Given the aging population in Florida, it strikes me that a gratuitously tech solution would only serve to disenfranchise some of the wisest people in the community.

I agree with timothy on this one - the interface to current voting machines needs to go.

It was sooo unfair of that Democrat who made those ballots so unreadable in Palm Beach, if only they had okayed the ballot before the election then they would have nothing to complain about...

Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/ "What's so funny about peace, love, and understanding?" - Nick Lowe

Whats completely relevant is that what happened did follow the legal process. Every law was kept to the letter.

Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/ "What's so funny about peace, love, and understanding?" - Nick Lowe

You know, your the first person to say that if statistical irregularities occur than some judge can adjust things to more believeable levels.

In addition, an area congressman, Rep. Peter Deutsch, D-Florida, said Friday that under Florida law a "circuit court judge would be required to determine what the will of the voters was and create a remedy."

Jon Mills, interim dean of the University of Florida law school and former speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, said state election law does not specify what types of remedies state circuit judges can order if they find problems on Election Day. The law simply says judges can provide "any relief," he said.

Bush's camp is threatening to call for recounts and challeneges in other states. I say go for it. This is a great opportunity to scrutinize and revamp balloting practices thoughout the nation. We can take the time, that's why there are months between election and inauguration.

Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/ "What's so funny about peace, love, and understanding?" - Nick Lowe

Oh, were you looking for unbiased news on the Clinton News Network? Is it any wonder that you got the "impression" which is most favorable to the Democrats? CNN is about as objective as Slashdot.

For a dose of real news check this out.

The Truth Detector runs on Linux.

Whoa -- the Palm Beach system was indeed using validity-checking equipment? Ballots were checked for validity by a machine when the voter turned in their ballot?

Those 19,000 people voted again after the machine beeped when they fucked up their first ballot.

Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/ "What's so funny about peace, love, and understanding?" - Nick Lowe

And due to the anonymous nature of the vote, no one would ever be able to tell you about it, either.

This does not discount stupidity of people who punched two holes, nor does it discount the fact that those people may have tried to write on the ballot to distinguish one hole as the "right" one. Not everyone understands what "machine-readable" entails.

1) CNN seems to have taken considerable care not to say that any of those 19,000 mispunched ballots resulted in that person's vote being lost, nor have I seen anyone else make that claim.

Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/ "What's so funny about peace, love, and understanding?" - Nick Lowe

I once was "Ungrounded Lightning Rod" but /. slashed off my " Rod". Is that why they call Linux a Unix workalike?

Also, it's worth noting that in the "sample hand recount" of four precincts conducted by Palm Beach yesterday, by far the largest number of double-punched ballots were punched in holes 4 and 5 -- namely, the Buchanan and Gore holes.

Clearly, a lot of things went wrong on Tuesday --almost all of which could have been avoided with a technologically superior balloting system. I think it's pretty obvious to most reasonable observers that a lot of people who tried to vote for Al Gore ended up having their votes either not counted, or counted for Buchanan; the issues of whether their complaints are legitimate or not, and if so, what to do about it, are obviously matters of law, but what we can say is that clearly, it's time for an upgrade.

P.S. I should also note that there's precedent for an election being overturned because of the inaccuracies of punch-card voting. In 1998 Massachusetts outlawed the use of punch card balloting because in 1996, a primary result was overturned when they went back and manually counted the "hanging chad" cards that hadn't been counted by the machine vote. (The vote count there, by the way, went from -250 to +100. Check the recent AP Wires for the full story.)

I once was "Ungrounded Lightning Rod" but /. slashed off my " Rod". Is that why they call Linux a Unix workalike?

I agree that the obvious answer is to do a hand count in all of the counties where the punch-card system was used. This would eliminate the bias of only recounting selected counties, while also getting the real result of the election. Only 26 of Florida's 67 counties use punch cards. (I don't know whether the aggregate of those 26 counties leans D or R, but based on Jim Baker's refusal even to consider hand counting as a legitimate means of recount -- despite the overwhelming empirical evidence -- I could take an educated guess ...)

How can you possibly claim they are the wisest people in the community, if they were too stupid to figure out the ballot paper?

Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/ "What's so funny about peace, love, and understanding?" - Nick Lowe

--
Some days, you just can't get rid of a bomb.

Which means they were used to vote for the n-th hole -- since they can remember.

If they can't even stop to analyze what are the positions of the holes in the ballot, do you imagine they will stop to think about the bigger issues at hand? Those people shouldn't vote. If they voted, their vote should be cancelled.

Oh, it was? Good!

The ballot box was a Pentium PC with an LCD display, a numeric keypad, flashcard, and battery backup power. The voter punched the candidate's number and the name appeared on the screen, along with the candidate's picture and party name. Then the voter pressed a green key to confirm the vote or orange to erase and start again. There was also a white key for a blank vote. The "section president" (me) enabled the computer for each vote using a separate keypad.

Votes were stored to the flashcard immediately. After the voting closed, the PC printed in a built-in thermal printer the results, and print-outs were given to any party representatives who were present. Another copy of the result was pasted to the precinct door. I then delivered the PC, with the flash card containing the result, to a Justice officer from the electoral court.

Spare PCs were available for cases of hardware failure, and old fashioned paper ballots were also available, for cases of prolonged power outages.

This method was used in all Brazil this year. In some places the ballot boxes were delivered to the voting precincts carried in dug-out canoes.

Perhaps the system in USA would be more advanced if they hadn't been the first to adopt electronic counting. Seeing those people carrying punched cards in the TV brought me some deja-vu feelings. Last time I saw a punched card being used for computer input was in 1979.

O P E N___S O U R C E___H U M O R

Perhaps you mean a 'completely observable process', however I get your point and I totally agree with it. The only problem is that for the most part none of our elections are like this. The concept of having anonymous voting coupled with the sheer number of voters prompted people to design new systems with which to perform votes.

In moving from a system where everyone yells a 'yea' or a 'nay' to the ballot method we left out the ability for the community as a whole to observe what the actual vote was first hand - our current system leaves it up to someone else to count the votes and as such you automatically lose the sense of personal security in knowing that your vote was properly included.

By using a computer controlled method to register votes we are not losing or gaining any functionality over the ballot system from a voters point of view. If you can write an X and not click a button then you definately must have an interesting situation. What we are gaining however is the ability to open up the counting method so that there is no single point where it can break down. With people counting votes you have to ensure that the vote counters are sincere and you depend on their ability to perform their jobs perfectly. Now I don't know about most people, but I would think that the more people counting the better, since independant errors will decrease. By implementing a purely digital system, we would have exactly that in that the developers of the system would be able to see where the others made flaws - we have programs that can calculate launch trajectories to Pluto, I'm sure we can make vote counting systems properly. Also, since many places use automated counters now, what would the difference be? If many people work on the digital voting system there will be no opportunity for it to become flawed from a design point of view.

As for hacking, etc. one must be aware that the opportunities exist to maliciously affect ballot systems as well. 'Rigging the vote' immediately comes to mind. The security of a digital system would probably be easier to monitor than the ballot system anyways - it's a lot easier to determine that you have altered results from a digital source than from a bag of ballots. And as for punishment, well, you can just imagine what would happen if you were involved in a federal vote scandel of any sort.

I guess in the end I'm advocating the use of technology to make things easier for everyone and more stable. A punchcard never lies, true enough, but a computer only does what you tell it to.

"Madness is rare in individuals, but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule." -Friedrich Nietzsche

I once was "Ungrounded Lightning Rod" but /. slashed off my " Rod". Is that why they call Linux a Unix workalike?

Besides the obvious redundancy requirements, though, there will need to be legislation passed which will prevent delaying the election process via legal tactics (lawsuits, court orders, etc.) in the event all independent sources don't match up. After all, anything saved to a physical medium is prone to corruption during the actual transfer of data. So if three independent data repositories are used, agreement between two of them should be legally binding and not subject to dispute in any court.

Two quick notes. You have to keep track of who voted (so people don't vote twice). This doesn't mean keeping full logs of every transaction, but it isn't possible to not keep any logs at all as the article initially states.

I'm increasingly disturbed with government and other agencies assuming that they can put critical information and services on the internet and expect that information to be reliably available. For example, my college insists on a 100% on-line course registration system. If your net connection goes down, you're screwed-- the registration day will be over before you can sort through the beauracracy or fix the connection. Any kind of electronic voting system needs to have a completely failsafe backup (like punch cards). A simple DoS attack on a voting machine shouldn't disenfranchise hundreds of voters.

-m

Nah, no need to keep a log. Just wipe out the person's password when their voting transaction goes through.
-

If you can't trust an anonymous e-mail with liberal doses of exclamation points, what can you trust? -snopes

That's a mechanism for recording who has voted. (everyone who is registered and can no longer vote)

Getting everyone to agree on a single standard might help, or might not. Instilling the notion in voters that they need to doublecheck things and ask questions if they're having problems would probably help more...

