my right to have my own SAM (for my protection, of course), so I don't see why you're bitching about the ACLU when they choose to let another organization take up the cause of a particular amendment. For the most part they've done a hell of a lot of good. And, if you check, you'll see that they've taken up a lot of cases against both Democratic and Republican run governments on the sides of both the right and the left. For someone who values "liberty" as much as you claim to, I'm surprised that you are bitching about an organization that is promoting rights in any form. In fact, from the vapid partisanship of your post, you seem to be more of a Republican Lib-wanabee rather than a real Libertarian.

Re:In Arizona

[TapeCutter]

"A true civil libertarian (well-known as the shortened form, "libertarian")"

As a non-USAian I find nothing 'civil' about the anarchy espoused by many slashdotters who label themselves "libertarian".

BTW: Over here in Oz, the conservative party are called 'liberals', they are exceptionally good mates with GWB's administration.

Re:In Arizona

[d34thm0nk3y]

In the very backwards state of Arizona, they still use paper ballots. Yet when those ballots are inserted into the ballot box, they go through a visual scanner that kicks the ballot back out immediately if it is improperly marked. While you can choose not to vote on any given ballot issue, accidentally marking more than one vote for an issue will reject the ballot immediately, and you can get a new one on the spot to correct. Paper ballots don't need to have the problems cited here, and obviously have some advantages in recounts afterwards.

Of course, by the ACLU rules, voting Republican is a source of voter error, and reason for the ballot to be rejected.

So, you support the ACLU in this lawsuit then because that is exactly what they are arguing for.

My City Was Gone

[FudRucker]

Ay! Oh! A way to go Ohio...

The paper ballots aren't the problem

[vonPoonBurGer]

The problem is the counting system, not the ballots. Paper ballots actually work fantastically well, if you have a smart system for counting ballots. Canada does, thankfully, and it uses paper ballots. We know for certain who our next prime minister is hours after the polls close, all ballots are counted at the polling station, and any interested voter is allowed to watch the counting. At the same time, we spend a fraction of what the US spends per capita on elections. For more detail or a non-Canadian perspective, Robert X. Cringely has a good little write-up (it's down toward the end of the page).

Re:The paper ballots aren't the problem

[MaWeiTao]

While I agree there are issues with the entire electoral process in the US keep in mind that Canada has a population of barely over 33 million while the US population has 10 times that; California alone has 36 million.

Re:The paper ballots aren't the problem

[uvajed_ekil]

So? I see no reason their system shouldn't scale well enough to work here. We have more voters, but we also have a more polling places and people help count votes, so any system we can conceive of could be implemented. Even if I had to wait 12 hours, or however long, for results, rather than having an idea of who won an hour after the polls close. I'd much rather wait one little day for reliable results than have instant results that may or may not be accurate and precise. What's the rush?

Re:The paper ballots aren't the problem

[Ironsides]

Tell me. How many things do you vote on each election and how often do you have an election? Last year (2007) I had 12 things to vote son. Two of them had me voting for up to three options. That's twelve different counting of the ballots. We go through this every year in the U.S., not every four.

Re:The paper ballots aren't the problem

[Ironsides]

Last year (2007) I had 12 things to vote on. Two of them had me voting for up to three options. That's twelve different counting of the ballots. That's a lot of counting. We're not talking one day of ballot counting, were talking two weeks.

Re:The paper ballots aren't the problem

[AJWM]

Well yeah, the US voting system is seriously fscked up, starting with the fact that there's one election day to elect everyone running for office from local dogcatcher to president, not to mention however many ballot initiatives and referenda there are. (Okay, there may be some local exceptions.)

In Canada, for example, it's pretty much unheard of to schedule a municipal or provincial election on the same day as a national one.

As I recall the last Canadian election I participated in (couple of decades ago), each particular race (position) had its own ballot, colour-coded, each going into a different ballot box. That simplifies the counting greatly. (Mind, I officially declined my vote in that one, all the candidates were bozos or worse. They have to count officially declined votes as equivalent to "none of the above", and they'd have to do the election over if there were enough of those. They have to record it to balance the number of ballots in the box with the number of voters who showed up. If they wanted to increase voter turnout, they should do something similar here in the US. Of course they won't, the two major parties like the lock they have in the current system.)

Re:The paper ballots aren't the problem

[Ironsides]

Well yeah, the US voting system is seriously fscked up, starting with the fact that there's one election day to elect everyone running for office from local dogcatcher to president, not to mention however many ballot initiatives and referenda there are. (Okay, there may be some local exceptions.)

More like completely wrong. In 2005 and 2007, I voted only for elected positions within my State and County. There were no federal government issues or positions voted on at all.

In Canada, for example, it's pretty much unheard of to schedule a municipal or provincial election on the same day as a national one.

Most U.S. States are the same way. However, occasionally we do have a state or local issue to vote on. In 2006 and 2008 we have voted/will vote on Senator to Congress, Congressman, President (2008, not 2006), some state constitutional amendments (they are voted upon as soon as they are eligible), county bond issues (these happen every year). Now, remember. The U.S. Federal Government has no control over the local elections. The States and usually the Counties or Cities have the power. Should they choose to change the local election date they could, but they usually do not. Looking back at the 2004 election, there were relatively few things to vote on. President, Congressmen, (correction) no Federal senator that year, some state constitutional. amendments, and some county bond issues (as I said, every year).

As I recall the last Canadian election I participated in (couple of decades ago), each particular race (position) had its own ballot, colour-coded, each going into a different ballot box. That simplifies the counting greatly. (Mind, I officially declined my vote in that one, all the candidates were bozos or worse. They have to count officially declined votes as equivalent to "none of the above", and they'd have to do the election over if there were enough of those. They have to record it to balance the number of ballots in the box with the number of voters who showed up. If they wanted to increase voter turnout, they should do something similar here in the US. Of course they won't, the two major parties like the lock they have in the current system.)

Perhaps this is why Canada is so fscked up then? Too many people complaining when they don't even vote? It also doesn't appear to work to increase voter turnout in Canada as you have not voted for a couple decades by your own admission.

In the U.S., no votes are counted. Depending on the State/local rules, it can actually affect the outcome. But again, the Federal Government has no say in this, it is up to the states. If enough people in a state wanted to change the rules, they could. There are methods on the books for amending the state constitutions and laws that bypass the state legislatures that would allows citizens to change the state election laws. Of course, it could also be that the people who actually vote like it the current way. After all, it gives them more of a voice in the system over the people who just don't care enough to vote, such as yourself.

Re:The paper ballots aren't the problem

[SuiteSisterMary]

We have what's called a 'representative' system. The idea is that we vote for our 'representatives,' who then 'represent' our wishes and desires in Parliament. If our 'elected' 'representative' isn't doing what we 'voters' want them to do, we 'elect' one who will.

