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Voting Machines Selecting Default Candidates
overThruster writes "Some voters in Las Vegas have noticed that Democrat Harry Reid's name is checked by default on their electronic voting machines. By way of explanation, the Clark County Registrar says that when voters choose English instead of Spanish, Reid's Republican opponent, Sharron Angle, has her name checked by default."
Really, all voters should be presumed to cast a "none of the above" ballot unless they specifically vote otherwise. Yes, even those who abstain by not showing up. Failure to even show up is a vote of no confidence in the system itself, which is a very important statement and deserves to be counted.
If the majority of the population doesn't even show up to vote, that is a de facto vote against the system. Nobody can claim a mandate to govern under such circumstances. Any government elected under such circumstances cannot be considered legitimate.
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I'm Canadian, so maybe the political situation is completely different "down there", but I think you are reading a little too much into people not showing up to vote.
Sure some people are making a statement by not voting, but I think most who do not vote are either lazy (probably the majority) or don't feel they have enough understanding to make a serious choice.
And personally, I would actually rather have a relatively small turn out of voters making a choice based on their beliefs, than a huge crowd of people just randomly picking a candidate because everyone is telling them they must vote. Voting isn't the important part.. keeping yourself aware of the politics of your country is!
I do like the idea of specifically counting people who say "I don't think any of these are good" and maybe even a "I don't feel confident to make a choice". Would be an interesting number to see.
There is no default choice. The selection screen is right after the language screen. If you press English and linger too long, it also selects what ever is at the position when the next screen shows up.
This is a 'young tester' type of bug. Any tester whose is comfortable and used to the type of technology won't see it. As soon as an old person whose finger lingers, it shows up.
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well for starters it isn't a 'US' election, it's local. If anything this is libertarianism at its best, not liberal.
A local community deciding it's own rules. Isn't that what the Tea Party/GOP has been spouting off about for years?
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