I am the one to apologize. I was afraid that my previous answer could be seen as a flame war declaration. This last answer of you is very interesting.
Anyway, I think I have explained too much, sorry about that.
No need for that. I love this kind of information! Cultural differences is one of the things that makes life interesting in this planet! We can always learn from other people's experience.
I don't intend to start a flame war and I don't know which country you are from, but I've never seen a vending machine or a bus driver who would take credit cards (anyway some bus passes are smart cards, mine included, but they are for people living in the city only). But I sure hope to see the day when it happens and all coins and paper money are swept from existence!!
I was going to say that the nerds proved Jules Verne to be rigth, but I just read he published his 20,000 Leagues under the Sea several years after the firstsubmarines where launched.
They say, anyways, that Jules Verne's book inspired inventors to build more advanced submarines.
If you think it is cruel to eat them and use them in other ways it doesn't matter why they live in the first place.
Down with the lions!!! They chase, harass and kill the zebras! And the zebras deserve more than just be used as food.
Remember kids, we weren't on the top of the food chain all the time! Some few million years ago we used to be eaten by smilodons.
In the moment I saw this on the news I said: "Are americans still allowed to research on genetics? Where has Bush failed?" Of course, I meant this as a joke and people at home laughed. But if you have ever seen stand-up comedy, you know that it's funny because it's the truth.
One thing I'd like to know is whether the blank votes can put one candidate over the edge, giving him a majority. Lula was less than 2% from getting a clean majority, so if 2% of the population voted blank, would that have avoided the need for a runoff?
No. And I can say that with all confidence, because Lula got 48.61% and blank votes were 2.73% (you can check the facts here.)
Besides, if you sum up all the candidates % of votes, you will see they add up to 100%, therefore neither blank or null votes are considered.
The null vote stuff is harder to predict, because the Constitution says one thing and the Electoral Code says other thing. So if it happens, the final word is given by the Supreme Electoral Court.
Even worse than jury duty, however, is the fact that poll duty is for three consecutive years.
You mean two consecutive elections, right? Since we have elections every 2 years... (I'm not contradicting you, just making your information clearer for the ones who doesn't know the Brazilian voting system).
If you want technology, put it in assuring the manualo (sic) vote counting of the paper balots isn't tampered. Not on the voting itself.
Excellent idea! But how to implement it? Removing the humans from the equation?
Every voting system is flawless by itself. It's the human factor which messes everything. Are electronic voting machines hackeable? Probably. How much they can affect an election by tampering individual voting machines when there are 126 million voters and an average of 450 voters per voting machine? Maybe too little.
Sure, they can tamper the system at the root, tampering the basic software and therefore tampering all the voting machines. But how long do you think this could fool everybody, specially when the voting machines can be audited and the whole voting process is controlled by an independent power branch?
This thread is getting long and so far I can't figure out your point. You seem to be against the current electronic voting model but I still can't figure out why. You say it's fraud prone and I agree with you, but paper ballot used to be much more fraud prone in Brazil, historically speaking. I can only imagine you are young, in your early 20's and don't remember how elections used to be, because you have too many good arguments to have a bad memory.
Blank votes goes for the candidates with the most votes in the last turn. On the other hand, if in the last turn no candidate reaches 50%+1 votes (because of the null votes), the election is cancelled, and the current candidades may not run for the next one.
My dear heavens! Where did you take this idea from? The election could be cancelled if, and only if, more than 50% of total votes were null. "Could be cancelled", it's not for sure. It's up to the Supreme Electoral Court to decide what happens if more than 50% of the votes are null. (I'm not linking the official page on this information because it's in portuguese and wouldn't be fair for most slashdotters.)
A sound idea, don't you think? But, guess what? Yeah, the law wasn't approved.
I remember that... too bad you just decided not to say why it wasn't approved. They tested this system in places where most voters are simple-minded people (for the Brazilian readers, it was in Sergipe and Distrito Federal) and they did it on purpose. It didn't work because it confused people. Instead of confirming the vote, most of them (for reasons I don't remember now) cancelled it, making the paper to be sheredded and the process to restart from beginning, leading to huge lines and voting happening until 10 PM, when they should end at 5 PM.
The technology wasn't the problem there, it was the level of education of people voting. There is no technology that can turn dumb people in smart people.