But I'll also give you the stock answer; number of people counting scales proportionately to number of ballots cast, really easy like.

Re:The paper ballots aren't the problem

[Ironsides]

So, you only vote for your member of parliament and no one else? Who then selects your Mayors, provincial Governors and Assembly Members? Sounds like you either don't know much about your government at all or don't have much say in local elections.

Re:The paper ballots aren't the problem

[SuiteSisterMary]

Oh, we have all sorts of reps that we vote for. We just make a point of staggering it all out. We also tend to divide them up into different classes; we have federal elections, provincial elections, municipal elections, and so on.

Re:The paper ballots aren't the problem

[Ironsides]

The same goes in most of the U.S. Most states vote for state offices in odd years, federal offices are only in even years. County offices are only in odd years. However there is the odd County/State item that is voted on in even years.

In 2004, we voted for president, federal representative, (not federal senator, that will be in 2008), two state constitutional amendments (a rarity) and four county bond issues.

County bond issues require the approval of voter in order to be passed and are usually voted on yearly. This is not a state or federal requirement, the county code was written this way and the citizens have seen no reason to change that.

Now, what would be the point of having two days a year to do this, when we already have one day for it. It's not that hard to vote for a few more items on the same day. The state I'm in specifically tries to minimize the number of things to vote on during a year there is a federal election. Also, remember, the local governments run and pay for the elections. The federal government does not pay for them nor does the state in most places.

Re:The paper ballots aren't the problem

[SuiteSisterMary]

Now, what would be the point of having two days a year to do this, when we already have one day for it. It's not that hard to vote for a few more items on the same day. The state I'm in specifically tries to minimize the number of things to vote on during a year there is a federal election. Also, remember, the local governments run and pay for the elections. The federal government does not pay for them nor does the state in most places.

Well, apparently it's too hard to have proper counting methods; whenever anybody mentions the (world renowned) Canadian system, the two rebuttals invariably brought up by Americans are 'We have ten times the population you do!' and 'we vote for all sorts of things at once!'

Re:The paper ballots aren't the problem

[Ironsides]

That's why we dislike hand counting, not paper voting. We've also seen how easily paper voting methods can be rigged and manipulated. We've seen it for well over 100 years. Prior to going to electronic machines, my county used mechanical machines. The only paper ballots are the absentee ballots. Those ballots are machine readable and are read by a scantron machine. From our experience, it's been the paper ballots that are the ones most subject to fraud in one way or another, not the machines.

Even an 'honest' hand counting isn't infallible. Every vote I've heard of with a manual hand count has had different results every time. A properly made machine will produce the proper count every time.

Re:The paper ballots aren't the problem

[AJWM]

It also doesn't appear to work to increase voter turnout in Canada as you have not voted for a couple decades by your own admission.

That's because I don't live there any more, genius.

Re:The paper ballots aren't the problem

[SuiteSisterMary]

Even an 'honest' hand counting isn't infallible. Every vote I've heard of with a manual hand count has had different results every time. A properly made machine will produce the proper count every time.

See, I'd say the exact opposite. How can you say that a machine will produce the proper count, when you have no idea what it's actually doing? Yet with paper ballots, it's trivial to a) count how many you started with, b) count how many you handed out, c) count how many you had left over, thus eliminating the barest possibility of ballot stuffing, then d) have a representative from each party in a locked room when the elections official cracks open the ballot box, and everybody keeps their own tally as each ballot is pulled out and shown to the room?

Re:The paper ballots aren't the problem

[Ironsides]

How can you say that a machine will produce the proper count, when you have no idea what it's actually doing?

Testing. Choose a random number of test votes to try out on it. Perform test. Does the machine count match what it was expected to be. Wash, rinse, repeat.

then d) have a representative from each party in a locked room when the elections official cracks open the ballot box, and everybody keeps their own tally as each ballot is pulled out and shown to the room?

You'd think that, but upon recounts they still come out different. Here's one instance The same happened in the 2000 Presidential Election in Florida. These were manual recounts with observers from both parties and they still came out different every time.

Re:The paper ballots aren't the problem

[SuiteSisterMary]

You'd think that, but upon recounts they still come out different. Here's one instance The same happened in the 2000 Presidential Election in Florida. These were manual recounts with observers from both parties and they still came out different every time.

Then somebody's either a) a retard, or b) purposefully screwing up. Or, possibly, c) each time, they used a different method/judgement on what did and didn't constitute 'spoiled ballots.' Which, again, is a solved problem.

To paraphrase Peter Griffith, 'it's easier (and more accountable) than you're making it.'

Re:The paper ballots aren't the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

By that logic Canada has a harder job than the USA. More area to cover, with many fewer people. Vote counting scales linearly.

Hmm, I wonder how people in the USA can manage to eat, when there are so many more of them than in Canada. Won't it be difficult fitting them all into the single McDonalds and single Starbucks?

Re:The paper ballots aren't the problem

[Ironsides]

Which just proves that a hand count is not as foolproof as you seem to want to claim. Introduce humans into a problem, and you have complications and uncertainty. Which gets us back to machine counting of votes.

Re:The paper ballots aren't the problem

[SuiteSisterMary]

Unfortunately, the machines are designed by humans.

Re:The paper ballots aren't the problem

[uvajed_ekil]

Two weeks? Do ya'll folk count on yer fingers an' toes dere, o wut? Are you assuming the use of punch cards, with every race being close enough to recount, with "hanging chads" and "pregnant chads" to agonize over?

And as I always say, I'm very willing to wait a bit for correct results rather than to have questionable results right now.

Time to write the ACLU

[plnrtrvlr]

The ACLU is dependent upon contributions to exist. I've contributed to them before. It's time to write and speak your mind. Email them at membership@aclu.org or call them at (212) 549-2585 and let them know what you think. The ACLU is supposed to stand for free and fair elections: they need to know that we want them to stand for TRULY reliable and honest elections by supporting machines with an auditable paper trail and opposing any other solution.

Re:Time to write the ACLU

[afidel]

The problem in Cuyahoga County was never one of a verifiable paper trail, we've had that since we went to electronic voting. The problem was that the machines were often broken causing polling places to be so backed up as to cause people to give up. They also had a server crash during tallying which obviously doesn't instill confidence in the results of the electronic process. This means that we would basically have to hand count every ballot every election (not just in close or disputed elections) at a cost of millions per election, millions Cuyahoga County doesn't have (we're one of the poorest large counties in the country). I'm sure if there was time and money we'd ideally have scantron machines at every polling place but there isn't before the primary and probably not before the general election. Going back to the electronic machines probably isn't possible because of the time needed to get all the techies to fix and deploy the machines.

Re:Can't mark an -X- on paper, eh ...

[Qzukk]

Sorry, your X wasn't dark enough and the scantron machine didn't pick it up. "Tuffit" indeed.

