I didn't say that paper elections cannot be rigged. They can, and have been more often actually than there have been fair elections.

I did not even say that it's easier to rig electronic elections than paper elections. Personally, I'd expect it to be as long as you're the one calling the shots.

What is harder is simply to debunk cries of foul play. People can easily imagine what a paper election is like and how counting them (with representatives of all parties involved present) can be somewhat trusted. It is easy, on the other hand, to convince people that this is not the case with voting machines.

People don't trust what they don't understand. And trust is something a democracy needs urgently. People need to have faith in their system of government. Whether they like their current government or not, but they need to know that it was elected fairly and that it is what "the people" wanted. That's the whole problem here. Because without ... well, you see how Mexico is doing...

It is?

Explain this to Joe Random who just heard some populist cry foul play, claiming that they can't be audited and that the auditors are all in league with the party that won the election. Yes, it's bull. But the problem is that you CANNOT debunk it. Joe Random can't imagine how such an audit takes place. He can imagine counting paper slips, and he can see through the ruse when someone cries foul in such an environment. Any party crying foul in a paper election will be told that they should've put some monitors down if they didn't trust the ones running the show and counting the paper slips. That's (at least in my country) their right to do.

You can't do that with computer voting. Yes, someone can make an audit. But it isn't something you can easily explain to someone who has no idea of computers. He will readily believe someone who claims that it's bogus. Simply because he doesn't understand what "audit" means. He understands counting paper slips, though.

The danger is even less in the actual possibility of manipulation as it is in the possible loss of faith in the election. People are already weary of politicians and even politics to some degree (personally, I can only hope that the general apathy is more due to useless politicians rather than people genuinely not caring about democracy anymore). The very last thing we need now is that something gives them the impression that it doesn't matter jack anymore whether or not they vote because it's rigged anyway. Whether real or imagined, if someone starts beating that drum, people will follow easily.

Simply because you can't easily debunk it.

But any party involved can (at least in my country, and pretty much all civilized countries I know of) nominate election observers that can easily identify whether everything's running correctly without any kind of special knowledge. They can easily tell whether the ballot is properly sealed, they can easily tell whether people step into the voting booth alone. They can easily find out whether the choice is free of influence. They can be present when the ballot seal is broken (actually, over here people are essentially locked in 'til the paper slips are counted, collected and sealed again, nothing going in or out in between) and when the paper slips are counted.

It's pretty hard to manipulate anything in such an environment. It's easy to see whether someone tries to manipulate results since it takes little more than eyes to detect foul play.

You act as if that wasn't even easier with voting machines. "Whoopsie, computer crash!"

And unlike in this case, you can't even claim that they're criminally incompetent. Because, hey, computers crash, that's what they do, right? Happens to you at home, too, and you can't be blamed for that, can you?

In other words, them running out of ballots and being unable/unwilling to allow voters to vote is something people can easily identify as something not being as it should be. Manipulation gets heaps easier with voting machines.

Only for the people who have no friends or family. But that seems to apply to you.

Battery life and cost are big factors only following range anxiety.

Often the 10 year + life is cited for many of the hybrids such as the Prius. The long life is only obtained through battery maintenance. The state of charge is kept between 50 and 80% most of the time.

In an electric, that would severely limit range to preserve battery life.

To get maximum range, EV's often top off the battery (100% charge) which shortens the life and deep cycles them, also shortening the life. Think about other devices you deep cycle on a regular basis with the same battery technology. How long does your cell phone, laptop, tablet, etc last on a charge the first year and after 3 years of use. Do you expect an EV to get the same distance after 3 years of daily commute? Give me an EV with a guarantee of >80% capacity after 8 years or 100,000 miles and I am so on it. Making it only 60% of the way to work after 3 years is not going to cut it.

Sadly, I'm not compatible with DRM so I guess I can't use that new browser.

There is one single very dangerous problem with electronic voting: Trust. People have to trust it, because they are unable to test it.

With paper and pen, it's easy. You can nominate anyone to work as an election monitor. The necessary qualification is "being able to find out where the X marks the spot" and "count". That's a skill set available to nearly everyone.

Working as an election monitor to rule out foul play with election machines requires someone to know quite a bit about computers. It's anything BUT simple to rule out foul play.

The danger here isn't even so much that manipulation can take place. And I don't even want to engage in the discussion whether or not these machines can easily be manipulated. The danger is that some populist aiming for the uneducated masses goes and cries foul play when he loses the election. And that's a danger not to some party but to the faith of the population in the whole democratic process. And that inherently is dangerous to democracy altogether.

It's not easy to debunk such claims. With paper, it's easy to go "oh please, count them yourself if you don't believe us. Here's the paper slips, and you can count, can't you?". Now try the same with election machines. Saying "you can do an audit yourself" isn't going to cut it. Why should we trust the computer experts? It's not something just anyone can do.

These machines are a danger to democracy. Nothing less.

Most people have more than one car. The average is about one car per person, and more than one person per household, so a "house" has more than one car. Only if you claim people will never share cars with family will your statement be true. And the sum of "exceptions" doesn't surpass the cost of rental for those purposes, so it's still cheaper to have a single electric that doesn't do what you want, and do whatever you want, whenever you want (but rent a different car to do it).

Electric cars are more practical. It's the oil-fueled cars that are the vanity vehicles.

It was obvious. I appologize for being nitpicky.

In America, we have 7500 rebate. In addition, most states have another 1-3K rebate.

Yeah. It looks like a merger of the Aztec and Pacer. HORRIBLE design. I think that Pacer will end up outselling it because it looks so horrible.

e-golf does not HVAC their batteries properly. To keep their costs down, they went with LARGE cells, which means that you will have un-even heating. As such, ever time that you try to fast charge it, you will be killing the lifetime. However, in your case, you are in luck. There are FEWER than 20 fast chargers in ALL OF AMERICA that the e-golf can use. As such, you will have to wait 4-6 hours for a charge.

What is there to like about the e-golf? Absolutely NOTHING.

Tesla cars sell great in Norway. And they, along with others living in Mn, speak volumes about how decent the car does in winter (for starters, the weight is balanced, not over the front wheels).