And it's sad that there are people with karma-modifying bonus who try to make a (wrong) point using only half of the information. No voting system is perfect, but you, as a brazilian, should know ours is much better than most voting system out there.
People shouldn't be fooled by the parties names in Brazil. And as physics say, it all depends on your point of reference. Inside Brazilian politics, PSDB has a slight right-wing bias. They wouldn't join forces with PFL (the most right-wing party in Brazil, among the ones that deserve attention, in my opinion) if they didn't have a right-wing bias. If you say that all parties are left-wing, you are contradicting yourself. After all, if they are all on the left, there is no sides, therefore, no left or right to consider. "Center" is half way from the leftmost wing and rightmost wing.
I might be worried that some left-wing nutjob in Brazil would nationalize that source code and fork in a "fuck the yankee imperialist capitalist" move that Latin America loves so much.
You are american, right? You must be, because you show little knowledge of foreign politics. Sure, Latin America has its share of "left-wing nutjobs", like Evo Morales in Bolivia and Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. But that's not the case in Brazil. We also have our left-wing nutjobs (and one of them ended in third place in yesterday's election) but they seldom achieve anything important.
About the "little respect for forign IP in the past", it didn't matter if it was foreign or national, it was a question of public health, which should be one of the top priorities in any government. AIDS strikes harder on poor people, and the pharmaceutical industry doesn't seem to be willing to spread the return of their investiment for too long.
And just for you to know, the Minister of Health that made this move was a center-right wing politician (which by the way won the election for governor in Sao Paulo, where 1/4 or Brazil population lives).
Randomize the buttons so that the order of candidates changes every time, store the order in a table.
Forgive me, but that sounds like a VB programmer idea. Anyway, Sao Paulo state had about 1000 candidates for congressman. Are you sure putting them in the screen in with no preditable order would help anyway? It would only happen to make large lines in the voting precintes!
In Brazil every party has a 2-digit number that identifies it. For executive candidates (president, governor and mayor) they use the party number. Senators use 3 digit numbers, federal congressmen use 4 digit numbers, city counselours and state congressmen 5 digits, being the first 2 from their parties.
When you enter the numbers, the voting machine shows their name, party and a picture, because Brazil still have lots of illiterate people. Besides the voting machine's buttons are large and have the numbers in Braille for the blind, along with a audible feedback.
Touch screen with the name of the candidates? Bah! This is unnecessary excess of technology and source of problems.
It's possible yes, to compromise a voting machine, but doing the same for a dozen of them is really hard.
Just to provide some extra information, they put one voting machine for every 450 voters in average. This would make a large scale fraud much harder if it's not an inside job. And inside fraud would be even harder, since the parties can inspect the software, if I'm not mistaken.
Personally, I don't believe that has ever happened, because the last party in power lost the elections and this can also happen this year.
I find it's somewhat weird that one can't directly vote as "null" (this means, in other words, you're refraining yourself from participating). In order to vote as "null", you have to pick an invalid candidate number. [...] For some reason, it seems to be this is a form of pushing the nation into voting *for someone*.
1) A nullified vote means you made a mistake picking a candidate. This "mistake" can be delibered or not.
2) If you are not willing to participate (considering that voting is mandatory in Brazil), the voting machine has a "blank" button.
3) The voting machines have the "blank" button since the first prototype in 1996. Actually, the design of the voting machine hasn't changed much since then.
4) The blank vote has always existed, since the paper ballot and it has the same effect of nullified votes. But the blank votes were the fraud source in paper ballots: some dishonest vote counters would fill the blank votes during counting. Believe me, that happened much often than you can imagine. With voting machines, that's impossible.
If memory servers, the first voting machines here in Brazil were ordinary 386 PC's with no operating system, it booted with the voting software. I don't know for how long this model was used, anyway. Maybe it was just the first prototypes.
Slashdot Mirror
But... but... you both have statistics! I don't know what to believe.
Statistics are like swimsuits: they show everything but what really matters.
(Reminds me of the thriving Chernobylian fauna.)
Nice article!! Does that mean that nuclear weapons are safe after all?
Sincerelly yours,
Kim Jong-il
You could call that number 07.0, but that doesn't make it any less correct to just call it 7
Mathematicians... always spoiling all the fun!!
Sorry. No flame war intended.
I am the one to apologize. I was afraid that my previous answer could be seen as a flame war declaration. This last answer of you is very interesting.