Here in Story County, Iowa we have what I would consider to be the minimum standard for voting equipment.

You get a sheet of names (in large print) with an oval right next to the name which you darken with a marker. But more importantly, as I found out from the guy right in front of me, if you mismark your ballot (say by marking 2 presidential slates) the machine will not accept the ballot. The election official voided his ballot and gave him a new one.

I would add one additional feature by adding 'abstain' as an option for each contest/question -- this would prevent people missing one or more votes (for example, by forgetting to turn it over and mark the back).

Shut up, be happy. The conveniences you demanded are now mandatory. -- Jello Biafra

I do think that requiring an Abstain/NotA choice for EVERY ballot question, and then requiring that every ballot question be answered in order to validate the ballot *before the voter hands it in*.

"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - The Brain

If Florida was that skewed, how can we be certain that the other states weren't, either?
--
One Thing, Two Thing, Red Thing, Blue Thing!

And, as was the case this Sept in the School Board election in which I was in, if 'write-in' appears to have won a position then the write-in's need to be looked at by hand to determine who got exactly how many write-in votes -- and in fact, someone did win via write-in.

Shut up, be happy. The conveniences you demanded are now mandatory. -- Jello Biafra

However: it all depends on the human factor! In my polling place, the machine didn't show up on time - so they had to stack the ballots in a big pile in the back of the room until it did arrive. I actually never saw my ballot go into the machine. Presumably my ballot counted. But there was a very contentious proposition on the ballot this year, Proposition L, which I opposed - and which is trailing at this count by seven votes. Is there a chance that the poll workers at my precinct screwed up one or more ballots, and that this may have made a difference, despite the fancy-pants new voting machines? I think so!

So the key to any new system is that it be idiot-proof and secure by design, of course, so the poll workers don't accidentally make a mistake that could compromise the election. Given the ICANN experience of lost passwords and so on, I definitely think that we have some work to do on the non-technological side of voting to make sure that any new system works.

sulli

You get a sheet of names (in large print) with an oval right next to the name which you darken with a marker. But more importantly, as I found out from the guy right in front of me, if you mismark your ballot (say by marking 2 presidential slates) the machine will not accept the ballot. The election official voided his ballot and gave him a new one.

I thought that deliberately spoiling a ballot was a recognized form of protest. You can't do that where you live?

I really don't like the idea of feeding a ballot to a machine. Consider: Shadowy figure (one of many, depending on how busy your polling station is) takes note of your name when you confirm that you are on the voter's list and receive your ballot. You go into your private and secure polling booth, write down your secret X, then feed your ballot into a machine. The machine then, by design or by accidental tempest-style emissions, sends a signal to the shadowy figure who then marks down on his list who you voted for.

The last time I voted (I don't recall if it was federal (Canada) or provincial (B.C.)) the process involved a piece of paper, a pen to mark an X, and a cardboard box to put it in to. A cardboard box is generally simple to understand- you don't need to reverse-engineer a bunch of computer chips to verify that it isn't doing anything nefarious.

This concern about shadowy figures marking down your vote may seem like paranoia, but it really isn't. Many governments of the world have been known to try very hard to identify who is voting for whom. Generally, the harder they try, the less you should want them to succeed. Any change in the system that makes the task possible/easier should be viewed with deep suspicion, IMHO.

I've been using this fall's elections as a civics lesson for our 7 yr old son, so he was in the voting booth with me asking questions. As a result, pretty much everyone there who cared to listen knows how I voted anyway.

Shut up, be happy. The conveniences you demanded are now mandatory. -- Jello Biafra

I've never heard of that, but

1. It seems a dumb-ass form of protest since the assumption seems to be that spoiled ballots are the result of idiots who shouldn't be allowed to ote anyway.
2. Under my scheme, you could protest by marking all the races as 'Abstain'.

Shut up, be happy. The conveniences you demanded are now mandatory. -- Jello Biafra

1- It seems a dumb-ass form of protest since the assumption seems to be that spoiled ballots are the result of idiots who shouldn't be allowed to ote anyway.

It's better than sitting at home and being counted as just another citizen who doesn't give a damn. A large number of spoiled ballots would at least get some attention. Lots of them would raise the question of whether votes were being counted properly (during the Quebec referrendum it was alleged that, in some "Non"-leaning regions, the vote counters were told to find any excuse they could to discard a ballot as spoiled). It could force a recount, which if done deliberately would be a real "fuck you" to the system.

2- Under my scheme, you could protest by marking all the races as 'Abstain'.

AFAICS currently the only way to "abstain" is to stay at home. If you dislike all of the candidates, your only options are to vote for someone you don't want to vote for (implicit acceptance of the system), stay at home (abstaining by apathy), or you could spoil your ballot in protest.

Whenever states and counties have tried to make it required for citizens to confirm that they are who they claim to be, the ACLU jumps in and says that it's harassment and a violation of our voting rights.

Huh?

I don't have a problem with needing ID to vote, but I guess some people do.

I think a great compromise would be to let voters choose, at the time that they register, whether their ID will be required for their vote or not. Then, for people who chose that when the registered, they will be asked for ID when the vote. For people who chose "no ID required", they won't be asked for ID when they vote.

That way, if I'm scared that someone might try to "steal" my vote, I can prevent it. On the other hand, if I'm offended by the government wanting me to carry ID around, then I can make ID not required for my vote, at increased risk of fraud.

The ACLU must not get down to Georgia often...I had to testify that I was legally entitled to vote and show ID. No ID, no problem: you can swear to your ID.


I have no affiliation with the CIA, NSA or Wendy's

--Fesh
"Citizens have rights. Consumers only have wallets." - gilroy
My email has been /. encoded.

Gorkman

Holy Crap! I am Trapped in a box of Fruit Loops! - From Normal, OH

...data as simple as voting-info should be trivial to recover...

Rumour has it that MI5 used to (during the cold war) check up on those who voted communist, though this is all denied, of course...

Just my E 0.02,

Stephen

"If there is a better solution... find it." - Thomas Edison

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Didn't I hear that this election has cost the USA over $4 BILLION?? How much do you think Gore and Bush and associates have blown on cheesy TV ads and smear tactics? Getting money should NOT be a problem.

First, change the campaign financing laws. For every dollar spent for 2004, some portion LEGALLY has to go directly towards updating the voting system. That'll net quite a few million right there. Then you get to realize that once you have voting HARDWARE, you don't need to print ballots - some savings there. You don't need hundreds of people counting votes by hand (Hi, FLA!) either.

Over the long run, assuming that the hardware is designed well (ie., has a good long life) it should save money in the long run.

"There's a party," she said,
"We'll sing and we'll dance,
It's come as you are."
So I came in my pants

Not to mention resources.

Locally we use paper ballots and a computerized counting ballot box. This year we had three privacy booths but really all the equipment you need to cast your vote here is a black pen and your ballot.

Switching from our paper, pen, and computerized ballot box would mean going from 1 piece of specialized equipment in the polling station to at least three. (How much are these computerized ballot machines going to cost each?)

Plus, during peak voting times you currently do not have to use the privacy booth - you can vote where ever you feel comfortable in the polling room. Any semi-flat surface (desk, table, wall, wife's back...) will serve as the voting booth.

And system failures (short of flood and fire) do not destroy the ballots - they can easily be re-run through the counting machines.

There is a time and a place for fancy technology. I just am not convinced the voting booth is one of them.

If you want to get this done you'll have to have a billion dollars come from a federal level to buy the stuff.

I really wish more people would remember how the US government was created. The fed was granted a specific, enumerated list of powers. Everything not specifically granted is denied (reserved to the states). Ironically, the biggest issues in this campaign have centered around who has the better plan to do $foo, where the fed has no legal authority to even do $foo in the first place.

Technology has already started to bridge the gap, anyway... at my polling place, everyone used Scantron ballots (fill in the bubble completely, please!), but the scan machine that you feed the ballot into counts every vote, rejects ballots with multiple votes and dials up at the end of the day to report the results to the state election commission.

No need for setup. No need for PC admins to run the polling place (or be needed nearby for maintenance). Open a box of paper, plug the scanner into the phone line, and go.

--
Never knock on Death's door.
Ring the doorbell and run
(He hates that).

Oh yeah, receive passwords by snail mail? Are we not forgetting the problems with the ICANN elections?

Honestly, we need to keep the physical booths around for quite a while longer. Perhaps absentee balots can have an option of being web-based,... but let's not go too far.

Also, there is the issue of election laws. Specifically, the "no campaigning within 100 feet of the polls". So if this is all web-based, can we outlaw door-to-door campaigning?

They're very good ideas, but let's be honest. Convenience is not a primary issue with elections.
"Television: a medium. So called because it is neither rare nor well done." -Ernie Kovacs.

What's that got to do with anything. This differs because:

• This is run by a state-level organization
• You could ONLY vote online for ICANN. You can still go to a polling place for this
• The local government already sends hundreds of thousands of smaple ballots and other crap for the election, why wouldn't they be able to run off a postcard, too?

