One thing people here often overlook [LWN.net]

One thing people here often overlook

Posted Sep 1, 2004 14:17 UTC (Wed) by pyellman (guest, #4997)
In reply to: One thing people here often overlook by hummassa
Parent article: Back door in Diebold voting systems?

I don't think anybody is overlooking that at all. The key needs are to (1) verify that a person has voted (not how that person voted), (2) make the voting process easy to understand and operate for the individual voter, and (3) generate reliable vote counts.

The post you replied to was addresssing #1. A recent news story indicated that perhaps 10's of thousands of voters are registered to vote in both New York and Florida (the vast majority of them Democrats, for those of you who are keeping score). A reliable, national-scope "exit verification" system could completely eliminate this particular form of fraud (voting more than once in Federal elections, which is a felony).

Peter Yellman

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One thing people here often overlook

Posted Sep 1, 2004 17:57 UTC (Wed) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]

Nothing to see here. When I moved from Maryland to California, I did not contact the state of Maryland and tell them to take my name off the rolls, and neither does anyone else. The result is that lots of people are at least temporarily registered to vote in two states. The vast majority of the people who are on the rolls in both New York and Florida are almost certainly elderly retirees who moved from NY to Florida. They aren't very likely to vote in Florida, hop a plane, and vote again the same day in New York; after all, while the Florida race is very close, NY is firm for Kerry so it doesn't matter.

However, I'd be interested in where you saw this article, and whether it was Republican-affiliated media (Fox, NY Post, Washington Times, Orlando Sentinel, etc). Florida Republicans are always looking for any angle to stop Democrats from voting. If only they can toss all those seniors who just moved down from NYC off the ballot, they can assure a Bush victory. It was the bogus felon list, more than the hanging chads, that gave the state to Bush last time.