RFID is the answer

[crismoj]

The only sure way to reduce voter fraud is for everyone to be micro-chipped at birth, walk into the voting booth a sensor would determine how many guns you had, how you've voted in the past, how many times you've used the healthcare system, etc.. and then register your vote accordingly.

Quit fighting it, it's coming.

E-voting isn't the demon: the closedness is

[verbalcontract]

I think the ACLU's point is that technology isn't bad for the election process: its bad process and accountability.

There's nothing wrong per se with touch-screen machines, punch ballots, e-voting machines, or even raising your hand to count your vote. Its being able to verify that your voted for who you voted for. It's being able to verify that your vote was counted. That's important.

The ACLU is trying to say that the solution to problems with touchscreen voting isn't to take a step backward technologically. We should be finding better solutions, like using technology to make votes verifiable, and making it easier to do so.

Re:E-voting isn't the demon: the closedness is

[STrinity]

There's nothing wrong per se with [...] raising your hand to count your vote.

Yes. Yes there is. Any voting system that doesn't preserve anonymity is open to intimidation.

Re:E-voting isn't the demon: the closedness is

[ProteusQ]

Then thank God we have the ACLU to tell what it progressive and what is not. Lawsuits are certainly the best way to make sure everything happens the way they are supposed to.

Oh wait, I mentioned God. That's not progressive. Crap, are they going to sue me, or will I just be modded down as Troll again?

Re:E-voting isn't the demon: the closedness is

[Copid]

Oh wait, I mentioned God. That's not progressive. Crap, are they going to sue me, or will I just be modded down as Troll again?

Help! I'm being repressed [for holding an opinion held by the vast majority of Americans including basically the entire government]!

A thought

[arizwebfoot]

Perhaps we could get Florida to count the votes in Ohio. We should have an answer about this time next year, unless there are lawsuits. There are always lawsuits in Florida. Even Florida sues Florida, it's their number one sport and they're trying to out-do California and the 9th Circus.

Democracy at its best

[Anonymous Coward]

Discounting the votes of those too stupid to fill them out correctly would fix the problems of democracy.

"The strongest argument against democracy is a five minute discussion with the average voter."

                -Sir Winston Churchill

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy#Quotes

Re:Democracy at its best

[arizwebfoot]

And remember, Democracy is two wolves and a lamb sitting down and deciding what is for lunch.

Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote.

Re:Democracy at its best

[Viceroy Potatohead]

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb sitting down and deciding what is for lunch. Lamb: "No, guys, trust me! I wouldn't try to pull the wool over your eyes! It's a hanging chaaaaaaaaad." [sorry, couldn't resist]

Re:Democracy at its best

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't the wolves be well armed as well?

Re:They aren't against paper but Central Count Pap

[Cervantes]

That's just what I was coming to write.

Mod parent up, and also tag the story "badtitle". Because, well, it's completely wrong. :) They're not blocking paper ballots, they're blocking a particular method of counting which has problems.

spare us the snobby elitism

[Scudsucker]

If someone cannot take the time to devote a minimum amount of effort to fill out a ballot properly, perhaps they should not vote at all.

Voting is a serious activity, and votes should not be thrown away over trivial errors if they can be easily corrected. And unless you never make mistakes, perhaps you should not be throwing stones in glass houses.

Re:spare us the snobby elitism

[Anonymous Coward]

Voting is a serious activity, and votes should not be thrown away over trivial errors if they can be easily corrected. And unless you never make mistakes, perhaps you should not be throwing stones in glass houses. Everyone makes mistakes. However, when I make mistakes I have to accept responsibility for it. For something important like voting, you should put forth the bare minimum effort required to fill out the ballot correctly. If someone can't do that without making a mistake, maybe they should learn to accept the consequence that their vote doesn't get to count.

Most important things in life don't get do-overs if you screw it up. Coddling people who can't be bothered to doublecheck their ballots doesn't do them any favours.

Re:spare us the snobby elitism

[Freeside1]

agreed. people should have the opportunity to correct a mistake.
ballots could be designed to get some types of people to fill them out "properly", and others, well, they'd just be SOL if they cant read small text, or don't know the meaning of a certain word, or anything else a corrupt politician can dream up.

Your vote is how you cast it...

[Takato-chan]

Not how you _wanted_ to cast it. Much like in any voting system, once you cast your vote, you can't go back and change your mind. Why should computerized voting be any different? At least with a paper ballot, there is a _paper_ trail!

Re:They aren't against paper but Central Count Pap

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in Kern County, California we used to have a really fool proof system. It used IBM punch cards which were punched by the voter with a little card punch. Slide in the card and use an attached punch. If the card was not in the exactly correct position, the punch would be locked up. Tabulating the ballots was done with a card reader. The people at the registrars office did not like the system because they had to stay up until the ballots from the east end on the county were transported over the Sierra Nevada to Bakersfield.

best of both worlds

[yellekc]

The last time I voted was on an electronic machine. I forget the brand, but it required a key card, and had a paper tabulation of your votes that was visible behind a clear window for your approval. After approving the paper backup, it scrolled up out of sight. I really liked the system. It was easy to use, prevented voter errors, and provided a paper trail. Traditional paper ballots are beyond outdated, but having a paper trail is still necessary. This was in Ohio by the way, but I guess each county has different election commissions and therefore different machines.

Re:best of both worlds

[argent]

I forget the brand, but it required a key card, and had a paper tabulation of your votes that was visible behind a clear window for your approval. After approving the paper backup, it scrolled up out of sight.

Two problems:

(1) Since the records are a tape, then by recording the order of voters in the precinct records and the order of records on the tape they can determine who voted which way to a fair degree of certainty.

(2) If the tape was treated as the primary ballot (that is, it was physically transferred to a counting station and read) then this would address many of the problems of an electronic ballot. However not only is it not treated as the primary ballot, but as a result in some cases such tapes were discarded as trash after the elections.

Excellent

[Dachannien]

Awesome! I didn't want to vote anyway. Thank God the ACLU is there to relieve me of the horrible task of making up my mind regarding who's the least of a dozen evils this year.

Seriously, though, my head is spinning from the shenanigans going on here from all directions. In 2006, the county BoE had fubared my voter registration, and I got stuck voting provisionally despite bringing ample identification with me, and despite having lived and voted in that precinct in every general election for the past several years. I filled out a paper ballot, jammed it into a big envelope, sealed it, and dropped it in the box. Not only do I have no idea whether my vote got counted, but I also didn't get these vaunted protections the ACLU is now complaining about.

Where was the ACLU when I needed them, I ask you?!