This space for rent. Call 1-800-STEAK4U

That said, I agree with the problems that many people have brought up here about voting from home. I think computerizing the voting is a _great_ idea, but I think that doing it over a network could create huge headaches for the Registrar of Voters. Also, the best way to guarentee the whole "secret ballot" idea, in my opinion, is to maintain the polling places.

On the other hand, Oregon just held it's first mail-in-only election, so maybe the vote-from-home trend is going to take off. Who knows?

However, I think some caution should be shown. I would consider it a Bad Idea (TM) to suddenly boot up a few hundred thousand PC clones with Win ME and eVote v1.1 in 2004 using touchscreens. Why? Duh - why do a lot of slashdotters use *nix? Let's talk instability and insecurity. Not only that, but my Palm III has enough trouble keeping its tiny touchscreen calibrated... I could just imagine people screaming all across the country that they touched the DEMOCRAT button, but the GREEN PARTY button right beside it was registered instead (as an example).

No, we need to go old-school on this. I'm talking a combination of Radio Shack and networking. The voting device itself should be pretty much a non-computer, but instead simply a peripheral of the polling station's server. To vote, you push a button, or stick a contact into a hole - something positive and physical - and that info gets sent back to the server. Heck, add a few :Cue:Cats to read the voter's voter card bar code, to ensure they can't vote twice. Dead simple, cheap, and HACK PROOF.

Otherwise, those currently-14-year-olds will get into the voting booth, blink, smile, and hit CTRL-ALT-DEL.

"There's a party," she said,
"We'll sing and we'll dance,
It's come as you are."
So I came in my pants

Other excerpts:

• "Nuff me!"
• "Why do I always have to sleep in the green spot?"
• "Bowling is on!" "We should tape it."
• "Trying to adjust them will only make her louder."
• "Anyway, she was a bitch."

"There's a party," she said,
"We'll sing and we'll dance,
It's come as you are."
So I came in my pants

Actually, one could consider that a good thing. A heterogeneous system is -- in general -- harder to subvert than a homogeneous one. Problems tend to be localized, too. (If we had all used the Palm Beach system, Buchanan might be president-elect!)

Purely electronic balloting would only work if there was a truly secure way of making sure that the votes cast were the votes counted, and the binary that did the counting was the binary compiled by the published source.

This has occurred to me, too, at times, and it always reminds me of some article I read here sometime back about preventing cheating in online game networks. It seems to me there should be a way for all computers in the vote-recording-and-tallying network to periodically run checksums on each others' files (e.g., every time one tallying computer submits a batch of votes); I'd imagine these verifications could also be posted publicly. Of course, my security knowledge is practically nil, so I'd like to know what sort of problems a scheme like that would present.
-- (if I were a bug, I would want to be a true Renaissance Bug)

Technology is not the solution to all problems. --locust

Now, I don't think absentee voting should be the only way to vote. I think we should keep the local polling locations for just the reasons you mentioned. But I think using the internet or some digital replacement for paper absentee ballots would be great. A lot faster, more effecient, and no worries about lining up the booklet with your voting card :) In fact, you could even include a confirmation screen to make SURE you meant what you said.

"We're the most ripped-off company around..." -- Bill Gates, 1980

--locust

Here's an alternative to absentee voting that is almost as convenient, but has fewer security problems. With computer kiosk voting technology as described in other posts, a voter who can't report to his precinct to vote can report to the nearest voting station - even if it's overseas at a U.S. embassy or military base, and be able vote remotely over a secure network. IMHO, this should only be done at certified voting stations, so officials can check identification and maintain election security, and set him up with a ballot display from his home precinct. This way he still gets the advantages of a secret ballot, but doesn't have to go to too much trouble to be able to vote. Also, a voter who feels intimidated going to his nearest precinct (think of the Fla. State Troopers hassling and ticketing blacks in front of voting stations) can go to any other location to vote.

The catch is that voting stations throughout the entire U.S. must be standardized and be able to talk to vote servers at any place in the U.S. This must also be done securely - using encrypted protocols as well as digital and real-life authentication, coupled with anonymity of the actual votes. Encryption is a good thing, but in many cases can't entirely substitute for an official seeing for himself that things are secure.

Meldroc - remove NOSPAM from address to email...

You do know that what you just described is coersion, is voter fraud, is a felony crime, and is punishable by massive fines and long jail time, right?

Your boss, your party, and your Aunt Matilda all could go to jail for making you not vote in the way you want to, or even making the situation uncomfortable for you when yo do actually cast your vote. In fact, this issue is oging to come up down in Dade County in Miami, where it was apparently decided last Friday afternoon that the local Police Force would use Tuesday to check insurance and driver's licenses. Oh, did we forget to tell you that? Oh, is Dade County a primarily ethnic and Democratic community in a state run by Republicans?

If you can't vote the way you want, call your election board. My company told us we should vote against a measure that was proposed here in FL (the Monorail proposition, BTW). I voted for it, and decided they could suck it up. I don't take part in the PAC here at work, I don't vote party line because I'm a hard-core Democrat, I vote whoever I think should be there.

If you're unable to do that, then you need to get rid of the people that are causing you to be unable to exercise your most fundamental right here in the US.

This space for rent. Call 1-800-STEAK4U

My company told us we should vote against a measure that was proposed here in FL (the Monorail proposition, BTW). I voted for it, and decided they could suck it up.

Damn right - I mean, look what the monorail has done for Ogdenville, Brockway, and North Haverbrook. It put them on the map!

(singing) Monorail, Monorail, Monorail!

Mono-D'oh!

Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!

Primarily: allowing people to log in and vote from home creates a situation that further favors the affluent and educated. I don't know what the current statistics are, but I do know that internet penetration into low-income regions is much less than that of middle-to-upper class neighborhoods. We already have a situation in this country where the "economically challenged" and less educated (often the same group) turn out in lower numbers than those with money or schooling; allowing online vote-from-home would further widen this gap, a direct conflict with the ideals of the system.

Second, (and probably somewhat contrary to my first point), I, personally am unconvinced that we want to make it easy for _everyone_ to vote. I do NOT believe it should be difficult to vote, and I certainly oppose anything that makes it harder for any group to vote than for another, but I do think that voting should be proactive, not just something you can do by firing up your WebTV and clicking on "unresearched politician #2."

The current system of requiring voters to either file for an absentee ballot or go to a polling place to vote requires that the voter demostrate some desire to do so.

As a result, (I believe) what you get with the current system, is a voting constituency that cares enough about the issues (or candidates) to vote, is much more likely to have researched their issues, and, in all likelihood, votes in a manner representative of whatever neighborhood/demographic/group you want to pile them in.

If voting took no effort, I think you'd get a whole lot more of the "vote for the best looking candidate" or "whichever tag line sounds more promising," and that could completely nullify the actual issues.

TV has "dumbed down" the political process for the least common denominator already... if we increase the effect of the LCD anymore, won't that just make it more of a popularity contest and make political positioning mean absolutely nothing?

Maybe I just don't have enough faith in the average constituent. Damn Jerry Springer!

The Founders would have considered internet/webtv voting to be an instrument to promote "mob rule". Elections are already far more democratic than they were under the original Constitution. Let's not take it any further.

The Truth Detector runs on Linux.

Oh foo. How likely is that? Your boss calls you into her office, demands that you fill out your ballot, sign and seal it, all in her presence? First of all, you can just refuse, and if you get fired, then you didn't want to work for that person anyway. Second, if your boss or anyone does this with more than one person, I bet it wouldn't be too hard to take them to task on it. Depending on what the law is in your state, you could even live the American dream and prosecute your boss on a felony charge.

I voted at my kitcen table, alone. No fuss, no muss. A friend of mine voted sitting in the computer lab, with a handful of us all standing around making suggestions. For president he flipped a coin to decide between Nader and Gore. The system works.

--
The government lies, and the newspapers lie. At least in a democracy, they are *different* lies.

This means people could waffle and recast their votes...

Besides which, there are two distinct issues here, electronic voting does not mean it needs to be online voting. I'd like to see the voting done at the polls on computer, but I don't trust internet security (is that an oxy moron?) enough for a web based voting system.

Forcing everyone to make a trip to the voting booth is an unneccessary obstacle. For example, we hold our elections the first week in November. By that time of the year, the weather can be severe in some parts of the country, which keeps people from voting. Not being able to get to the voting booth because you are stranded by severe weather is not a valid reason to take away someone's right to vote.

We need to do everything we can in this country to make it as convenient as possible for everyone to vote.

I think, more than anything, that insert from Brazil should really hit us hard. I wonder what the media would do with something like that? I can just imagine the headlines...

Brazil: Better Technology, Voter Turnout!

Aren't we supposed to be the very ICON of Democracy at work? I guess that just shows what happens when you just sit around and pat yourself on the back.

