Black Box voting's, no good, punchcard voting's no good......

[screaming_meme]

So what system should be the standard?

[pansypoo53219]

1. No.2 pencils

on paper ballots(standardised tests).
computer tabulation. FUCKING PAPER TRAIL. works in africa, can work here.

[atldem]

2. How about a

piece of paper and a marker? Systems of election should be a low tech and understandable as possible. If that means that we have to wait until the next day to get results then so be it!

[screaming_meme]

3. But arent hand-counts inaccurate?

I wouldn't mind sacrificing tabulation time for accuracy.

[Pobeka]

5. Then you want hand counting.

Count them twice. This is not a time-consuming problem, done at the precinct level. I can live with a little inaccuracy. Inaccuracies will average themselves out as you roll up precincts. What I can't live with is bias, bias magnifies itself as you roll up precincts.

[screaming_meme]

8. What margin of accuracy is acceptable?

Punchcard voting is around 2%. That would have decided Florida 2000, assuming all other things were equal (and I know they weren't, so let's not go there).

[Pobeka]

9. 0.1%

And I think it's achievable with hand counting. Again, it's because the small error at the precinct level will tend to "average" themselves out as you add the precinct totals together.

[TinfoilHatProgrammer]

10. I must respectfully disagree

Perhaps you can "live with a little inaccuracy", but I can't. It's incumbent on the election administrators to ensure that every vote is counted accurately, not just some of them.

JC

[AP]

13. Numbers aren't subjective. You can count things. One. Two. Three.

I don't really mind a computer tabulation, so long there are very flexible recount rules. You should be allowed a sample hand recount for no reason at all, and then a full recount if the sample recount falls within a certain range.

I also think if a machine counts the ballots the first time, you should be entitled a full recount on a different machine automatically.

[w4rma]

4. If they add a printer to the touch screens that printed out the ballots

and the ballots were counted just the same ways we've always been counting ballots, then that would work just fine.

But for some reason Diebold utterly **refuses** to do this despite the major security problems with Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) systems.

[Eloriel]

7. I heard a presentation by one of Cathy Cox's staff people

the other day. It was very instructive. She spent some time talking about the horrors of paper ballots (the old fashioned way). She impressed upon my mind the fact that responsible election workers go through quite a bit of trauma when ballots go missing. For them, paper = vote fraud. They are so bleepin' glad to be rid of the responsibility and worry and mess and inconvenience of paper ballots that they will, apparently, believe whatever Diebold tells them. They have a built-in predisposition to WANT to believe that computerized voting without voter-verified paper ballots IS the way to go.

And I'm really sure those Diebold and other voting machine company reps are really, really nice. Some of them even make contributions to their political campaigns. Well, probably all of them do. What's not to like? PLUS, Congress funds these things. SoS's can look like heroes. Others can "deliver their state's electoral votes to" the candidate of their choice. Of course, that was Wally O'Dell's words, not any election official I know about. O'Dell is the CEO of Diebold and that's what he proudly proclaimed in a fundraising letter for Bush the other day.

So, you see -- it works very well for EVERYONE, with the possible exception of the voter, and losing candidates of course.

Eloriel

[Grey]

6. #2 pencils work here ,too.

I voted for my Prime Minister with a Paper and Pencel,
In Canada we like to keep things simple.

[ParanoidPat]

11. And honest!

Welcome to DU Grey! :toast:

[Festivito]

12. Optical scanning works, okay.

Only okay.

Votes are easily seen, easily marked, somewhat easily counted by hand, and the ballot is given an immediate check for overvoting so the voter can correct it. However, it MUST be followed up with random HAND recounts because the readers could be maliciously programmed.

Undervotes are not caught, and I've seen people too exasperated to review their own ballot that kicks out for having an error. Sometimes the election workers hit the override button for every ballot just so they can get through the day. Not good, but, they're volunteers!

There are always errors and error rates. Hopefully, the as the margin of victory decreases the scrutiny of the count should increase. For example if a person wins 3000 to 2000 out of 6000 voters, 600 errors (10% which is pretty high) won't matter. Even 300 absentee ballots can be discarded and not read. The 1000 no-votes could be a problem and the opponent should be able to have them checked for being actual votes. Then, as well, the rest may be re-read and recounted.

I would like Internet voting where your computer prints your vote page at home or at a library, that page can be read by an optical reader when you bring it to a polling place. If the optical rejects it, you can go to a computer and printer at the polling place and reprint the ballot. Some worry that this would allow people to pay voters to walk in with one ballot and be paid if they submit it quickly enough that they could not have voted any other way. So, I think that everyone not using a polling-place machine should have to bring in a disposible ballot with the good one and show it, and dispose it as the vote is cast. Imagine being able to vote while on the Internet at home, doing research, taking your time, then walking into a polling place and back out in a couple of minutes on the way to work, not tens of minutes going over long ballots, and having your ballot counted, your ballot corrected, and your ballot varifiable in case of trouble.

Well, that was long-winded of me.