For my American friends.

[lance_sibley]

Snagged from gurudata:

---

Dear United States of America,

The headlines are full of articles noting that your electronic voting machines have been giving all kinds of problems today, during your "mid-term elections".

Since many of you like to go around proclaiming yourselves as being the "Champions and Defenders of Democracy", one might think that you guys had this whole "voting" thing down pat by now. However, since it appears that you do not, allow me to offer the following suggestion:

Here in Canada, we have this really cool high-tech voting mechanism. It is called a "pencil and paper". Let me explain how it works:

1) Some wise person takes the input media known as "a piece of paper" and prints on it the names of all the people who are running in this election. Next to each, their party affiliation (where applicable) and a circle is printed, making it very clear which party and circle go with which candidate.

2) In turn, every Canadian who gives a sufficient level of "a damn" is handed a some input media (aka "a ballot") and goes to stand behind a shield made of high-tech cardboard, where they find the "pencil" component of the input device. Using this pencil device, the voter places a symbol in the circle next to the name of the person they want to vote for. Elections Canada is even so nice as to provide a list of acceptable symbols in every voting booth.

3) The voter then uses a complex voting concealment method called "folding" to hide their selection as they take their ballot to the high-tech vote collection mechanism known as "a box with a hole in it" and insert their ballot.

Done. No fuss. No muss. Pencils never fail to boot or leave chads a-hanging.

I may be a technogeek, but sometimes, for some applications, I like simple solutions. :)

Comments

[crusherdisciple.livejournal.com]

Your model disenfranchises the illiterate inhabitants of the Red States.

If we went back to hand counting, the news media would be bitching about how they wouldn't get the results in time for the 11pm newscasts.

[boywhocantsayno.livejournal.com]

Your model disenfranchises the illiterate inhabitants of the Red States.

There are ways around that - have pictures of the candidates at the voting booth. Colour-code the ballot.

If we went back to hand counting, the news media would be bitching about how they wouldn't get the results in time for the 11pm newscasts.

We don't have that problem. Admittedly, we have a tenth of the people you do, but that could be gotten around by having more polling stations and more vote counters.

[randomyst.livejournal.com]

Um, the government can't tell the 11 pm newcasts to just wait their freakin' horses? LOL

You know, the sad thing, I'm not sure whether Bunny is being sincere or facetious because the reasons against seem like they could go either way.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

Not to mention blind people. And may be totally unworkable due to the number of offices and issues to be decided on any ballot. For example this time in Colorado there are 14 referendums, the Governor, Secretary of State, State Treasurer, Attorney General, State Representative, Congressman, retention of 12 judges appointed some time ago by the Governor, State Senator, County Sheriff, Connor, Commissioner, Treasurer, Assessor, Surveyor, and Secretary. That makes forty some things to vote on. Using a pencil and paper we'd be done counting sometime near Christmas.

I don't necessarily think this is the most sensible way to run elections, but it would take a great deal of work to reform the system beyond just having pencil and paper.

[boywhocantsayno.livejournal.com]

I believe that we have protections in place for blind people; they're allowed to have someone accompany them behind the screen. Couldn't you do that? (For that matter, are the machines currently in use accessible to the blind?)

I hadn't considered the length of some of your ballots, though - that's a good point. How about optical readers that scan the ballot? Works just as quickly, without any problems such as the ones that I've been reading about. We've been using them for the last few municipal elections. Whether they're "fill in the circle" or "complete the arrow" or something else like that, they're simple, straightforward and reliable.

Though it boggles my mind at times to see some of the offices you guys vote on. I just can't fathom voting for judges. Judges should be above politics, IMO. Same with the County Sheriff. Several of the other positions you list also sound to me more like civil service positions rather than political ones, or ones that could be filled by appointment from the caucus in the state House or Senate.

(And I don't even know what a "Connor" is, besides Angel's son or an actor who once played the Chief Engineer of the Enterprise. ;) )

[psiphiorg.livejournal.com]

You mean the illiterate inhabitants of all states, yes?

davidh

[the-pirate-show.livejournal.com]

Well said.

[thekevinlc.livejournal.com]

Ah, the dead horse that is the dreaded voting machines.

Nice advice from someone from another country. *giggle*

[crusherdisciple.livejournal.com]

Okay, I just heard that for the fucked up precincts that actually did go to hand written ballots, those votes won't be counted for 11 days. That could slow down the calling of close races.

Damn, and I thought waiting until the next morning was bad.

[gurudata.livejournal.com]

Hiho,

Ah, the dead horse that is the dreaded voting machines.
Nice advice from someone from another country. *giggle*

And yet, today's problems with those machines are filling OUR news! :)

Well, right after the whole Britney Spears thing, of course. Even Canadians have their priorities. :)

Cu,
Andrew

[thekevinlc.livejournal.com]

Britney Spears thing? I'm sorry, I have no idea what you're talking about. Trailer trash isn't high on my list of things to give a shit about.

Bush isn't my fault. I can sleep well at night knowing that. I can't blame voting machines for his place in the world. I blame the people who used them to elect him. Of course, my Mensa card prevents me from understanding what people see in the man.

The thing is, and I don't want to hijack this thread, if we had a new president this very second, nothing would change. A whole new government won't change anything. It would be a nice start, but the damage he has done will take decades to repair.