I'm actually glad all of this has happened, though. The more controversy, the more likely things will change. I actually hope Congress has to decide our president, and nobody actually gets what they want. Serves us right for: being apathetic, sitting on our laurels, not changing our laws to fit the times/situations, etc.

Ever feel that we're starting to backslide?

I'm not going to argue scemantics, here. I know we're a republic, it's been said so many times that I think I'll be dreaming about it for weeks. It's irrelevant. We call ourselves the leaders of the free world, and here we are squabbling over 300 votes out of MILLIONS.

The US is being laughed at heartily, make no mistake. My point is still valid. We need to start putting our money where our mouth is. After, of course, we pull our pants back up.

That maybe a popular mantra in American media, and I'm sure a lot of American people buy it (not all, thank God). Let me assure you though that the rest of the world really doesn't think the USA as prime example of democracy (nor does anyone think the US is the poster boy of human rights, a claim that is often made by American politicans).

--
I used to hate computers, but then the server went down on me.

Good point. But therin lies the snag. How can you keep telling American Citizens that "We're the leader of the free world," and "Our way is the best," when they start questioning just how badly the election was botched.

I mean, didn't we just threaten to overthrow a president in another country that had a *wider* margin than what we have here? Didn't their whole voting system and results come under such scrutiny that said president ran away?

Leader of the free world? Sure. Laughing stock leader of the free world. First Clinton's indiscresions, and now this... ::sigh::

Good point. Political infighting is never good. But that's what I meant anyway. The fact that it was made public was minorly embarassing. The fact that we spent millions investigating, prosecuting, and eventually giving up on it is really sick.

But what can I say, gotta have them moral values.

Couldn't have said it better myself. Reminds me of that episode of Sliders where something like 90% of the us population has a law degree, and you have to have a briefcase of paperwork to buy a hamburger. I honestly don't know how it got this bad, but it is. Heck, you can't even critisize a corporation anymore without being sued. What ever happened to free speech?

I think this brings everything to light, though. The more this gets blown up, the more people rail against having a president that squeeked into office against popular opinion and by only a 1/10000th of a percentage point, the better. Strangely enough, this is GOOD for everyone here. The best way to get reform is to get definitive proof that the current system doesn't work. Didn't we just do that? Heh.

1. Hash the password agains a sequence of numbers - your SSN, Driver's License, something personal. Treate it like a PGP block, create a string 80 characters long that requires other information from you.
2. So can my mail-delivered PC Banking ID's, my credit card statements, and a lot of other sensitive documents with important numbers. what's the going price for your latest CC statement?
3. The set up SSH/SHTTP/whatever endrypted connections that talk to a bank of central computers that check off people as they vote. Trivial, once the voter ID hash is calculated, only the original number needs be registered back at "home base".

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I'm against having people voting from their homes via computer, but I fully believe that each polling place needs to be fully computerized. The idea of waiting hours or even days for results to be counted is absolutely ridiculous with the technology that is available today. Each polling place needs a database server to provide authentication and to compile votes, a few computerized voting terminals, and a modem to transmit these results to the central county or state office when the polls close. The database server could be eliminated at each location if a dedicated connection were available, but that's unlikely in the fire departments and churches that are typcially hosting elections.

I don't know about where you live, but having a Driver's license is not required here to vote. All you need is some form of photo ID. There are about 15 of them listed on our local election board web page, including things like Passports, Military ID's, and various other things.

There's too many acceptable forms of ID to make it a requirement to have a specific one to vote. In fact, I wa worried I wasn't going to be able to vote because we moved in May from one house to another right down the street, but we can't find which box our Voter Cards are in. Tying things to a single piece of paper/plastic/whatever is not a good idea.

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I don't know about where you live, but having a Driver's license is not required here to vote. All you need is some form of photo ID

Hell, I wasn't even asked to provide an ID when I voted. They simple asked for my last name (coward), and then said my first name "(anonymous) is that you?" This was in Seattle - fraud would have been trivially easy.

for email address, hold monitor up to mirror

When I voted, the election judges asked for my name, looked it up in a big printout, and asked for my address and date of birth. Someone else could get that information, but they would have to spend time memorizing it well enough to repeat it on demand. They would also have to be the appropriate gender and age group.

Death to Spammers!

1) Given a identifying password Just means I can go to X computers, and type X different passwords, and vote. Guess passwords would not be very hard; either they would be like a CD-Key/serial-number, and be generated, or they would even be simpler to guess:

Adams, Doug: abcdefg
Adams, Dougie: abcdegh
Adams, Douglas: abcdefi

Er...you have no understanding of cryptography, do you? Only an idiot would give serial passwords like you have on any system. Instead, you'd use a real random source to generate the passwords. The passwords might look like:

Adams, Doug: mbB1wW32JfDS
Adams, Dougie: Mphi7pcR0CMb
Adams, Douglas: 8aTrXKTtjia6

Those passwords have 72 bits of entropy in them. You could expect to guess the password of one of those people after about 70 billion tries. Think that'll go unnoticed? Try one a second--a reasonable latency for a 'Net-based attacker--and you'll still be trying in the year 4100.

Of course, most people have trouble with twelve-character random strings, so instead they'd use some sort of mapping to words, like AOL's famous CD keys. (Imagine one of them: "VOTE FOR SHRUB.")

Only a few dollars at best, because otherwise it would be too difficult to steal elections. In Oakland, the local Democratic machine (the old one, not Jerry Brown's) promised voters a chicken dinner, and delivered a coupon for a $4 premade dinner at Safeway.

Note, you have to wonder how such would skew results in the future. If we accept for the moment the possibility that low-income people may be more likely to vote Democrat, would they be more likely to sell their votes, presumably to the Republicans ? Would net Democratic votes be lost if such were allowed ?

>Why is that a problem? That can be done now,

The difference is that now, you can certainly contract to sell your vote (though such may not be legal), but if I pay you for your vote, I have no way of verifying that you have voted as I directed, and therefore that I have 'received' the vote I paid for. Hence, at present, any vote-buying scheme is fraught with uncertainty.

Under a scheme where votes are made electronically, with only information such as passcodes and driver's licenses used for authentication, I can verify that I have received the vote I bought for, since I can register the vote myself, or at least know that the vote has already been made.

Look for your favorite O'Reilly animal and punch down the column.

You mean the weasel? Thanks a lot. That only leaves 1...2...3...all the candidates left

Meow!

If I was an employer, I could fire anyone who exhibited political sympathies that I found to be objectionable, such as voting for a candidate who supported the labor or enviromental movement.

Death to Spammers!

This principle applies to vote accounting systems just as much as it applies to money accounting systems. Otherwise, just as with money accounting systems, the computer records could be (deliberately or otherwise) corrupted with no way to detect the situation. This sort of curruption has occurred many times with the old mechanical 'lever' voting machines, which similarly left no paper trail... those machines were beloved in places like Louisiana and Dade County (Fla.) because you could easily rig them (e.g., fiddle with the innards so that a vote for Bush turned into a vote for Gore, etc.) and there was no paper trail to conduct a recount upon.

Thus I very much support a system where ballots are paper and must be manually marked by voters, but the ballot box (a specialized machine) won't accept invalid ballots (voter has to get that ballot cancelled there, in realtime, and get another one). At a minimum, if we go to the touch-screen type systems, there should be a printer and roll of paper inside the machine that prints the votes as they're confirmed. These rolls of paper could then be used to check whether the computer got glitched or not. But from a checks and balances point of view, the paper ballots are far superior, since they're easier to re-count.

There is a reason why cash registers still have a roll of paper in them tallying things.

-E
-- Proud member of the EFF.

Where I voted they use computer readable form, you darken the circle for the candiate you want. You then take the ballot to a machine which scans the ballot. This machine could very easily be modified to check that the ballot was valid (no double votes) and print out a receipt that you can check to make sure that the ballot indicates that you voted for the candiate you wanted.

"Um, sure, sir."

"Good. Show me your receipt."

This may be extreme, but I'm just trying to get across the point that in a way, it flies in the face of the anonymous nature of voting to issue receipts. And if you had them, it would make coercing people to vote a given way much, much easier, because there would actually be a method of proving how they voted.

"As a civic-minded company, we ensure that only responsible people work for us. Before we continue the interview, may I see your proof of voting?"

"Why no I didn't. But thank you for asking that question directly into my Sharper Image microphone tie. Would you like to just give me your ass now, or should we let a jury decide whether I get your head on a platter as well?"

Duh. Why would you assume that if the government uses new technologies, then old rights automatically disappear? Although this may disappoint you, we are not living in the world of Blade Runner.

Lastly, I'm guessing that the Regen was thinking about a simple confirmation receipt -- "you have voted" -- not an itemized receipt -- "you have voted for FOO and BAR". Vote confirmation is not a privacy issue, it's a public record.