Anyway, I think I have explained too much, sorry about that.
No need for that. I love this kind of information! Cultural differences is one of the things that makes life interesting in this planet! We can always learn from other people's experience.
I don't intend to start a flame war and I don't know which country you are from, but I've never seen a vending machine or a bus driver who would take credit cards (anyway some bus passes are smart cards, mine included, but they are for people living in the city only). But I sure hope to see the day when it happens and all coins and paper money are swept from existence!!
I was going to say that the nerds proved Jules Verne to be rigth, but I just read he published his 20,000 Leagues under the Sea several years after the first submarines where launched.
They say, anyways, that Jules Verne's book inspired inventors to build more advanced submarines.
nothing else needed.
Money, perhaps?
I don't open my wallet in the dark.
Because it doesn't have a light! This wallet is the answer for the question that was never made until now!
If you think it is cruel to eat them and use them in other ways it doesn't matter why they live in the first place.
Down with the lions!!! They chase, harass and kill the zebras! And the zebras deserve more than just be used as food.
Remember kids, we weren't on the top of the food chain all the time! Some few million years ago we used to be eaten by smilodons.
You are all wrong! God did it and the bible clearly says so.
"Funny" mod will not improve your karma, buddy!
Remember, kids... "Intelligent Design" doesn't imply "Designed Intelligent".
In the moment I saw this on the news I said: "Are americans still allowed to research on genetics? Where has Bush failed?" Of course, I meant this as a joke and people at home laughed. But if you have ever seen stand-up comedy, you know that it's funny because it's the truth.
... Someone call Jack.
Jack Bauer or Jack Shephard?
One thing I'd like to know is whether the blank votes can put one candidate over the edge, giving him a majority. Lula was less than 2% from getting a clean majority, so if 2% of the population voted blank, would that have avoided the need for a runoff?
No. And I can say that with all confidence, because Lula got 48.61% and blank votes were 2.73% (you can check the facts here.)
Besides, if you sum up all the candidates % of votes, you will see they add up to 100%, therefore neither blank or null votes are considered.
The null vote stuff is harder to predict, because the Constitution says one thing and the Electoral Code says other thing. So if it happens, the final word is given by the Supreme Electoral Court.
Even worse than jury duty, however, is the fact that poll duty is for three consecutive years.
You mean two consecutive elections, right? Since we have elections every 2 years... (I'm not contradicting you, just making your information clearer for the ones who doesn't know the Brazilian voting system).
If you want technology, put it in assuring the manualo (sic) vote counting of the paper balots isn't tampered. Not on the voting itself.
Excellent idea! But how to implement it? Removing the humans from the equation?
Every voting system is flawless by itself. It's the human factor which messes everything. Are electronic voting machines hackeable? Probably. How much they can affect an election by tampering individual voting machines when there are 126 million voters and an average of 450 voters per voting machine? Maybe too little.
Sure, they can tamper the system at the root, tampering the basic software and therefore tampering all the voting machines. But how long do you think this could fool everybody, specially when the voting machines can be audited and the whole voting process is controlled by an independent power branch?
This thread is getting long and so far I can't figure out your point. You seem to be against the current electronic voting model but I still can't figure out why. You say it's fraud prone and I agree with you, but paper ballot used to be much more fraud prone in Brazil, historically speaking. I can only imagine you are young, in your early 20's and don't remember how elections used to be, because you have too many good arguments to have a bad memory.
Blank votes goes for the candidates with the most votes in the last turn. On the other hand, if in the last turn no candidate reaches 50%+1 votes (because of the null votes), the election is cancelled, and the current candidades may not run for the next one.
My dear heavens! Where did you take this idea from? The election could be cancelled if, and only if, more than 50% of total votes were null. "Could be cancelled", it's not for sure. It's up to the Supreme Electoral Court to decide what happens if more than 50% of the votes are null. (I'm not linking the official page on this information because it's in portuguese and wouldn't be fair for most slashdotters.)
A sound idea, don't you think? But, guess what? Yeah, the law wasn't approved.
I remember that... too bad you just decided not to say why it wasn't approved. They tested this system in places where most voters are simple-minded people (for the Brazilian readers, it was in Sergipe and Distrito Federal) and they did it on purpose. It didn't work because it confused people. Instead of confirming the vote, most of them (for reasons I don't remember now) cancelled it, making the paper to be sheredded and the process to restart from beginning, leading to huge lines and voting happening until 10 PM, when they should end at 5 PM.
