Tue 4 Nov 2008
It was quick, easy and dare I say fun. I was a little disconcerted that the paper ballot used involves a scanner in which a poll worker stands behind and watches you put your ballot in. I was trained on and am used to the old mechanical voting booths where I grew up in New York. It is the one where you walk into a booth, pull a lever which closes a curtain, flip a few switches on a matrix and then pull the lever again to open the curtains and register your vote. No method is perfect which is why there is a continual search for better voting methods. There is always some sort of trust that is involved when going to the polls.
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November 4th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
I like the only system I know about… you pick any number of party cards on the outside, bring them to a booth, make any pencil markings if any on one of them and put it in the envelope. then you hand the closed envelope to the poll worker and you’re done.
November 4th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
The scanner method is by far the simplest and most accurate. You know before you leave if your ballot scans, and there is a full paper trail for a recount.
All states should use this type, no silly hanging chads, no diebold, etc.
November 4th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
In France, we take one paper for each candidate, then we go to an “isoloir” (small room behind a curtain).
In this room, you put the one paper for your candidate in an enveloppe and then get out of this “isoloir”.
Then, you simply insert your closed enveloppe in a box which is transparent (so that the poll worker can see you only insert one enveloppe).
That’s simple, it involves no trust in anyone, your vote remains totally anonymous and you can’t be coerced to vote for someone.
Not a bad method IMHO…
November 4th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
How does the envelope thing work when you have about 20 or 30 things to vote on? It seems like it wouldn’t scale. It would also be possible to overvote, and it would not be caught until the ballot was counted.
November 4th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
Aren’t those old mechanical machines brilliant? They show you exactly what you’re going to vote for, all at once, and if you change your mind you can change your vote before you commit.
No other system I’ve used can say the same. Since I’ve been in California, I’ve voted using punch cards with a pin (seriously, not even with those awful Florida-style things that caused all the hanging chad issues); similar cards where you had to find a tiny box and fill it in with a Sharpie; those iffy electronic machines, both with and without a cash register receipt printing on the side (actually, I did a paper ballot with the machines without a paper trail); and, this year, back to paper ballots where you had to fill in the space between an arrow head and tail, only you had to do it as a single line (or, I hope, completely blacked in).
The mechanical machines are by far the best technology I’ve ever used. The whole wonderful interaction between the lever and the curtain and all the levers clicking to clear your vote for the next person just adds to the experience.
Somehow, it seems like making life easy for the voter has taken a massive step backwards toward making life easy for the counters, no matter what effect it has on the voters and on your certainty about your vote. Why does this problem seem to be so hard?
November 5th, 2008 at 8:35 am
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How does the envelope thing work when you have about 20 or 30 things to vote on? It seems like it wouldn’t scale.
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Simple: we don’t vote for a lot of stuff in the same time. this would only be confusing, and it’s a great way to have people accept anything.
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It would also be possible to overvote, and it would not be caught until the ballot was counted.
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Nope. The poll worker can see you only insert *one* enveloppe. And you can’t come back a second time as you have to sign a paper and present your ID card as well as your voting card. Of course, your voting card is related to the one and only place you have to vote (which you chose previously).
If you can’t go to this place to vote, you can give someone else the right to vote for you. In this case, you lose the right to vote yourself, so you can’t overvote.
Really, not trust issues, no complicated process, anonimity,… The only problem is the waste of paper. But as it can be recycled, it’s less a problem than those posed by the use of “voting machines”