I think that takes care of the second issue you raised. As for the first, I don't expect that old rights will automatically disappear if we get receipts confirming who we voted for. However, there would be unscrupulous people who would (illegally) use the fact that a record exists showing who a person voted for to try and influence the election.

I'm not "living in the world of Blade Runner," as you so melodramatically put it. I'm living in the real world, which also contains a lot of less than nice people.

Vote confirmation of the sort that Regen was thinking is, in fact, a privacy issue. It's not a public record.

The memebers of House of Representatives can vote by "electronic device". Every representative has a voting card and there are machines in the hall. It would probably be a good idea to start implementing that for the common vote as well.

The significant problem in doing a public electronic vote is to find a way to gaurentee that each person can vote no more than once while at the same time making sure that the vote is really anonymous.
_____________
Just Because I Can!

The significant problem in doing a public electronic vote is to find a way to gaurentee that each person can vote no more than once while at the same time making sure that the vote is really anonymous.

Split it up into two sections. Give everyone a card with a bit of flash memory on it. Have everyone register for a vote sometime before election day. This will put an id on the card. The id will not be tracked per voter, just that it was assigned. On election day let everyone vote in an authorized place on authorized machines, and record the id and the vote.

For the meantime, they could still use paper and do the election the sdame way, except that the computer will punch the holes or whatever it is. The computer can read the values and display it to the user. That should rid confusion and keep at least the same security of secrecy that we have now.

Nah, each state can do it on its own. It's just a thought of how to implement it. I would even think it to be better to be done only in a few states at first. See how it goes before everyone else jumps into it.

While you immediately see open source as a solution to this one, something tells me that the election officials in places like Nye County Nevada aren't going to be nearly so receptive to such an obvious communist plot. If there is a move to e-democracy, the open source long haired *nix geek will have to sell his system town by town against hot new startups and MS Vote. People will try to make money off of this by selling package systems and promising upgrades and support. And non-tech savvy officals will buy it. The result will be a range of systems, with a corresponding range of problems and complaints.

I think you may also be underestimating the data integrity concerns. Florida is using punch card readers, a well understood and frankly antique technology to count the votes. And there was still a difference of something like 1400 votes between the tallies. If we're seeing this kind of variability on a stand alone system that we've been using for years, I worry about the rollout of a range of voting applications rushing to be the first to market.

While I believe an electronic voting system could be made to work, I think it's going to take well beyond 2004 to gain acceptance. You and I grew up with this technology, and we probably both still double check to make sure travelocity hasn't booked us a flight via Prague to Cleveland. How will your grandparents feel about voting online?

Yet, if the sw is well written, the mistakes could be corrected immediately, unlike the mess now.

I'm not sure from your post. Are you suggesting that problems could be rapidly corrected before the election? As in the case of removing dead candidates from Senate races? Or are you suggesting that the user interface of the ballot could be redesigned on the fly during the polling?

While the first would be an important improvement, the second would be disastrous. I can't think of anything that would undermine voter confidence more than ballots that changed mid-election.

However. the real problem is not technical but social. Elections are carried by conties with county budgets. This is a reflection of the low priority that the democratic process is accorded in the US and is the / of all evil.

First, there needs to be a Federal Election Oversight agency that will set standards ( like emission standards) For example: Maximum acceptable spoilt ballots. Maximum time to wait for vote. Maximum distance/time to get from home to vote. etc.. There should also be a federal coordinating agency with a budget that will allow the modernization of election technology that you suggest.

Second, I would ask for some consideration of using a more sophisticated encryption system that will protect ballot secrecy while allowing to cancel fraudulent votes ( e.g. dead people) post facto.

Sorry to be partisan, but this isn't about Al Gore at all. The Republican attitude towards the current crisis ( the voters screwed? tough luck) sends the wrong message and exemplifies the kind of attitude that make the US voting system archaic. It would be nice and surprising if Bush pledged to modernize the election system in a fair and comprehensive system. Absent that, the GOP position today is committed to not seeing the evil of the present system. That is very unfortunate.

-- look, cheese ahoy!

The attitude of 'Caveat elector' means that voters are fair game for the parties to manipulate in whatever way they can get away with. This is what used to be the case in America 30 years ago. We are still too close to those days for comfort.

The federal Government sets standards for health, liability, police, etc, all of which goodies are not constitutionally protected. if the Federal Government is not the right body to guarantee the integrity of the (federally guaranteed in the constitution) right to vote, then what is the Federal government for? Your statement only makes sense if you believe that the Federal Government should be abolished. In that case indeed I'd agree that Federal standards are not necessary

The alternative of course, is to do what all other countries with screwed up election systems do: invite UN election monitors.

-- look, cheese ahoy!

Most people don't understand that the states have a great deal of discretion in how elections are held. There isn't a constitutional requirement that a state hold an election to select the electors for the electoral college. A state could give that power to the Governor or legislature. See McPherson v. Blacker.

Death to Spammers!

First, there is reality. For all practical purposes voting is the way the electors are chosen. T

Second, the case you cite assumes that the states are democratic. Tthe electors may be appointed, but that is because a state acts through its elected officials. There is no question that for a state to cancel the right to vote altogether would be "repugnant to the constitution" ( and in particular to the 14th ammendment).

Even if you were right, That is no objection to a federal requirement that, whenever elections are held, they should meet standards of fairness.

I must confess that listening to people who think that requiring high standards of fairenss be preserved in elections is "too much government" is a mind boggling experience. If this is the case, what exactly is wrong with Cuba?

-- look, cheese ahoy!

People don't trust ballots that can be counted by hand. Do you think Hal900 will fare any better?

Give me the pricinct results, Hal.

Sorry, Dave. I can't do that.

p.s. this has been changed.

Authentication Issues
Passwords are one of the flimsiest forms available. At least with a signature there is a little real-time originality. It seems to me it is necessary that people shuld still physically visit the polls:
1. There is the opportunity to eye-witness the actions of the voter as (s)he presents ID, signs hte book, and proceeds to the booth.
2. There is no question as to what transpired at the poll, whereas a vote from the privacy of your own home invites the danger of mistakes (or accusations of mistakes) where no eye witnesses can verify anything.
3. Issues of equipment failure, verification of choices, answers for questions, are all kept public. Likewise, any imposters or similar frauds would have played out their actions before witnesses, making detection and reaction easier.

Computers used Right
1. Photo-confirmation of the Presidential-pick is a great idea. Those punchholes in Palm Beach couldn't be an issue, even if the choices exceed the ten that Florida dealt with.
2. Weighted Votes would be great: Rank the picks from top to bottom. The Computer could summarize your top pick, but also distribute the weighted results of the popular vote (i.e. Checking Nader, then Gore, then telling the others to smegg off). ;-)
3. We could view the web results not only by county, but by district. If a district htinks they have been misrepresented, they could check with their neighbors and contest the results.

That last one has a funny tie-in with this Florida thang... Even though two-thirds of America would like to disban the Electoral College, it was the very thing that drew the attention to Florida's irregularities. Ironic. Yet, we can only guess how much of this goes on in the other 49 states and D.C.

McMicrophone: Retinal identification confirmed... May I take your vote?
Voter: Hmmm... What are the specials today?
McMicrophone: We've got three new parties available... the Darwinist Party Pack, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger Junior... the Posthumanist Party, starring Max Moore... and Martian Party, starring the head of Leonard Nimoy.
Voter: Uh, just gimme a large Green, a medium Democrat, and a Libertarian and NaturalLaw in small.
McMicrophone: Here's your ticket *bwop* , please pull forward to the next window.

You pull forward, and insert your ticket which contains your anonymous voting data. The Display comes up and shows:
You have ordered:
1 small Hagelin
1 small Browne
1 medium REFORM CANDIDATE
and 1 Large SOCIALIST

Hey! That isn't what I ordered!! Gimme the manager!
The Manager apologetically straightens it all out, with a complimentary order of fries.

Yes, but what of the unintended consequences? Picture a thoughtful, middle-aged voter in the voter booth.

VOTER: "Hmm... I've heard some good things about that Nader feller. Maybe I should vote for him."

[Presses the Nader button, Ralph's mug gets flashed on the screen]

VOTER: "AIGH! Get it off... get it off!"

[Blindly stabs at the buttons. Nader's face is replaced by Bush's.]

VOTER: "Ahhh... much better. This feller looks like a good choice."

--
The government lies, and the newspapers lie. At least in a democracy, they are *different* lies.

Don't talk to me about Nader. I traded my vote for Nader to a perl script.

--
Eight plus one is infinite for sufficiently sideways values of eight.

Here's a refresher:

Joe Hacker is analyzing a state election with 6,400,000 voters. The state has 64 counties with exactly 100,000 voters each, and the election candidates P and Q have almost exactly the same number of supporters. Joe reasons that the distribution is binomial, with p=q=0.5 and N=6,400,000. "Success" is defined as a vote for candidate P; but by symmetry who is who doesn't matter.

