One thing people here often overlook [LWN.net]

One thing people here often overlook

Posted Sep 1, 2004 16:35 UTC (Wed) by AJWM (guest, #15888)
In reply to: One thing people here often overlook by hummassa
Parent article: Back door in Diebold voting systems?

In the old (and still widely used, worldwide) paper ballot system of marking an "X" beside your candidate, you certainly *can* verify whom you voted for. You can even watch as the poll worker takes the folded ballot and puts it in the ballot box. So far, so good (unless the poll worker is extremely skilled at sleight of hand, which is statistically unlikely).

True, after that you have to rely on the ballot counters to do their job honestly, and the observers to keep them so -- but in general since multiple parties have representitives involved and observing, odds are pretty good that your vote will be counted as cast.

(Of course there's still room for hanky panky -- bogus voter registration, bussing in of "voters" from other areas, "lost" ballot boxes, hanging chads... (oh, wait, no hanging chads with a marked "X" system) -- but a recount of your vote will still count it as for whom you cast it.)

Of course the electronic media don't like it because they can't give their breathless instant anlyses and before-the-poll-closes announcements of the "winner" (as happened in Florida because the panhandle is in a different timezone than the rest of Florida), but so what?

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One thing people here often overlook

Posted Sep 1, 2004 18:12 UTC (Wed) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]

My point is exactly that no, you have to trust a lot of people. In the case of a recount, you have to trust the place where the votes were stored. You have to trust the seals in the ballot boxes, before and after the first counting. You have to trust people who transport ballot boxes. You have to trust the maker of the seals not to make seals in excess.

The snafu of the last USofA presidential elections was mainly due to the following factors:

* lack of accountability. each wrongly counted vote should be laid havily on someone's back: the election fraud that took place was a perfect crime.

* lack of a national voter database. this has privacy issues, ok. but a lot of countries (including mine) do well with national ids. get over it.

* absentee voting. here this is absolutely forbidden. either you vote where you registered or not. period. it gives a lot of space for fraud.

* bipartidarism. for any ballot box here, there are 40-50 people looking at it until the moment the sum (electronic or not) comes out of it. this is because for any ballot box, there are at least five to ten political parties involved.

* bad electronic media. our media outlets (electronic or paper) discovered they had a lot of power when they could immediately count, add, and accompany the results of the election.

* nonsense timezone managemnt. I don't recall if there are 4 or 5 timezones in the US. in Brasil, there are four -- and all the voting booths open at the same time: the hour of opening is adjusted in each timezone so all things start and end at the same time.

* fear of economic uncertainty. NYSE drops a few points, even Gore gave up: ok, Bush takes it all. I don't care.