ACLU Sues Over Paper Ballot Counting Method

[defective_warthog]

Ohio wants to remove the security risks of M-100's at the precinct level by moving to M-650's at one location. This does remove several security risks associated with the M-100's. M-650's cannot detect the paper ballot's orientation. -paper ballots have to be manually sorted and stacked in the same orientation. M-650's are sensitive for such large machines. -they need to be level and stay level as they operate. M-650's will reject an over voted ballot because it's using the same ballot definitions as the M-100's (precinct level). M-100's can detect the paper ballot orientation. -votes on paper ballots get counted regardless of orientation of the ballot. M-100's can detect over voted ballots. -machine kicks the ballot out allowing the voter to correct their vote -precinct procedure should include accounting for spoiled paper ballots This centralized counting of paper ballots does not give a voter a chance to correct a mistake on an over voted ballot. A mistake that would be detected by M-100's if they were used at the precinct level. I think Ohio is over reacting to it's own Everest study. Most of the security problems associated with the M-100's can be controlled by proper training of the poll workers and improved access control measures at the county or precinct level. Ohio should look to how the M-100's have performed in North Carolina. But North Carolina has one of the strongest laws in the nation. And perhaps more trainable poll workers. -the defect

Re:They aren't against paper but Central Count Pap

[uvajed_ekil]

The crux of their argument is that central counts unlike precinct count and even mediocre touchscreens offer the user a warning when they overvote or undervote for a race thus warning them that they ballot may not be counted and thus giving them a chance to fix it. Their argument is that this lack of a warning (however poor) is likely to cause many errors that the voters are never aware of.

Yes, voting is serious, and yes, we should check our own work. But we all make silly mistakes and typ0s sometimes, so why shouldn't we use every means possible to ensure EVERY vote is cast and counted as intended? Voting is indeed serious, so I don't understand how anyone can argue against using good designs and methods to ensure the proper result.

I'm against both

[mosb1000]

I'm against voting in general (in the sense that people seem to think that an overly invasive and controlling government is okay as long the majority of us voted fot it). Parhaps the ACLU agrees with me and thinks that discrediting the physical mechanism of voting will cause people to re-think blindly accepting democatric rule in situations where no rule at all may be better.

Re:I'm against both

[sumdumass]

That's just silly. There are a lot more issues on a ballot then who gets in office most all of the time. A lot of those issues deal directly with how overly invasive aspects of government can be.

And I would hope that your not skipping the voting process when you claim to be against it. You see, often we have to pick the least evil of the candidates given as choices. Consistently picking the least evil candidate limits some of the damage that can be done. Of course voting for someone because he is popular or has an inviting smile sort of tosses that all out. But complaining about the results of something you chose not to participate in (not you specifically) seems a little inappropriate.

whatever happened to hand counting?

[nguy]

I think voting should be on paper ballots that are hand counted. There is no more reason to mechanize voting than there is to mechanize kissing.

Obviously, if you want to vote anonymously, you can't get feedback about whether you filled it in correctly. But, then, you aren't in elementary school anymore.

Re:whatever happened to hand counting?

[The One and Only]

There is no more reason to mechanize voting than there is to mechanize kissing.

Obviously, you've never kissed 100 million people all on one night every two years!

Re:whatever happened to hand counting?

[Jimithing DMB]

I think voting should be on paper ballots that are hand counted. There is no more reason to mechanize voting than there is to mechanize kissing.

Obviously, if you want to vote anonymously, you can't get feedback about whether you filled it in correctly. But, then, you aren't in elementary school anymore.

According to the ACLU's legal brief if the county in question were to implement this voting system (traditional paper ballots) they'd still be in trouble. You see, the ACLU's legal argument is not that non-notice voting systems are bad but that because other counties have notice voting systems voters in counties with non-notice voting systems are at a disadvantage.

Read my other post in this discussion for a more thorough analysis.

Re:whatever happened to hand counting?

[nguy]

Read my other post in this discussion for a more thorough analysis.

Maybe you should read my post first. I'm arguing that all voting should be done by paper ballot with hand-counting. That also addresses the ACLU's concern.

Re:whatever happened to hand counting?

[Jimithing DMB]

Maybe you should read my post first. I'm arguing that all voting should be done by paper ballot with hand-counting. That also addresses the ACLU's concern.

Only if every county in Ohio moves to traditional paper ballots which would be an absolute nightmare to count. It's a little late in the process to print scannable ballots for every county but the obvious long-term solution is to go with optical scan. That way, if all precincts can have the scanners present then voters can get instant notification. If some cannot then to maintain the ACLU's idea of fair it's simple enough to just collect the ballots in a box for all precincts and scan them later.

At least standardizing on optical-scan ballots means you have options and ultimately if all else fails you can still count them by hand.

Stupid people have no problems filling out LOTTERY

[lena_10326]

....ballots, but suddenly have problems with voting ballots.

Interesting.

I've seen this work.

[SanityInAnarchy]

There was a machine -- Diebold, unfortunately -- which would scan the ballot when it was dropped in, and keep some sort of internal tally. It wouldn't say who I voted for, but it would say that I voted.

In what way is that not sufficient?

Re:I've seen this work.

[sumdumass]

Time and order of counted votes.

That is one of the problems with the voting system in Ohio in which changes are being forced to happen because of. You can request a time stamp of when the votes were cast and a list of voters who showed up to vote for each precinct. This has been shown to remove the secrecy of voting when the time the person shows up can often be collaborated with the time stamps. It isn't 100% perfect in predicting who voted for what but it can rule out if you voted a certain way or not if say between 3 and 4 pm no one voted for a democrat or for what ever ballot measure/tax levee/whatever at a certain precinct and you voted there at 3:30 pm.

If they were tallied as casted like that again, there would be a need for a time stamp again so you didn't average 3 votes ever ten minutes and then all the sudden 10 votes every three minutes during the lunch break and right after the news outlets started telling people who the winners are with the polls still open.

Personally, I didn't care, my district had a printout that was displayed under a piece of glass that you verified to match your vote as a final step before submitting it. Not only did this leave a paper trail, but it made you verify your part of the trail. And there would be one of these papers for each person who casts a vote. The rejected ones printed rejected in yellow ink all over it. Photo copying it makes a black mark where the type of ink was so any questions about the legitimacy only needed a zerox machine to validate.

Re:I've seen this work.

[SanityInAnarchy]

Time and order of counted votes.

Why does that have to be recorded?

Just leave the box locked until the votes need to be counted, at which point, leave out either time or order.

Re:I've seen this work.

[sumdumass]

I didn't originally see what you were thinking when I first wrote this But I think I do now, The box you drop it in doesn't count that you voted for X just that you showed up and voted. Then at the end of the night, count the votes in random order and make sure the total voted cast match the number the box counted.

I guess that would work as long as we can tell how many votes were cast when (as in you voted not you voted for X) and that the same votes cast are the ones being counted at the end of the night. Maybe making the box place random numbers out of order on the back of the ballot while only recording what number was issued in addition to a simple time stamp (but not connected as to when either was issues) could ensure that both the votes were cast legitimately as well as proving they are the ones being counted.

