Election Meltdown '06

[Off_White]

I like the optical scan heavy-paper ballots

 

I couldn't agree more. It's what Thurston County has gone to, and they're far better than the punchcards we used to have, no hanging chad, and for the vote by mail, no trying to punch the correct tiny little number tab because you didn't have the pin registration ballot that they used at the polling place.

 

Simple and pretty damn foolproof? Where's the profit in that?

[murraysovereign]

Jeez, I sure do envy you Americans and all your high-tech super-advanced methods of doing everything. Up here we're still using stone-age voting systems. Get this - our ballots are printed on mere paper, and all they have is the names of the candidates listed from top to bottom, and right next to each name there's a little square box. What you do is, you make an "X" in the little box next to the name of the person you want to vote for (using a little pencil they provide you with in the voting booth ), and then you fold the ballot in half and drop it into a cardboard box near the exit, just before you leave the polling place. How lame is that? It's embarassing, really. And then to add insult to injury, all those ballots are counted - get this - by people for chrissakes. It's positively medieval. Sometimes it can take, like, two or three hours to get the final vote tally - who's got time to wait two or three hours for voting results? I can't wait for us to adopt some sort of Rube Goldberg gee-whiz computerized system - it'll be so much faster and easier and more reliable.

 

Oh, yeah, and I almost forgot the best part. Federal elections in Canada are managed by something called "Elections Canada" - it's like a permanent body in Ottawa whose only purpose is to run federal elections. There's a piece of legislation that sets out all the rules, like eligibility for candidates and voters, campaign spending limits, the design of the ballots and the ballot boxes, all that stuff right down to the type of pencil they put in the voting booth, and this Elections Canada office is charged with ensuring that all the rules are followed, all across Canada, regardless of which party is in charge in this or that province, or whose brother is premier, or how much money some computer company donated to which party.

 

Can you imagine?

[tvashtarkatena]

Federal elections in Canada are managed by something called "Elections Canada" - it's like a permanent body in Ottawa whose only purpose is to run federal elections.

 

What do they do the rest of the time?

[murraysovereign]

Federal elections in Canada are managed by something called "Elections Canada" - it's like a permanent body in Ottawa whose only purpose is to run federal elections.

 

What do they do the rest of the time?

 

Gardening, mostly, I think. Play Bridge if it's raining, maybe the odd hand of Crib; go to hockey games; Curling - you know, the usual stuff.

 

But seriously, the permanent staff is only a relative handful of people. Between general elections they oversee the audits of candidates' spending from the previous elections, review and update the voters lists, manage any by-elections that may come up due to deaths, resignations etc. And this being a parliamentary democracy, they have to be ready to fire up the full election machinery at a moment's notice, because our elections are not pre-scheduled. We could have one called tomorrow, if the government loses a confidence vote in the House of Commons or if the Prime Minister decides he wants to "seek a new mandate" (ie catch the Opposition at a disadvantage in hopes of returning with an increased majority). The vast majority of elections offices are part-time local positions, and are only activated in the event of a general election, or a by-election in that riding.

[Fairweather]

... we can ignore the fact that the owner or President or whoever he was of Diebold said he was setting out to deliver Ohio to Bush two years ago

You seem a little vague, Matt. If you really wanted to present a case I would think you could at least cite the name and quote-date of this supposed individual - maybe even know his title and/or position at Diebold?? Maybe something a little more substantial than "whoever he was".

 

... and we can ignore the fact that the problems seem overwhelmingly to have arisen in Democratic voting districts

Again, Matt, any PN data to back this up?

 

These folks at Diebold said they could not produce reliable machines that printed receipts and they said their machines could not be hacked. Both were ridiculous statements.

This is, at least, believable. But more info would be helpful. I honestly don't know what to believe re "hacking". It seems we have programmers right here on this thread with opposing views.

 

End of story.

Hardly. I think the thing I find most perplexing (and frustrating) about you is that you're so down-to-earth in some other regards, and yet are so given over to these complicated conspiracy theories - the ones that fit into your political ideology anyhow.

 

 

 

Perhaps we agree here that election reform would be a good project for the new "bipartisan" political machine?

 

Unfortunately, this only seems to be a priority when Democrats lose. I don't expect we'll hear much about it - unless Republicans come out ahead in 2008.

[tvashtarkatena]

But seriously, the permanent staff is only a relative handful of people.

 

We had the exact same system, whereby our elections were controlled by a handful of people, until this week.

[marylou]

 

... and we can ignore the fact that the problems seem overwhelmingly to have arisen in Democratic voting districts

Again, Matt, any PN data to back this up?

 

There were massive inconsistencies between exit polls and actual votes in the 2004 national election. A vast majority of states were many, many percentage points off in this regard, and in every single case the inconsistency was in GWB's favor in terms of votes won versus polling data.

 

It may not seem like such a big deal, but exit polls are so accurate (or have been historically) that they are used to monitor elections for foul play. In at least a couple of cases, foreign elections have been thrown out because the exit polls were so inconsistent with the result. There's no explanation of how this discrepancy could have occurred, basically none of the theories have held up.

 

I'll be interested to see how the 2006 results stack up to the exit polls.

 

As far as there being a higher rate of discrepancy in Democratic (or poor for that matter) areas, it's been widely documented, both anecdotally and statistically.

 

Exit poll data only goes down to the state level in order to protect the anonymity of those polled.

 

I'm reading a book called Was the 2004 Election Stolen? that might be of interest to some of you. It goes into great detail about exit polling and fraud. It's pretty fascinating if you like that sort of thing. Lots of data comparisons too.

 

The US election system is broken. I hope that the new Congress can come up with some solutions.

[mattp]

I've been watching the news and we really haven't seen it yet but I don't doubt we'll see some analysis suggesting there has been voter suppression or even vote fraud supporting some of the successful Democratic candidates this year, Fairweather, but over the last several years the majority of it has run the other direction.

 

I guess you've forgotten about Florida and Ohio, eh? And as to smaller races, just run a ten minute Google search and start reading the reports and I think you'll see more reported concerns about problems favoring Republicans than Democrats. And as to the statement from the Diebold CEO that he was going to deliver Ohio to Bush? Search the name Odell if you've forgotten about this story that was pretty big news just a couple of years ago.

 

Still, however, my suggestion is this: the Democrats have said they are going to drain the swamp of dirty politics, and that they want to reach accross the aisle. I think this would be a good issue for them right now and it would be difficult for folks to argue this wasn't a worthy cause or that it is not one that should be addressed by both parties.

 

There was an opinion piece in today's NYT that suggested we might look at an election system more like Canada's. That might be a good place to start the discussion.