The technology wasn't the problem there, it was the level of education of people voting. There is no technology that can turn dumb people in smart people.
And it's sad that there are people with karma-modifying bonus who try to make a (wrong) point using only half of the information. No voting system is perfect, but you, as a brazilian, should know ours is much better than most voting system out there.
People shouldn't be fooled by the parties names in Brazil. And as physics say, it all depends on your point of reference. Inside Brazilian politics, PSDB has a slight right-wing bias. They wouldn't join forces with PFL (the most right-wing party in Brazil, among the ones that deserve attention, in my opinion) if they didn't have a right-wing bias. If you say that all parties are left-wing, you are contradicting yourself. After all, if they are all on the left, there is no sides, therefore, no left or right to consider. "Center" is half way from the leftmost wing and rightmost wing.
I might be worried that some left-wing nutjob in Brazil would nationalize that source code and fork in a "fuck the yankee imperialist capitalist" move that Latin America loves so much.
You are american, right? You must be, because you show little knowledge of foreign politics. Sure, Latin America has its share of "left-wing nutjobs", like Evo Morales in Bolivia and Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. But that's not the case in Brazil. We also have our left-wing nutjobs (and one of them ended in third place in yesterday's election) but they seldom achieve anything important.
About the "little respect for forign IP in the past", it didn't matter if it was foreign or national, it was a question of public health, which should be one of the top priorities in any government. AIDS strikes harder on poor people, and the pharmaceutical industry doesn't seem to be willing to spread the return of their investiment for too long.
And just for you to know, the Minister of Health that made this move was a center-right wing politician (which by the way won the election for governor in Sao Paulo, where 1/4 or Brazil population lives).
Randomize the buttons so that the order of candidates changes every time, store the order in a table.
Forgive me, but that sounds like a VB programmer idea. Anyway, Sao Paulo state had about 1000 candidates for congressman. Are you sure putting them in the screen in with no preditable order would help anyway? It would only happen to make large lines in the voting precintes!
In Brazil every party has a 2-digit number that identifies it. For executive candidates (president, governor and mayor) they use the party number. Senators use 3 digit numbers, federal congressmen use 4 digit numbers, city counselours and state congressmen 5 digits, being the first 2 from their parties.
When you enter the numbers, the voting machine shows their name, party and a picture, because Brazil still have lots of illiterate people. Besides the voting machine's buttons are large and have the numbers in Braille for the blind, along with a audible feedback.
Touch screen with the name of the candidates? Bah! This is unnecessary excess of technology and source of problems.
It's possible yes, to compromise a voting machine, but doing the same for a dozen of them is really hard.
Just to provide some extra information, they put one voting machine for every 450 voters in average. This would make a large scale fraud much harder if it's not an inside job. And inside fraud would be even harder, since the parties can inspect the software, if I'm not mistaken.
Personally, I don't believe that has ever happened, because the last party in power lost the elections and this can also happen this year.
I find it's somewhat weird that one can't directly vote as "null" (this means, in other words, you're refraining yourself from participating). In order to vote as "null", you have to pick an invalid candidate number. [...] For some reason, it seems to be this is a form of pushing the nation into voting *for someone*.
1) A nullified vote means you made a mistake picking a candidate. This "mistake" can be delibered or not.
2) If you are not willing to participate (considering that voting is mandatory in Brazil), the voting machine has a "blank" button.
3) The voting machines have the "blank" button since the first prototype in 1996. Actually, the design of the voting machine hasn't changed much since then.
4) The blank vote has always existed, since the paper ballot and it has the same effect of nullified votes. But the blank votes were the fraud source in paper ballots: some dishonest vote counters would fill the blank votes during counting. Believe me, that happened much often than you can imagine. With voting machines, that's impossible.
If memory servers, the first voting machines here in Brazil were ordinary 386 PC's with no operating system, it booted with the voting software. I don't know for how long this model was used, anyway. Maybe it was just the first prototypes.
Nevermind letting a 14-year-old who has obsession tendencies to have access to a gun!!
GramMar damnit!
Spelling is an element of ortography, not grammar.
So sad when you see the police breaking the law...