On Fri, 11 May 2007 06:14:07 -0500, Erik Funkenbusch wrote:
> On Fri, 11 May 2007 11:31:48 +0100, SomeBloke wrote:
>
>> Why don't they all use that tried and tested system of voting. Turn up and
>> write your cross on a piece of paper next to your favoured candidates name
>> and then put it in the ballot box. This is just what I and many others did
>> I our local council elections.
>
> Yes, i'm sure that would work. And you can count all 100 million votes
> yourself. That shouldn't take too much time.
>
> Look, after the 2000 election, it became clear that any method that
> required end users to mark a ballot had a huge margin of error. Hanging
> chads and all that. This created opportunities for candidates to declare
> various ballots invalid, and try to alter the election results.
>
> The idea behind the touch screen machines is that no ballot can be
> incorrectly recorded. That doesn't stop someone from accidentally voting
> for the wrong person somehow (people do it), but it prevents the
> uncertainty about which candidate was actually voted for.
>
> What I would like to see is a touch-screen system for ballot printing,
> signed with a private key to prevent pre-manufactured ballots. You go into
> a booth, indicate who you want to vote for, then a paper ballot is printed
> with the choices you made, which you can verify by looking at it. This
> then gets fed into an optical scanner machine (such as those used for the
> last 20-30 years, very reliably) and the ballot is dropped into the
> machines collection bin.
>
> This does several things. First, it removes the human error in marking the
> ballot (but not the human error of choosing the wrong candidate). Second,
> it creates a verifiable way for the voter to check that the touch screen
> device created a proper ballot. Third, it creates a paper trail in the
> form of official ballots that can be hand counted if necessary. Fourth, it
> eliminates the issues we've seen with not printing enough ballots for a
> precinct. Fifth, it eliminates any possibility of fraudulent voting
> machines, whether they be open or closed source. And Sixth, it means only
> the optical scanner (one per precinct, no matter how large) need be kept
> secure. The paper trail means that any voting machine fraud would be
> caught when any hand recount occured.
>
> This allows for automated tabulations, which speed up precinct closings and
> allow official vote numbers to be submitted to the secretary of state of
> each state in a timely manner, regardless of how many voters there are. In
> other words, it scales, something that paper ballots alone cannot do. And
> it makes each ballot 100% countable, with no fear of recounts eliminating
> votes from contention for being invalid.
That still seems overly complicated to me Erik. Ask a mechanical engineer
what is the most efficient machine and they will tell you it's the one
with the least moving parts. Less to go wrong. As much as I love
technology I still think that a simpler system would be easier to
administer.
I know that in the UK bank staff are used to count votes. Nimble fingers
and a plentiful supply! This is all overseen at the various counting
stations by the Party workers and the returning officers for each area or
constituency. Doesn't take very long to do split up like that around the
country. Open, visible and less prone to manipulation and 'hanging chads'.
Any technological advance would be welcome but at the moment I don't think
that there is one that is less prone to manipulation than the one we use
at the moment.
Tim.
|
|