Joe reasons that each county has an independent and identically distributed normal distribution, so that taking 64 such samples will cause the distribution of summing the county vote to have a mean 3,200,000 and a variance of 6,000,000*p*q/8=6,400,000/32.

Taking the square root and applying the central limit theorem, Joe believes the null hypothesis should obey a distribution of 3,200,000 with one sigma equal to about 450 votes.

(a) Point out the obvious flaws in Joe's arguements.

(b) Correct and Generalize Joe's procedure for counties with different vote tallies

(c) Read _Cryptonomicon_ and discuss real world applications of this technique.

You have 2 weeks. :)

Steve.

The Electoral College does not convene until December 19th to cast the state votes. January 20th is the official Inauguration of the new President.

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Anyway, I have no idea why states still use those idiotic punchcards when there's so many better options. Washington state (where I live) used scantron-type sheets, you know, fill in the box beside the candidate you want. _This_ is a technology that everyone has grown up with.

Switching to an electronic voting system because of those dumb punchcards is a severe case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Just because one method of paper-voting sucks doesn't mean the concept of voting on paper is itself suspect.
--
"HORSE."
-Flaming Carrot

• No feedback on who or what you voted for
• inability to change vote(sure you can ask for a new ballot, but when you see that line waiting, you kind of want to get done as soon as possible, plus you have to re-vote on everything else)
• tampering-prone(I found the pre-cut holes flimsy on my ballot), who knows if those double-punched holes were due to voter mistake or worker-tampering?
• complicated setup - having to insert in a specific orientation and then making sure it fits properly in the 2 red buttons is more painful than it should be.

The reasons you mentioned are actualy quite good. But here in brasil we have one small diference from the USA, corruput people here does not goes to jail. If you create a project to a eletronic voting booth that will costs millions of dolars, the people behind the project are likely geting a few percents of those millions. So the more you expend the better. :-/

Corruption aside I think that a single procedure to vote is good, in the sense that makes thinks easier and even cheaper. Here in brasil we have advertising campains to "teach" the people how to vote, and even how not to vote. Since in Brasil you HAVE to vote, there is a option to vote in blank and other to nullify you vote, both of this are considered a bad pratice, I don't agree. But the point is that those campains are made once for the hole nation.

The worst part of voting in Brasil is that the hole process is a big black box. Who programed those voting booths machines? What is the hardware in there? Where is the source code? Where are the schematics? How can I be shure that my vote is even counting??? The answer is simply I don't know. All the process of voting should be compleatly open-source so people could review the process. Even if I didn't know how to review the process I am very shure that every candidate would have people reviewing it for them.

--
"take the red pill and you stay in wonderland and I'll show you how deep the rabbit hole goes"

[]'s V

Such ballot boxes could be locked inside the voting terminals and removed by the precinct captain. Each ballot box serial number is published before the election. Each serial number is accounted for after the election and the entire contents of each ballot box is posted on a public site. Ballot ID's are verified after but not published before.

Scenario:

1. Voter goes to desk, registration is confirmed, is given a bar code containing the ballot ID.
2. Voter goes to voting terminal, swipes :CueCat over bar code :-) . Voter then votes using whatever user interface is deemed reasonable.
3. Votes are recorded to the ballot box. Votes are then hashed with ballot ID and whatever other information is considered important (ballot box serial number?). Hash and ballot ID are written to the ballot box.
4. When the ballot box is full or the polls close, the precinct captain signs the ballot box with her own key and seals the ballot box in a static-free container.
5. When ballots are counted, each ballot box is read out (an operation that takes on the order of 20 seconds) and stored under surveillance. Missing/unauthorized ballot boxes and voter ID's are recognized at this stage.

Of course, these aren't the votes that really matter, if you think about it. It makes more sense to work on Congress first, providing non-anonymous, non-repudiatable voting and prohibiting the voice vote. When it can be proven who voted for what, the wolves will drop like flies, OR the dittoheads will stop bitching about accountability and responsibility.

-jhp
Got to collect all karma points to become Royal Crown Chinpoko Moderator...

Voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil.

Think about it also, if whatever entity had primaries in September (before the general) then the finalized ballots probably weren't even ready to go to voters until mid-Sept.

These ballots have to be POSTMARKED on election day though.

Everyone is assuming we're talking about hooking up modems to your local Baby Bell internet provider and broadcasting packets back to the master server which is on someone's DSL or Cable link.

I have one word for that: Duh. If we go to a computerized system, we're going to need point-to-point, non-open communications lines for all of these clients and servers. Systems that dial into each other directly. It won't be possible for Johnny to sit at home and man-in-the-middle hte tally packets, because there won't be a middle for him to be in. You wn't be able to DDoS the servers, because you will never see them poke their heads onto the net at large.

Come on people that's just common sense...

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The problem isn't technical... we have workable systems now (Didn't Arizona recently allow Internet voting in a primary?). The problem is with the culture.

Who appeared first on the presidential ballot in your state, Gore or Bush? It's different from state to state because different states have different rules about how ballots are constructed. One of the significant aspects of the upcoming court cases in Florida is whether the presidential ballot was even _legal_. People spend weeks arguing over how the ballots will appear, imagining that putting Bush over Gore or Gore over Bush will give one candidate some imagined advantage.

Now imagine these folks having to deal with a computerized solution. Massive Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt on their own parts. These people barely understand paper in the first place. Now you're going to have to deal with arguing who appears first in the list, "what about those teenage hackers?", "I don't trust anything I can't see," phsyical ballot security, etc.

I agree that it would be nice if today's 14 year olds could vote the way they are used to doing everything else. But that's not going to happen until today's 14 year old is 50 and a pillar of the community and can basically dictate that it's time to move on to electronic voting. It won't happen before then.

ABC's Cokie Roberts: If Electoral College deadlocks and House and Senate cannot decide on a president and vice president, Speaker Dennis Hastert is likely to refuse the acting presidency, making Senator Strom Thurmond (R-SC) acting president

Given the number of years he's served in the Senate without being Prez, I say give it to him.

It beats the hell out of a gold watch for retirement! ;-)

I'd like to think Thurmond and most folks his age have grown up since then. But thanks for pointing it out and reminding me that our history is not always a proud one.

Gaddis' Law: In any sufficiently extraordinary situation, one's propensity for getting screwed is inversely proportio

Gaddis' Law: In any sufficiently extraordinary situation, one's propensity for getting screwed is inversely proportio

Bush won about 3/5 of the states. He won a bunch of them with tiny, rural populations.

Also, Gore actually won himself the upper midwest. So I'm not sure what you were talking about there.

The electoral college is a holdover from the times of slavery, as far as I'm concerned. It was put in so the more populous northern states couldn't elect a president on their own, and thus abolish slavery.

You'll notice that we abolished slavery 130 some years ago, anyway. There aren't any issues like that anymore that require small states to be given an inordinant amount of power.

...if we didn't have a constitution that prevents abuses like that, and requires hoops to be jumped through in order for it to be amended.

Of course, you can rig the numbers pretty much any way you want when you're this close to the 50% mark. (I don't necessarily disagree with your conclusion, though.)

And, when you're in a genocidal situation, a democratic vote may not be your best option anyway. Hopefully it is an option, though. ;-)

The EC currently _automatically_ gives their votes to the highest popular vote-winner in their state, so that is no longer a valid reason for the continuation of the EC system. The EC 'representatives' don't do anything nowadays other than announce on tv who got all their EC 'votes' (determined by the popular vote in that state).

That isn't true in some states. There is still the potential for "faithless electors" to swing the vote.

I'll disagree with you there. How many times did a candidate campaign in Alaska, Hawaii or Wyoming? A state has 3 out of 540 EV's or 600k out of 100 million voters, either way, the state is not that important in the overall scheme.

Also, the Electorial College made my vote useless in Georgia. As predicted, Bush won by some 400k votes. My vote actually made more difference in the nationwide tally (200k difference).

print sort split('a','roaDrawaraoamaTo');

Alaska, Hawaii, and Wyoming are ignored not because they are small, but because they lean heavily to one party--Alaska and Wyoming are heavily Republican, and Hawaii is heavily democrat. No amount of campaigning will change that. Give me a small state with a close vote, and you'll see some campaigning done there.

Voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil.

Which is exactly why the Electorial College is not perfect.

When a state leans heavily to one party, it is a waste for the other party to campaign there. The original poster said "Small states and areas with low population density are not ignored". My homestate of Georgia was ignored. Texas was ignored. The E.C. focuses the campaigning to the states where the E.V. is up for grabs. Why should the residents of Texas (and other states) be ignored because the Electorial Vote in that state is a forgone conclusion?

In a Popular Vote election, Gore might campaign in Texas, hoping to gain 500k votes (while having no shot at the Texas Electorial Vote).

print sort split('a','roaDrawaraoamaTo');

Oh, I agree completely. I was just explaining that it's not that states are small that is the reason they are ignored. Indiana, being heavily Republican in presidential elections, was also ignored, despite having more electoral votes than Tennessee, where both candidates campaigned heavily.