Re:I've seen this work.

[SanityInAnarchy]

The box you drop it in doesn't count that you voted for X just that you showed up and voted. Then at the end of the night, count the votes in random order and make sure the total voted cast match the number the box counted.

Unless you have a particular reason to mistrust that machine, it could simultaneously record two different things: That you showed up and voted, and who you voted for. It would just record these in separate places, with no record other than the physical ballots kept somewhere.

Thus, at the end of the day, there's effectively no difference -- so long as your data store doesn't log transactions in some kind of revealing way -- but it's slightly more efficient.

State law

[sgunhouse]

Won't do any good for them to try to sue Cuyahoga County anyway, it was the state which decertified current touchscreen voting machines and is forcing all counties back to the paper ballot. All of Ohio's counties (88, if I recall my history) have to go back to the old paper ballot system before the primary next month, after the federal government forced the touchscreen system on us a few years ago. (No, I don't live in Cuyahoga County, but I am in Ohio.)

no, seriously, spare us the elitism

[Scudsucker]

There is no reason to discard a ballot for trivial errors when they can be easily found on the spot. You show up to vote on election day, fill out your ballot, and an election worker feeds it through an opscan reader. It tells you on the spot that you didn't vote for a presidential candidate and it turns out it's because you only reached 60% opacity within the circle rather than the minimum 70%. Or how you "voted" for both candidates for the same judicial office, because you accidentally filled in the wrong spot at first and didn't erase it sufficiently before marking in the second spot.

So you fix the errors or just get a new ballot. Your votes are rescanned and counted, no harm no foul. If you vote for the wrong candidate that's your own damn fault, but throwing away ballots for trivial errors in the name of "responsibility" is nothing more than holier-than-thou elitism.

Re:no, seriously, spare us the elitism

[Anonymous Coward]

When I was in highschool (and a few random courses early in undergrad) we answered multiple choice tests using scantron cards. Immediately upon handing them in, they could be run through the machine to determine your grade.

At least the ones I saw in highschool tended to be pretty picky. Entire box had to be filled in, right kind of lead had to be used, absolutely no smudges over any of the other boxes (forget about using an eraser!). However once you handed the card in, whatever the machine reported as your mark was your mark. Use a pen or wrong kind of pencil? Too bad. Fill in a box incorrectly? Too bad. Accidently offset all the answers by one? Really, too damn bad.

It didn't matter if the card was filled out incorrectly. It didnt matter if the reason the machine didn't like it was blatently obvious. You filled it out correctly or your mark suffered; simple. Because of that policy, I and the kids in my classes quickly figured out that we needed to be careful when filling the little buggers out.

The point is if we can expect teenagers to fill in several dozen boxes flawlessly when their grades are on the line, we can sure as hell expect adults to fill in a handfull of boxes flawlessly when they are helping to decide the future of their country.

If someone messes up on a driving test than they have to wait before they can take it again. It doesn't matter if it was obvious that they just overlooked a stop sign, and probably would notice it if they immediately took the test again - they have to wait. Similarly if someone screws up while voting, they should have to wait until the next election to try again.

As an aside I'm not sure you even understand what elitism is. Rejecting the idea that people should have their hand held throughout the entire election process is not elitism in any sense of the word.

You should be notified??

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they should be notified of their error immediately and be allowed to correct it. You are wholly wrong here.

Really? How can they notify you if they don't know who you are? Votes are supposed to be cast anonymously. The reason for this is so that your vote cannot be bought, and also so that you cannot be persecuted for your political views. This is how it has been done in the past and how they continue to do it today in the US - there is no way to tie an individual ballot to a specific person. Even with the voter verifiable paper trail, there is no way to link an individual to their vote; the voter verifiable paper trail just produces a piece of paper that re-states what was on the electronic voting screen, which can be used to account for any discrepancies in the electronic count.

Having grown up in Cuyahoga County...

[Mhrmnhrm]

I have absolutely no clue why the ACLU has their knickers in a twist over this. Back before the "Help America Vote Act", when nearly the ENTIRE STATE used punch cards, after poking your holes, you slipped the ballot into an envelope, dropped it in a locked box, and that was the last you ever saw of it. That box went off to a CENTRAL tabulation facility, and if you over/under voted, or had a hanging chad, tough shit. There was no "Hey, this isn't right, would you like to try again?" Then we got touchscreens, and now optical, and the ACLU thinks central counting is a problem? Frack me... how about they go fight for predatory lenders and corrupt laws instead.

Re:Having grown up in Cuyahoga County...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you grew up in Cuyahoga County, then you know how corrupt it is. You know how terrible the "progressives" have f-ed it up in Cleveland, how bad the schools are, etc.

You know that Ohio has a Democrat Secretary of State pushing all this "reform".

You know that it was actually Democrats in Cleveland that were put on trial for election fraud.

You should know that the ACLU and other Marxist organizations don't care a bit for truly fair voting.

They are only concerned with stacking the deck for the Communi...er..the "Democratic" party. That means central tallying places to make tampering easier, moron-proof ways to vote for their party members, motor-voter laws to make it easy for illegal aliens and other non-eligibles to vote, and many other ways to steal other people's votes and subvert democracy.

Re:Having grown up in Cuyahoga County...

[Copid]

You should know that the ACLU and other Marxist organizations don't care a bit for truly fair voting.

Question: At what point in history did the word "Marxist" cease to mean anything at all?

Solution found

[RiotingPacifist]

Give me a 51% vote, come on you already voted for bush, TWICE!... ....oh wait that was what the whole paper vs electronic thing was about.

From what i understand the ACLU merely acts on behalf of people, so id step back before attacking them and just hope that the legal system will reject they're move against a centralized paper counting system (theyre not for electronic voting just against 1 type of paper voting).

how hard are your voting systems, we just write a big x next to the candidates name KISS. If your system is that complicated perhaps the best method is to have a touch screen do all, the double vote checking and picking who you want (think nice shinny logos and faces for the less intelligent amongst you), then simply punching the paper for you. Although perhaps an argument could be made for voting evolution, the dumber votes are less likely to survive and therefore voting keeps getting harder as only those smart enough to use it count!

Yergh...

[Anonymous Coward]

I see so many people (and US states) that have not a single clue on how to run a paper ballot based election properly. This is how virtually all ballots in Canada are cast. How do we know it is secure? A chain of accountability is made to ensure no tampering happens, through (ah! Just like US government, they say...) checks and balances.