[boywhocantsayno.livejournal.com]

Nice advice from someone from another country. *giggle*

Whenever someone at TrekBBS says that in response to criticism from a "dirty furriner," I always think, "But it's okay for your President to 'spread democracy' to other countries?" Somehow, though, they never seem to realize the irony of their reaction. ;)

[thekevinlc.livejournal.com]

I didn't vote for him. Sorry to piss on that parade. I really don't give two good shits what happens in other countries, but I do agree that we shouldn't have gone into Iraq. I'll get hell for saying this, but Iraq was better off with Saddam in charge.

Just don't lump me in with those people who put Bush in charge. Not my fault.

[con-girl.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, in a country where they vote on all kinds of propositions and for all kinds of positions, voting this way would take weeks and weeks.

They can have HUNDREDS of questions.

SO, as much as the pen and paper method works, it probably will not work for them.

Clearly the hole punch method didn't work. I think that they'd be better off with the optical reader (as in tests at school where you fill in little circles). Some municipalities in Canada use them and they seem to work okay and they leave a record that can be checked by hand.

[gurudata.livejournal.com]

Hiho,

SO, as much as the pen and paper method works, it probably will not work for them.

Depends on your definitin of "works", and whether or not "accuracy" has priority over "fast". ;)

They should just let people vote by calling a 1-800 number. After all, American Idol has a higher voter turnout than the US mid-terms, don't they? :)

Cu,
Andrew

[boywhocantsayno.livejournal.com]

Depends on your definitin of "works", and whether or not "accuracy" has priority over "fast". ;)

True, but which would you prioritize? The new Congresspeople don't take office until January, whereas the propositions would take effect immediately, but it could be argued that knowing who won the various races is more important...

They could always just bring in more people to count.

They should just let people vote by calling a 1-800 number. After all, American Idol has a higher voter turnout than the US mid-terms, don't they? :)

Hee. Figure out a way of preventing people from voting more than once, and it might work. (And yes, I know you could issue voter PIN numbers, but there are probably people who would keep calling anyway and tie up the phone lines, possibly trying to give fake PIN numbers. When they eventually hit upon one that works, they've stolen someone else's vote.)

Alternatively, maybe they could just go to a mail-in system, let the elections take place over a course of a few weeks, and have people do the data entry in a centralized location using one system.

[boywhocantsayno.livejournal.com]

They can have HUNDREDS of questions.

SO, as much as the pen and paper method works, it probably will not work for them.

mishalak said the same thing above about the length of their ballots. I hadn't thought of that until I read his comment...

Clearly the hole punch method didn't work. I think that they'd be better off with the optical reader (as in tests at school where you fill in little circles). Some municipalities in Canada use them and they seem to work okay and they leave a record that can be checked by hand.

... and I posted pretty much the same response. :)

[eastman23.livejournal.com]

I may be a technogeek, but sometimes, for some applications, I like simple solutions.
One of the things I remember from Professional Practice in CS (aka "Ethics with Al") was that sometimes a technical solution isn't the best solution. But people think that the technical solution is automatically better because it involves computers. And this was coming from a CS prof.

That said, with the number of things they vote for, a simple pencil and paper may not be the best solution, but I don't see why an optical scanner where you fill in the circle or connect the arrow can't work. But apparently some people want easily hackable machines with no paper trail.

[avt-tor.livejournal.com]

Having observed ballot counting using paper, I can say it's not always that simple to say where a pencil mark is.

We had two offices being elected, plus five ballot questions. For a couple of those, the text was fairly long, and I hadn't been able to track down text ahead of time so I read them at the poll. Across the river in Maryland, they had two federal offices, six state offices, and four ballot questions. Doing this with a paper ballot that was readable would either have involved several pages or a single sheet larger than a full-sized unfolded newspaper. At a minimum, hand-counting seven to twelve different questions takes seven to twelve times as long. The possibility of error would be (1+x/100)^n, where x was the possibility of any single error and N the number of poll questions. A legal paper recount becomes vastly more complex when you have to secure evidence to recount two or more unrelated polls.

Mexico held its election with paper ballots, and it is still disputed, with demonstrations in the streets and threats of civil war, months after the election was held.

I'd rather have a computer touch-screen that generated a printed ballot; that would eliminate almost all ambiguity and allow for a machine first count (which would suffice in almost all cases). But I am not enough of an expert to say what the best solution is. Ultimately any electoral system depends on citizen participation; if many eyes watch every step of the process, it's easier to prevent fraud and error.

[mountebank.livejournal.com]

Elections Canada is even so nice as to provide a list of acceptable symbols in every voting booth.

Is "the finger" an acceptable symbol?

[boywhocantsayno.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I think it should be. :)

[evil-admiral.livejournal.com]

The system works great! You press the button on the screen to vote Republican and you vote Republican! You press the button to vote Democrat and you vote Republican! It's great! =P

[boywhocantsayno.livejournal.com]

Great for you, I'm sure. Not so great for roughly 50% of your population. :P

[sciffy-circo.livejournal.com]

I'll keep digging that tunnel to Canada...

[marahsk.livejournal.com]

Um, there already *is* a tunnel to Canada, between Detroit and Windsor.