However, regardless of whether we ought to get rid of the EC or not (and I think we should), it's not going to happen. Here's my earlier post on why not.

Voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil.

Could it be that Gore knew that no matter how much campaigning he did there, he would never win Kentucky? And Bush knew that no matter how little campaigning he did there, he would never lose it? Why yes, that could be it.

Voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil.

If the electoral college were disbanded, it would be highly unlikely that a candidate would visit NM. However, the same would be true if our state heavily leaned one way or another. There was no reason for Bush or Gore to visit Utah, for example(same # of electoral votes) - that state was going to Bush, and no amount of campaigning would change that.

I watch the sea.
I saw it on TV.
--Geddy Lee, "My Favorite Headache"

I understand your point... but you're missing something. Candidates DO spend time in states with less than 10 electoral votes.

I'm in Oregon. We have a piddly 7 VOTES, even less than you.

But the republicans came here over 12 times in the last month or two. 12 TIMES! They were even in eastern oregon multiple times... do you have any idea of what kind of backwater that is? But they were there, stumping their hearts out.

The dems were out here a lot too... I just don't know the numbers. And you know Nader spends a lot of time out this way. It was unreal. All of these polititians fretting over my little (well, vote-wise) state. And last I heard, along with FL, we're too close to call.

Also... we had a mail-in ballot. It was great. I actually didn't mail it, I went to the courthouse and dropped it in a ballotbox myself, since I didn't fill it out till late. (After a certain day, you aren't supposed to mail it, since it might not get in on time.)

The ballot itself is very clear, has tons of info, and almost no opportunity for mix ups. And I was able to sit in my own living room and go over the whole thing (referencing all kinds of material) and even look up some things that I'd never heard of, so that I would actually know what I was marking in.

Everything is in columns, and clearly separated. The place to mark in your vote is on the right-hand side of each column. The "vote" column has big bold arrows that have a large gap in the middle, like this:

(Oh, hell... slashdot won't give me the tags I need to draw it out... darn.)

All you do is very clearly fill in the gap in the arrow that points to your choice. It's hard to explain well, but it's so easy, and so obvious. The way things should be, regardless of method.

Anyway, I was really happy with the way the mail-in vote worked, especially considering that this was the first one. What troubles they had (like getting them all in on time, etc) Are sure to be worked out. I also liked the ballot itself, and the method for marking your vote.

On the other hand, I DIDN'T like sorting through our 3 billion #$@&*ing measures! (Or 30, or whatever. Good thing we could do it at home, or we still wouldn't be done.)

The media, no offense to Democrats, are a bunch of stupid liberals who insert craploads of bias into news reports and try to get the American public to think on the side of the Democrats. I don't want to get into it (it would make a great IRC session in the future to discuss this), but there's a lot of "coincidences" in major media reports that show a subtle but nauseating bias... Hence how Dubya looks like a complete moron but no one thinks it's a big deal that Gore is a pathological liar

Yeah, it *really* pisses me off to see liberals like George Will, John Sununu, Brit Hume and Tony Snow etc. spout their leftist dogma... </cheap shot>

Seriously, it seems to me there's a case to be made that even though many members of the media are (for lack of ability to come up with a better word at the moment) liberal-leaning, the reporting tends to go the *other* way. Recall that this is the media that said "Gore was too aggressive in debate #1", then "Gore wasn't aggressive enough in debate #2" and "Gore was too aggressive in debate #3" and basically said "Bush held his own" through all three. I don't think Bush is *dumb*, but he lacks curiosity, intellectual drive. He never rose far above the level of slogans. (Maybe he could, but he didn't in the debates, and everywhere where he did come up with something, it was clearly scripted)

Where'd your "Gore-as-pathological-liar" meme come from? I didn't see "the media" as a whole (there are exceptions of course) falling all over themselves to straighten the record out about (e.g.) Gore having been the model for the main male character in "Love Story" (for the record: Gore said something false, that he and Tipper were the model for the couple; and Erich Segal *has* said that Gore and Tommy Lee Jones were his inspiration for that character). The 'I invented the internet' thing, which *arguably is the one that started it all* was based on some pretty slipshod reporting (it takes a certain shade of glasses to see Gore as having lied outright on that one -- I'd call it poor word choice; had Gore said " ... in the creation of the Internet" instead of "in creating the Internet", would there be that much dispute? Not according to Vint Cerf, author of the TCP/IP protocol); the original reporter even tried to take that story back -- did you hear about *that*? Cheney, IMO, lied when he denied the government had any role in his prosperity. Did you hear about that? What about Bush's pride in those Texas laws he never signed? Did you hear about those? (FWIW, I'm inclined to see all of this as not siginificantly worse than Gore's exaggerations and misstatements)

The problem is that the media are looking for a *story that will sell* ... actually digging up the legislative record and showing it doesn't *sell*. Talking to Vint Cerf doesn't *sell*. But they also don't want to be *perceived* as "pointy-headed liberals" and, if you asked a serious lefty like me, they go too far in that.

My question is, how does a post get a rating of 5 when it's unrelated to the story it's posted under? Saying "At least you're not complaining about the Electoral College." at the start of the message didn't magically make this post on-topic.

Of course, I realize that THIS post will be moderated down as well. It should, it's just as off-topic. I just feel more noble NOT posting this complaint as an anonymous coward.

This is the biggest problem with the moderation system. Modding up isn't used to say "this is a good post". Instead, it seems to be a way of saying "I agree with you". All I'm trying to point out here is that (5, insightful) is an enormously unreasonable score for an off-topic post. Moderators should take more care.

This is the biggest problem with the moderation system. Modding up isn't used to say "this is a good post". Instead, it seems to be a way of saying "I agree with you"

* Small states and areas with low population density are not ignored

So, people in a small state deserve more say in who gets to be the president than those in larger states?

* In the case that something awful happens (the president-elect turns out to be psycho after the election, we've elected the Anti-Christ, or god forbid they die in a plane crash, etc...) the electors don't HAVE to go with the people's vote

And what happens if the President turns out to be a psycho after the Electoral College? His handlers just have to keep him in line for another couple of months. There is no more safety here than having the election later.

* It turns out that each person's vote is more powerful that way.

Impossible. All of the votes put together have exactly the same amount of "power": they choose the next president. What the electoral college does is make the votes in the "swing" states more powerful, at the expense of those in the stronghold states.

* Finally, it's the only thing that prevents the presidential election from being a full-blown popularity contest.

I'm note sure I understand this assertion. It's simply a state-by-state popularity contest instead of an overall popularity contest.

Anyway, it's not like our electoral system in Canada sucks less--just differently.

Greg

Build a better mouse trap... and you'll be sued by someone who patented mouse trapping devices in 1993.

But the electoral college substitutes the problem of 50.0001% of the electoral-college-vote-controllers (however one might say that) thinking something and the rest having to live with it. The electoral college doesn't solve the tyranny of the majority problem, it only obfuscates it.

Build a better mouse trap... and you'll be sued by someone who patented mouse trapping devices in 1993.

In the case that something awful happens (the president-elect turns out to be psycho after the election, we've elected the Anti-Christ, or god forbid they die in a plane crash, etc...) the electors don't HAVE to go with the people's vote... they can break ranks and vote whichever way they want to. Remember, a candidate needs 50% of the electoral college to win, or else it goes to the House of Representatives - so in the case of a close election, a few defecting electors can change the process drastically. Not what we want to happen in a normal election, but it's there as a safety.

Many states now have laws saying that the electors have to vote for the candidate they are "supposed" to vote for, sometimes on penalty of criminal charges.

Small states and areas with low population density are not ignored

In the case that something awful happens (the president-elect turns out to be psycho after the election, we've elected the Anti-Christ, or god forbid they die in a plane crash, etc...) the electors don't HAVE to go with the people's vote... they can break ranks and vote whichever way they want to...Not what we want to happen in a normal election, but it's there as a safety.

The actual reason was that the founding fathers were a slightly elitist and didn't want the uneducated masses voting "irrationally" based on their emotions. As a result, they put in the elector safety valve. Of course, I'd say it's a lot more likely that a few electors flip out and vote irrationally than a block of a few million people do, but maybe that's just me.

Then again, if this were Bush vs. Bradley, I'd probably be outraged right now. But Bradley was another one that the media viciously killed right away, so badly and obviously that Bush should consider himself lucky. But hey, that's what you get when you aren't a party puppet like Gore is. McCain learned the same lesson in the other party, as well...

Finally, it's the only thing that prevents the presidential election from being a full-blown popularity contest. Basically, if we go to a direct-election system, we might as well change the position's title from "president" to "homecoming king"

Your points:

* Small states and areas with low population density are not ignored

Let's break this down:

1. Small states are not ignored. True. However, the population of those states would not be ignored in a direct democracy, so the difference to me seems to be that the states per se are what are protected by this: that is, the state government, its affect on the state's residents, and perhaps psychological factors like the populace's identity as a resident of a particular state. Depending upon your feelings about "state's rights", this may be important to you.

