Counting Your Vote

[G-spotter]

Your ballot was invalid! No it wasn't! Yes it was!

 

Cadidate A vs Candidate B - machine recounts unable to produce repeatable results even when fed exactly the same ballots.

 

They might as well use roulette wheels or the entrails of pigs to try and figure out who won

 

Talk about incompetent!

[TREETOAD]

Hard to believe but also not surprising.

[dmuja]

 

 

We need the UN to show up and monitor the elections - wish I was joking

 

[archenemy]

I wonder what would happen if everyone just refused to vote one year.

[fear_and_greed]

Perhaps another 3rd world country like Zimbabwe or Uganda could help you guys out. You know, send heavily armed observers, with snarling dogs to the polling stations. Voters would receive a purple thumb and be free to go if they voted for the old man, or get sent to Gitmo if they didn't.

[tvashtarkatena]

I wonder what would happen if everyone just refused to vote one year.

 

Here's what would happen: you'd get a million phone calls from the party you last registered with and its 501c3's prior to the next election. They only target 'infrequent voters', defined as voters who have skipped one or more elections in the past 4. If you live in an urban area, you'd probably also get several visits from canvassers who would hound you until you'd signed in at the polls. All the 'fuck you's and threats in the world will not keep these people off your doorstep. I should know. I'm one of them.

 

Vote in every election and save yourself the hassle.

[joblo7]

waste of time to vote into this circus

 

[AR_Guy]

Read the article - it's deja vu all over again.

 

As I said in conversation back in 2004 with respect to the issues in King County and the Washington Governers race, a HUGE problem is in ACCOUNTING for the ballots and maintaining a chain of custody and responsibility for the ballots.

 

This crap of not counting all the ballots on election day, then finding more, then getting different results on each subsequent count is bullshit. There's no way a businessman would survive long with equally sloppy cash handling, but hey - it's government, they don't go out of business when they fail, the just raise taxes and increase regulation on the productive parts of society.

 

Another issue: The optical scan or machine readable ballots. (Don't get me started on the question of electronic machines). Quite frankly, I think we'd all be better off going to a system where the voter gets a packet of color coded ballots. One per race or issue on the ballot. There's a simple box next to the name of the candidate or line for write in, or next to the yes / no. "X" marks the spot, or a line through the box, or a star, or circle the name of the person you want or what ever. It's pretty clear at that point who or what the vote was for. Ballot counters sort by color (for the different races / ballot questions), then by yes / no / candidate / non-vote / need examanation.

 

It would be pretty easy then to correlate number of ballots issued, number spoiled, number deposited in the ballot box and the number unissued out of the total produced, by district / and polling place, then by county and finally for an entire state. Corrleate this with the number of votes cast for each race / candidate or non-votes / blanks.

 

 

[tvashtarkatena]

waste of time to vote into this circus

 

I couldn't agree more. What's the point? It's all so BORING, isn't it?

 

The Somalis and North Koreans have developed systems that require no voting. Why reinvent the wheel? And hey, I need that half hour to do my own thing, OK?

Edited October 9, 2008 by tvashtarkatena

[dmuja]

waste of time to vote into this circus

 

he..he..IT WORKED!

[tvashtarkatena]

Read the article - it's deja vu all over again.

 

As I said in conversation back in 2004 with respect to the issues in King County and the Washington Governers race, a HUGE problem is in ACCOUNTING for the ballots and maintaining a chain of custody and responsibility for the ballots.

 

This crap of not counting all the ballots on election day, then finding more, then getting different results on each subsequent count is bullshit. There's no way a businessman would survive long with equally sloppy cash handling, but hey - it's government, they don't go out of business when they fail, the just raise taxes and increase regulation on the productive parts of society.

 

Another issue: The optical scan or machine readable ballots. (Don't get me started on the question of electronic machines). Quite frankly, I think we'd all be better off going to a system where the voter gets a packet of color coded ballots. One per race or issue on the ballot. There's a simple box next to the name of the candidate or line for write in, or next to the yes / no. "X" marks the spot, or a line through the box, or a star, or circle the name of the person you want or what ever. It's pretty clear at that point who or what the vote was for. Ballot counters sort by color (for the different races / ballot questions), then by yes / no / candidate / non-vote / need examanation.

 

It would be pretty easy then to correlate number of ballots issued, number spoiled, number deposited in the ballot box and the number unissued out of the total produced, by district / and polling place, then by county and finally for an entire state. Corrleate this with the number of votes cast for each race / candidate or non-votes / blanks.

 

 

No, we wouldn't be better off with such a system. Studies have shown that injecting more human counters/sorters into the system GREATLY increases the error rate over hand filled out ballets + optical scanners.

 

There have been very few problems with the optical scanning machines used in Washington. Our vote counting technology produces the lowest errors in the country, , avoids bottlenecks at the polls, and provides paper ballots for verification.

 

The problems during the last election had nothing to do with the machines used; they stemmed from errors in the voter registration records and lost ballots. None of these problems would be addressed at all by your overly complicated proposed system. In fact, your system, which involves much more paperwork, would result in more lost ballots and counting errors, not less.

 

Washington State's got the best voting technology available today; we should keep it, and work to address the actual voter registration/ballot handling problems with the system rather than fixing something which isn't broken.