  - Special paper, number of sheets printed by the printer and returned to elections Canada are compared
  - Three part ballots, consisting of a stub kept in the returning officer's book with a matching serial number to a serialized stub attached to the true ballot handed to the voter. The serialized stub is removed by the deputy officer before the voter puts the ballot in the box and collected and tallied against the returning officer's book (no-one may look at the ballot's contents at any time it is in the voter's possession).
  - When a voter enters to vote, their name/address is verified against their voter card (mailed to the voter earlier) and a line is placed through their name on the deputy officer's list. After they have finished voting, their name has a check placed beside it.
  - Deputy and retuning officers may not leave the premises during the vote.
  - Candidate's representatives are permitted (one from each party) to attend any and all polling stations for all functions of voting.
  - Should there be a need to move the ballot box at any time, such as so a disabled voter may vote when the polling station is not accessible, all parties to the vote (representatives and officers) are to supervise and approve this.
  - Ballots and box may not leave the premises until counted and reported.
  - Counting of the ballots is to be supervised by candidate's representatives while the room is locked so no-one may enter or leave.
  - Number of ballots counted vs. number of people that have voted vs. stubs are compared.
  - ALL MATERIALS that are NOT ballots (but used during the election) are placed in a sealed envelope, along with the results of the counted ballots, and the envelope placed in the ballot box.
  - Special cellphones provided to the officers by elections canada for only elections canada use are used to clarify unusual situations and report the results of the vote.
  - Special elections canada tape is used to tape the box.
  - The box is then returned by the officers to elections canada, where the results are counted again and compared to the results reported. All ballots are kept for a specified time after the election is complete so a recount may be preformed.
  - Spoiled ballots are to be agreed upon as such by all parties to counting the vote. Disagreements are to be recorded and reported.

Since there are representatives of all candidates at the polling stations (sometimes there may not be representatives of all candidates at all polling stations, it is a voluntary option for the candidate to provide representatives) and two unrelated officers (at a minimum) at each polling booth, it is virtually impossible to get away with "stuffing the ballot" especially with the above procedures in place. To get away with it would take the co-operation of at least a half dozen people, and that would lead only to, at best, a few hundred ballots (only at a large booth -- when I participated as a representative, my poll had 32 people registered on the list, clearly trying to stuff more than 32 ballots in the box would be pointless as they are recounted later) that are swayed.

For those that think this procedure takes too long, we are able to get the results of the election so quickly, Canada has passed laws to prevent the results of ridings being released before the election has been completed in your province (which, obviously, leads to exciting arguments on the internet about how BC votes are pointless as the election is already "decided" before they even get to vote).

Special rule:

  - If you are given a ballot, you must return it. You may not eat it, or otherwise decide to keep it for yourself.

Re:Yergh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow what you described is pretty much the same as what we have in Arizona (at least last time I voted).
US elections are run by the individual states, so you end up with 50 different processes, so based on Murphy's Law a few of them are going to suck

Re:Yergh...

[Arbitor Elegantorum]

The details of a Candian election are very similar to those of an American election, in any state. All the stuff about special tapes, matching number of ballots issued to those counted, etc. have been developed over the years to avoid cheating, yet it still goes on, mostly on the local level.

A friend of mine was a local poll-watcher in Chicago some years ago, while we were still using punch-card voting. She went to a preceint where on the page for the alderman's race the poll judges had taped over the non-incumbent's slots and circled the incumbant's slots in red ink. The unstated rules was that if your precinct didn't go for the incumbant you would stop getting garbage pickups. My friend complained and called Election Central, which closed the polling place for a few hours while new punch units were delivered.

My friend nearly got beat up. Not by the poll workers, but by the voters. Many of them were city workers, who were afraid that if they didn't bring their voting receipt to their boss that they would be fired. This sort of thing happens all the time at the local level, no matter the voting system in use. The problem is not Karl Rove using satellite transmissions to Diebold machines, it's local ward heelers who will violate the Constitution and all the laws of god and man just to get their brother-in-law on the city payroll.

Paper optical scan ballots cant be trusted

[bussdriver]

You should go to blackboxvoting.org and read about how those nice scanners that spit the flawed ballots back out ALSO HAVE AN OFF SWITCH for the checking feature. So, you can flip the switch off for areas where you want to lose votes.

MOD PARENT DOWN

[Smordnys s'regrepsA]

(not that I often say that)

Our education system sucks for anything other than churning out workers. Read up on the gents that kick started our current system. They freely admitted what they were doing and why (what they weren't doing was churning out intelligent individuals). Then go out and ask your teacher friends (high school or below, if you have to pay for college it isn't truly public) what they think of the system. You'll get an ear full, and a new understanding of the world.

Honestly, the students may be able to add, subtract, multiply, read, and write but they sure as heck can't understand. Try sticking their faces in front of an essay with more than 5 paragraphs, and see what you can get out of them (hint: it will come out exactly like a form letter, have bad grammar and syntax, and make you want to blow your brains out!) God forbid you try this with a serious text, they would skip straight to Spark Notes or Wikipedia!

Now, ask them their opinions on anything. Sorry, that's a trick question - they don't learn to form their own opinions until after they leave their cookie-cutter school.

We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forego the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks. -President Woodrow Wilson

Our system is nothing less than brainwashing, aimed at the children of the masses, to make them easier to control when they are grown. We are defective by design.
/rant

Whatever happened to accountability?

[jbarr]

While I understand that there may be legitimate cases where error reporting is necessary (though none come to mind at the moment) why aren't people held accountable for their actions when voting? If I make a mistake at work, I am held accountable, and must deal with any consequences. If I make a mistake on a test, the answer gets marked as wrong and I am held accountable for the incorrect answer. So why are people not held accountable for their voting?

The legal argument is different

[Jimithing DMB]

I do not really see the issue with central tabulation. If you didn't mark a candidate for a particular race or a choice for a referendum (an "undervote") then clearly you didn't wish to vote on it. Yes, it would be better to mark the write-in space and put a line through it or write in your own name but I think it would be clear to another human what the intention was. And if you voted for two people in the same race (an "overvote") then your vote doesn't count for that race. Sorry, if you're so stupid you can't figure out that you are only supposed to vote for one person per race when the ballot instructions clearly state that then your non-vote need not be counted.

In the case when it is a machine error occurring at the central tabulator then that error can easily be flagged and the ballot can be put aside. In the event that the race between two candidates is close enough that the number of ballots with errors could make a difference, then the ballots with errors can be looked at by human beings. If the error was caused by stray markings, then a group of people can determine the intent. If the error was caused by the voter clearly marking no choice or more than one choice then that vote can be thrown out.

In the grand scheme of things I would estimate that you might have to throw out a handful of ballots due to unreconcilable errors. That's within a reasonable margin of error.

And what about considering things in the era before technology. That is, simply writing the candidates' names on a piece of paper or being given a piece of paper with a series of checkboxes. What did they do back then if the name was unreadable or the voter marked two boxes or none at all? I would venture a guess that they did the same things I propose above. Namely, they made a best effort.