2. Areas with low population density are not ignored. For me, this raises the question, "should the government represent the people or both the people and the land?". If it just represents the people, then once again the people would be represented in a direct democracy; the "area" (region, number of square miles, or however you define this) is unimportant, regardless of its population density. There are probably counter-arguments, however, that the "area" is important because the people who live there know more about its resources and possible uses (national parks, logging, etc).

* In the case that something awful happens (the president-elect turns out to be psycho after the election, we've elected the Anti-Christ, or god forbid they die in a plane crash, etc...) the electors don't HAVE to go with the people's vote... they can break ranks and vote whichever way they want to. Remember, a candidate needs 50% of the electoral college to win, or else it goes to the House of Representatives - so in the case of a close election, a few defecting electors can change the process drastically. Not what we want to happen in a normal election, but it's there as a safety.

It is also, I think, a danger in normal elections: if an Elector goes nuts or members of the college are bribed, they can vote against the populace and it's completely Constitutional. Most states have laws which guard against this: for example, the electors may be chosen by the political party of the candidate that wins the most votes. However, the danger exists in normal years as much as the "safety" exists in abnormal years.

* It turns out that each person's vote is more powerful that way. You vote for a small portion of the big vote, but you have a much bigger contribution to your portion of the vote compared to if you just had a general popular election.

I've read (skimmed, technically -- Discover has a lot of fluff) the article reference on Slashdot a few days about this, and I don't think I agree with the conclusions. The basic facts are valid, of course: you do have a bigger say in something that is noticeable, since each state is individually noticeable rather than just the entire coutnry being noticeable.

But does this make your vote more important? On average, I don't think it does. True, every voter in a swing state is more important, but the rest of us are LESS important. I live in Texas; why should I vote, since I knew the state was going to go to Bush? Whereas if we had a direct democracy, my vote would contribute to the final total for a given candidate and would have some importance. Granted, it would be less important than the votes of Floridians this year, but it would still be more important than it was in Texas: not important at all.

You may say that there is always the chance that Texas would not go to Bush, so my vote is important. That may (or may not) be, but the psychological affect of thinking that my vote is unimportant is itself important. I suspect this is one of the reasons why voter turn-out is so low.

* Finally, it's the only thing that prevents the presidential election from being a full-blown popularity contest. Basically, if we go to a direct-election system, we might as well change the position's title from "president" to "homecoming king".

I disagree that the election would be any more of a popularity contest than it is now.

Why is a popularity contest with rounding error better than one without? Why is a popularity contest for one state better than a popularity contest for the entire country? Why should we have a popularity contest in states that are important (because they are known to be swing states) while the rest of the country is ignored (and possibly left to make a slightly more rational choice)?

There are, however, possible additional arguments in favor of the Electoral College:

1. It discourages people from voting, so voters tend to be people who care more strongly than most. Hopefully this helps weed out apathetic voters who are just following whims or party affiliation.

2. If swing states are ones which are somehow representative of shifts in American culture (or at least are representative more often than other states), then decisions made by swing states represent early responses to coming issues. For example, Florida has a lot of retirees and first- and second-generation Hispanic Americans. Is that not a preview of America 20 years from now?

If both candidates are basically presenting a centrist message, swing states may represent a magnification of the small differences between candidates.

The counter-counter-argument is that the candidates appear centrist only because we are looking at sound bites, charisma and party affiliation, not actual policy. If we were looking more at policy, the decision might not be so evenly split.

I don't mean to argue strongly either for or against the Electoral College (though, personally, I think we would be happier without it). My primary point in this article is that the issue is not as clear-cut as you (or many anti-EC people) have presented it.

As an aside, I personally would like a system with formal "abstain" votes for when you don't like any candidate, and prefferential voting: for example, people could vote for Nader then Gore; if Nader doesn't win, their vote goes to Gore.

* It turns out that each person's vote is more powerful that way. You vote for a small portion of the big vote, but you have a much bigger contribution to your portion of the vote compared to if you just had a general popular election.

There is no problem with the electorate college per say, but how the individual states implement it.

The problem I see is, that folks just assume that because things are done a certain way, this must be the right way of doing things.

Let's look at the source code of the electorate college:

Each State shall appoint, in such a manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress:.....

Now in plain english this means, that the states may choose their electors in any way they want to. It does not even say that there have to be elections! In theory, if the state legislature (or the state constitution) prescribes that the electors are determined by pulling ping-pong balls out of a bingo machine, so be it.

That is why every state has a certain number of electors allocated to them.

Imagine if it were a popular vote, and the states are the ones to administer the election, what would stop the states from creating more voters by lowering the voting age, allowing women to vote, allowing slaves to vote? I know, women are allowed to vote now, and there are no more slaves, but one must see this in a historical context. Nowadays a state might allow migrant farm workers or foreigners to vote just to have more say so in who will be the next president.

The electorate college gives every state aproximately the same voting power, a little more for the less populous states. Therefore no state can abuse the system to give itself more power.

Also, if we went to direct voting, the states would lose even more of their sovereignty. They already lost a lot with the 17th ammendment allowing Senators to be elected directly.

How so? Electoral college votes are still directly proportional to population, they just lump the whole state together when one candidate gets ahead of the others.

Under this system, Wyoming gets 3 votes, which is much greater in proportion to California's 54 considering that Wyoming's population is ~500k, while California's is about 33 million people.

The total power of all votes is constant: they select a President.

What on Earth makes an electoral college system less about popularity?

This was a freak election, for both the popular and electoral votes to be so close. With so many states at 48%-52%, it could easily have turned out that one side had a strong majority (over 60% or even 70%) of electoral college votes, though the other had a slight majority in the popular vote.

It turns out that the Electoral College is a fabulous method of electing a president, for a couple of reasons:

* Small states and areas with low population density are not ignored

And why shouldn't they be? Exactly why should the vote of someone in one place count more or less than the vote of someone in another place?

* In the case that something awful happens (the president-elect turns out to be psycho after the election, we've elected the Anti-Christ, or god forbid they die in a plane crash, etc...) the electors don't HAVE to go with the people's vote... they can break ranks and vote whichever way they want to.

Yes... what if -- Zeus forbid -- some third party candidate were elected by the people? The electors could exercise their supremacy over the people by overturning this obviously deviant result.

And good point about that insanity thing, but what happens if the president goes psycho after both the popular and electoral voting process? Maybe you guys better get a post-electoral college to ratify the electoral college's votes. And maybe a post-post-electoral college, too, just in case.

* It turns out that each person's vote is more powerful that way.

Oh? So a vote from Californian is more powerful than a vote from a Rhode Islander?

* Finally, it's the only thing that prevents the presidential election from being a full-blown popularity contest.

Hear, hear! Zeus forbid the chosen candidate of the people at large become their leader.

Regards,
Psychonaut

Real programmers use COPY CON FILENAME.EXE

• The President should support more than just the "straight majority" of our nation. He should also feel a little impact from diverse opinions around the country. The people in cosmopolitan areas tend to have very similar biases with each other about things like gun ownership, hunting, rights of animals, use of land for production, importance of the environment, abortion, and the role of religion. Those biases stem from the nature of living in big cities and dealing with day to day life there.
    Correspondingly, rural citizens tend to have very similar biases, and considering that some of those rural citizens do important things like feeding the rest of us, should we really just be ignoring them?
    Not everything in this nation is decided by a simple majority. We try to consider the rights of minority groups so that no group's voice is drowned out by the majority. Sure, it's a balance - since the minority groups shouldn't be leading us either - but that balance is important to maintain.
• We can't forget that the United States of America is just that - a group of united states. They got together for the good of all by agreeing to the Constitution. In order to get some of the less populous states to join the union, the drafters of the constitution agreed to some concessions, including the number of senate representatives from each state, and the number of electoral college votes from each state.
• If we get rid of the electoral college because minorities are over-represented, then we should get rid of the senate as well - since it's based upon the same theory of representation.

This whole idea of the Electoral college changing their vote has got to be the craziest idea I have ever heard. Most states actually have a fine/jail time system built up for delegates who do not vote as they have been elected to. Besides, if anyone found out that the delegates had not voted as they should, we would probably see a series of stonings. The delegates are usually intelligent people who realize that they wouldn't survive very long after casting their ballots.

In a country where technology and communication have outgrown anything that our founding fathers could have dreamed of in their wildest dreams, I find it funny that we are using such an archaic and obsolete system as the Electoral College. It has outlived its day, the founding father's realized it would, and that is why they built in a system that allows us to make changes to the constitution. As long as we're talking about making changes to the actual ballot, I really think it's time to rethink the entire process. If you're going to fix one thing, you might as well fix it all while you're at it.