However, none of what I just said is actually critical to the ACLU's case. Once again, the media (AP in this case) has taken what looks like nothing more than a press release from a large organization and printed it as fact. The ACLU is not in fact asking for an injunction to prevent what they are calling in their brief a "non-notice" voting system. Instead, they are asking for the injunction because some counties have "notice" systems and others have "non-notice" systems.

If you read the ACLU's brief you will note that it specifically states their legal argument is "not that the central count optical scan (CCOS) system violates equal protection per se." No, instead they are arguing that the disparity in voting systems means that Ohio voters are not getting equal protection of the law as required by the fourteenth amendment.

I am not sure I buy that argument. Is it really the case that voting systems with different characteristics are necessarily unequal? Furthermore, as far as I know Ohio primaries are not winner-take-all. Thus, even in the highly unlikely event that a not insignificant portion of ballots had unreconcilable errors the ultimate outcome would be one or two delegates going to the wrong candidate. Even in that case can it really be proven that voters got unequal treatment?

Furthermore, the potential for fraud with computerized voting systems planned for use in other counties should be compared to the potential of an optical-scan ballot with unreconcilable errors planned for use in this county. If the disadvantages are reasonably equal then the ACLU's argument is toast.

Re:Stupid people have no problems filling out LOTT

[servognome]

Stupid people have no problems filling out LOTTERY

That's because they get instant feedback on whether or not their ballot can be read - which is exactly what the ACLU is fighting for

Stop with the nanny state already!

[Anonymous Coward]

The "old" system that was used in my county before the "Great Kerfuffle" was perfectly adequate. A punch card (no, not the prescored piece of crap) was placed into a special holder and punched with a sliding punch device which would only allow punches at specific regular detents. You could see the holes. If they weren't next to who you wanted you could take the ballot back to the registrars and get a new one (the old one was put into a sealed waste box sight unseen by anyone but the voter). Yes, you had to turn it over to vote both sides of the card but there were large letters on both sides of the ballot that read "VOTE BOTH SIDES OF CARD".

Yes, the ballots were centrally counted. SO WHAT!? Interested and accredited officials were there to verify the process. The machines could be easily checked at any time. If folks still distrusted the results you had the paper ballot that could be verified by anyone caring to look at them.

At some point the voter needs to take responsibility for their [in]actions. They need to take the time to make sure they have done things correctly.

The ACLU is way off target on this one (and a bunch more). You do what you can to make a reasonable effort to provide a fair not perfect (and there is no such thing) voting environment. Short of the ACLU filling out the ballot for you (hmmmm, maybe that's what these "do gooders" really want) there is NO technology that will absolutely guarantee that some voters won't make mistakes (Go ahead, try to argue otherwise. Doing so simply indicates a fundamental failure to grasp the fundamentals of the human condition).

If the ACLU wants to worry about about counting votes they should concentrate on the disenfranchised voters in the Michigan and Florida primaries. Republicans cut their voices to a whisper (number of delegates were cut in half) while those egalitarian Democrats cut their tongues out (delegates were completely disqualified). Unfortunately the parties are entitled to their own processes and rules. But, the electorate should stop acting like sheep and pressure both parties (no, not the Government, this is a "party" thing) to reform.

Where's the outrage?

[Anonymous Coward]

The American Civil Liberties Union asked a federal judge on Monday to block the March 4 presidential primary in Ohio's biggest county if it switches to a paper ballot system that doesn't allow voters to correct errors.

Great. Now the ACLU, like the Democrat party, is acting to disenfranchise a whole state by taking away their right to vote in the primaries. Why? Because THEY know better. Way to go ACLU.

Re:Where's the outrage?

[Copid]

...the Democrat party...

I know that our leaders have trouble expressing themselves as a whole, but please don't let their spelling mistakes become yours. Or were you just being an ass?

Remember Florida....

[standsquiet]

Florida is the place where all of this started. It's ironic because Florida has a lottery. In a lottery you basically vote for numbers. You use a pencil to mark little "bubbled" numbers, and hand it to the gas-station attendant. There has never been any issues with the way it's done, and they are able to keep up with how many winners there are, as soon as the numbers are picked. Why can't the lottery be this way too? It's due to the bullshit idea that who you vote for should be "secret". That's ironic too, because most people post signs in their yards.

Obvious point is missing.....

[MrHyd3]

Most of you probably are not old enough to vote or may be voting for the first time. The obvious point missing here is the history of vote manipulation. Now that there any many points of view/opinions as far as media goes since the emergence of media reach, the spotlight on vote manipulation is constantly in the news due to the fact a certain group had the strangle hold on most elections. I live 45 miles from this county and it's PREDOMINANTLY Democrat, let them vote paper and when the moronic people can't figure it out "again", what excuse will they have then? First it was "We can't understand a butterfly ballot!" which was in use for YEARS in our area, then we went to the Electronic voting machine due to the FLA fiasco, then you heard cries of "some evil entity" changing votes so when they go back to paper again, I ask, who will they blame next?

Ballots

[o'reor]

There are a few principles that should be kept in order to keep ballots as simple as possible :

• one ballot per question. If you have more than one question to answer in a single ballot, confusion begins, and voting machines will be pushed forward as a possible solution. Instead, organize as many ballots as necessary, with (for instance) differently coloured envelopes for each issue.
• paper voting, with transparent ballot boxes. A multipartisan committee (open to any voter) is there all along to check that nobody has tried to stuff the ballot box with fake votes.
• any citizen should have the right to attend the whole process, from the opening of the booth up to the counting and recount by hand, and the results should be diplayed publicly at the entrance of the booth when the vote is over.
• in order to have more volunteers available for vote counts and supervision, organize the vote on sundays and holidays.
• never allow so-called "professionals" to meddle with the vote or the ballot boxes out of sight of every citizen. Abuse starts there. And such abuse has peen reported more than once in the last two presidential elections in the US.

That's my 2 euro cents from this side of the pond.

This is why voting "receipts" shouldn't be allowed

[argent]

My friend nearly got beat up. Not by the poll workers, but by the voters. Many of them were city workers, who were afraid that if they didn't bring their voting receipt to their boss that they would be fired.

This is why all the schemes involving a "receipt" rather than a ballot as a "paper trail" are not just flawed but actually reduce the validity of a vote. When you leave the polling place you should not be permitted to carry anything that you didn't have when you entered it... even so much as a "how to vote" card.

Re:This is why voting "receipts" shouldn't be allo

[Arbitor Elegantorum]

I think you misunderstand the voting receipt. Ours say, "Thank you for voting today, February 5th, 2008 Primary Elections." and it has the logo of the election board. That's all. We hand it to people after they put their ballot into the scanner or return the touchscreen activation card. In Illinois employers must give workers time off to vote, so asking for a simple verification that they did so seems fair. It is unfortunate that ward heelers also use it, but since it doesn't have any indication of how you voted, it is of little use.

Touchscreen vs Paper Ballots in Cleveland Ohio

[Ichido]

I have been working in Cleveland for the last 38 years. I live outside of Cleveland. The REAL Reason that The Democrats prefer Paper Ballots is that it is Extremely Difficult to Register and have DEAD PEOPLE VOTE! This has been an Issue that the media tends to 'overlook' and 'play-down'. Check on the last Presidential Election and you will find stories about Dead People Voting. Paper Ballots are easy to "Flood" into the voting process. It hard to drag Dead Bodies into the touch Screen Voting Booths. One 'Lady' was convicted of receiving a large amount of money from a Democrat, which was used to pay others to "Stuff" the election boxes with Phoney Ballots. WKYC TV3, NEWS TV5, WJW Fox8, and other Cleveland TV stations are, in my opinion, covering up this issue. Check the Cleveland News Papers and TV Stations archives for the details.

Re:Stupid people have no problems filling out LOTT

[lena_10326]

That's because they get instant feedback on whether or not their ballot can be read - which is exactly what the ACLU is fighting for

It's possible to fill out a lottery ballot in error and the machine will accept it. The game requires 6 numbers; fill in 7 and it accepts it just fine. It will just choose the first 6.

Like I said, people are utterly helpless with what's essentially a binary decision, the election, yet are perfectly capable of playing complex patterns of lottery numbers using wheels with hot and cold analysis. Hocus pocus, but not trivial. I'm tired of this assumed helplessness.

Forget about errors..

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd prefer no to have centralized counting because it makes it so much easier to fix an election.

Re:This is why voting "receipts" shouldn't be allo

[argent]

In Illinois employers must give workers time off to vote, so asking for a simple verification that they did so seems fair.

Maybe, but it's not actually necessary, is it? We're not talking about them taking time off any time they want it, after all.

But the main point is that there are people actually suggesting that voters should get a receipt of *how they voted*, to act as a paper trail. I'm not saying that's what happened here, I'm saying that this kind of incident demonstrates that the argument against it isn't just a paper tiger.

Who says they are looking?

[pavon]

Without the tally machines, you fill in the bubbles and put your ballot in the slot at the top of a box. With the tally machines you fill in the bubbles and then put your ballot in the slot on the tally machine. If it reads the ballot correctly it drops it into the box underneath and shows a green light. If it doesn't, it feeds it back out to you and shows a red light. That is how our scanners work. No attendant necessary.

If it keeps having problems and you can't figure it out then you can ask for assistance, which is better than unknowingly submitting an invalid ballot.

It's not about counting

[onemorechip]

The ACLU wants voters to be able to have their votes *validated*, not *counted*, locally. If they have an invalid ballot then they would have an opportunity to fix it before it is sent for counting. The first time this story ran (yes, it's a dupe) there was mention that the system being implemented may violate state law, which would explain why this is being pursued in Ohio.

BTW I like the Oregon system. I live in California but I registered for permanent absentee voter status several years ago (at least some counties here allow you to do that). You don't have to show you'll be absent on election day to get an absentee ballot, and the polls will accept your absentee ballot if you deliver it in person (which I usually do).

Is it just me...

[Phoenix919]

Is it just me... or has anyone else recalled that Ohio (occasionally florida and like 1 other state) is the state which tends to waver as far as presidential decisions go? (consider the election four years ago.) One "Special interest" covertly taking control of so specific a location, the inability to verify what was voted... and you have yourself a paid-for president. Now... what kind of politician or political party would POSSIBLY do such a thing? Hmmmmmm........

Actually

[pavon]

Allowing a voter to verify their vote "after the fact" from any location (or by direct examination of a receipt that leaves the polling place with them) makes vote-buying (or coercion) much too easy. Some clever guy came up with a method of voting that does allow people to check that their vote was counted correctly after the fact, without revealing who they voted for. It also adds a couple more levels of verifiability beyond normal paper ballots.

Of course this is at the expense of added complexity, so while you would be almost certain to catch any mistakes, it does increase the chances that mistakes are made - and then what do you do with those invalidated votes?

GET WITH THE TIMES

[Anonymous Coward]

Give me a break. Electronic voting works a lot better. I cant believe these people. http://www.politicalmajority.com/

I want to hear this argument...

[That1tallguy]

Let's play a game. "What is authenticity".

There's 3 *must haves* in verifying authenticity of something. You need an ID (your name -- this is not an ID card), you need authentication (something you know, something you are, something you have, etc) and authorization (here's what you can do).

Voting is anonymous, in theory anyway, they proved recently with electronic voting you can prove who voted what when fairly easily -- records request anyone? That aside, remove a part out, any of it, it is anonymous (!), because you cannot prove (no authentication) that this is exacty what this person was allowed to do and/or did. In voting, ID and authentication (we know what you're allowed to do, vote) are not used, so it is no longer something that can be traced, which is great. Don't confuse this with the authentication for you to be allowed to vote. They DO verify you are allowed, but the act of voting is not. Separate processes. Technically, someone could come in, be authorized to vote, but never go to the booth and just leave. That's your loss though since the 2nd part of the process is anonymous.

-But-

People have lost the idea that based on anonymity, it is impossible to verify that your "vote was counted" for whatever you voted for. You CAN verify you voted at post 157385826 and you CAN verify "yes that is your signature" ...beyond that, forget it. You can prove you were there, but not what/how/IF you voted.

So, with that in mind, it makes no difference how you vote. "Oh, you can fix a paper ballot" Sure, but you can on the electronic ones too (I'm in ohio, I've used one a couple times now) but a paper ballot -- you can interpret and it gives the political retards a legal leg to stand on because there could be "hanging chads" or other BS that makes the rest of us overly annoyed.

Re:They aren't against paper but Central Count Pap

[Snuhwolf]

Exactly. As per usual few bothered to check the aclu website for details before bashing them. Heres the straight dope: http://www.aclu.org/votingrights/gen/33828prs20080128.html

hoop jumping

[Scudsucker]

Entire box had to be filled in, right kind of lead had to be used, absolutely no smudges over any of the other boxes (forget about using an eraser!). However once you handed the card in, whatever the machine reported as your mark was your mark. Use a pen or wrong kind of pencil? Too bad. Fill in a box incorrectly? Too bad. Accidently offset all the answers by one? Really, too damn bad.

So if your pencil has #3 lead instead of #2, you get a zero no matter if you answered the questions correctly, with no chance to fix it? That's not reasonable, that's bullshit.

The point is if we can expect teenagers to fill in several dozen boxes flawlessly when their grades are on the line, we can sure as hell expect adults to fill in a handfull of boxes flawlessly when they are helping to decide the future of their country.

The point of taking tests in school is to see what you've learned. The point of going to a poll on election day is to vote. Not to set up an arbitrary series of hoops to jump through and disqualify anyone who makes a trivial mistake.

As an aside I'm not sure you even understand what elitism is.

A damn sight more than you know about being reasonable.