Voting Machines Wreak Havoc in Maryland Elections 463
An anonymous reader writes, "Voting machines are wreaking havoc in Maryland elections today. From the article:
'Election Day in Montgomery County and parts of Prince George's opened in chaos and frustration this morning, as a series of problems and missteps left thousands of citizens unable to vote or forced to cast provisional ballots... Montgomery County's Board of Elections held an emergency meeting and agreed to petition the Circuit Court to extend voting times until 9 p.m.' It's simply shameful."
(sigh) (Score:2)
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If you know the politicians and beaurocrats? Some know and care, some know and delight. Any randomness is going to increase the chance of a slightly losing candidate to actually win.
Possibly (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Possibly (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Possibly (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:(sigh) (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Take a piece of paper.
2. Mark an X in a big box CLEARLY beside the candidate you want.
3. Put it in the ballot box.
Can it really be that simple? Yes!
As a software developer, I have to ask:
WHY IS ANYONE IN THEIR RIGHT MINDS USING A BLOODY COMPUTER TO DO THIS? I don't care if it's open source or closed source software on it, running on Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, whatever. All of these are harder to verify (if not impossible) that no tampering was done than SIMPLE PIECES OF PAPER.
Here, I'll link to Cringely, that way you'll know it's true
Re:(sigh) (Score:5, Insightful)
Because somebody, somewhere is getting a cut of the contract costs...
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Re:(sigh) (Score:5, Insightful)
"Forever" is perhaps more precisely stated as "several hours for initial results, a few days for the recounts".
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Between candidates for constituional offices, local offices, statewide ballot propositions, local measures and all of the other things that were given to the people to voter on, the last California ballot had between 15-25 separate items. And that was just a gubernatorial primary. Multiply that by the thousands of precincts, and you've got a long wait.
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Exit polls will give a reasonable estimate on the results.
Are these the same exit polls that predicted a win for Gore, then Bush, then Gore, then Bush? No t
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Do you really want to nickel and dime the counting of your votes? It doesn't really matter who wins so long as its cheap, right? Shit, you act like the voting machines are cheap. You can hire a hell of a lot of people for what 1 machine costs.
Re:(sigh) (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason that argument doesn't work is simple: the ballots don't go to some central location for say, the entire province or anything like that. There are people in each riding doing the counting (and in fact, multiple locations within one riding). That way, you just need enough volunteers from within an area to cover that area. In other words, the number of voting stations and people counting scales with the population.
But you know, everyone loves to solve non-existent problems with computers.
Re:(sigh) (Score:4, Interesting)
Personally I'd prefer a system where the votes get counted in every practical manner, or at least allows for such. Electronic voting -- all votes are tabulated by computer over a network, that also provides a human and easily machine readable paper ballot. Have the machines that count the paper ballots and the electronic ballots operate seperately and then verify their results with one another. In the event of a significant discrepancy or the need for a recount, have humans count them, as well as do another paper ballot machine count, using a different machine, perhaps.
It might be a bit expensive, but as our elections are at the foundation of our democratic republic, I think we can afford to "splurge" in this area.
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"Louise Bradley said she arrived at her polling station after the electronic cards had been delivered, but her card did not work properly. When she got to the section of the ballot listing candidates for the Democratic central committee, it was already filled out. Bradley said she had to remove the computer's choices and insert her own."
Hal, STOP trying to vote for me, dammit!
I'm sorry Dave, but I can't let you do that.
Re:Two good schemes (Score:4, Informative)
You do not need computers to do this.
This type of voting (there are several types of transferable vote system) is used to elect the European Parliament, the Mayor of London, the Australian senate, the president of Sri Lanka, the Irish Parliament. I have voted in two of these on ballot papers that were obviously intended to be hand counted. Single transferable vote systems were also used Denmark, as well as in Tasmania, long before computers were invented.
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Vote-counting is a task that is easily parallelizable. By using a sufficiently large number of volunteer vote counters, you can make the time very small.
Re:(sigh) (Score:4, Informative)
It's quite simple, really.
Re:(sigh) (Score:5, Informative)
Just to add some data: In the 2004 US presidential elections, 122,293,548 valid votes were cast. In the 2005 federal elections in Germany, 48,044,841 valid votes were cast. Germany has 16 states.
Re:(sigh) (Score:4, Insightful)
Wrong. 2200 of about 80000 electoral districts used Nedap voting machines in the last Bundestag election. Our German readers might find these articles (2005) [heise.de] informative (2006) [heise.de].
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The real reason for using the computer systems is to save the cost and time required to design and print paper ballots, not to s
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I'm sure that works great in Canada, but we have more than 4 people who live here. Also, we have electricity, so we can power our counting-machines.
Re:(sigh) (Score:4, Informative)
> I'm sure that works great in Canada, but we have more than 4 people who live here. Also, we have electricity, so we can power our counting-machines.
Ok, yuk yuk. Very funny. However, compare Canada with an equivalent population, say, Florida (remember 2000). Some 10,000,000+ votes cast in our election, all on paper, counted within 8 hours. We knew who our government was the same day. No supreme-court injunctions.
Part of the problem is resolved by a simple paper vote with a clear big circle to mark an X, but a large part of the differences between our countries are two-fold:
Cheers,
Re:(sigh) (Score:5, Funny)
4. Repeat.
Re:(sigh) (Score:5, Funny)
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Reasons to use a computer at all:
Computer voting, in and of itse
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Canada has several official languages and handicapped people.
Their paper doesn't seem to have "interpretation" problems.
Everyone I know who makes computers do things knows that computers are the wrong tool for voting. Their flexibility makes it easir to commit fraud, and much more easy to leave
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There might be a single exception to successf
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How many candidates per piece of paper? How big should each candidate's name be written? In what ORDER should the names of the candidates be written? When are the ballots printed?
2. Mark an X in a big box CLEARLY beside the candidate you want.
What does, and does not, count as an X? If I just have a small dash, should that count? What if I have a small dash in two boxes, or an X in one box and a dash in another box, or X's in all but one box?
3. Put it in the ballot box.
What if I
Re:(sigh) (Score:4, Insightful)
These arguments are simply not valid, for one very good reason: The rest of the democratic world does just fine with manual voting. When was the last time you heard that there were problems counting votes in Germany, or France, or the UK, or Norway, or ancient Greece, or whatever.
First off, why you people even need to make an X on a long list of candidates is beyond me. Here in Sweden (where there'll be an election on Sunday) each party has its own ballot, you simply stick that in an envelope, give it to a voting-official which checks your identity and suffrage, that voting offical puts the envelope in a box, and you're done! No confusion over votes, no-one can vote twice, no arguments over which candidates are first on the list (you can get ballots from all the parties in the parliament right there, and there are usually people handing out ballots for the other parties at the voting station). I repeat, for the rest of the world, this is not a problem,
As a plus, if it is desired, this can easily be counted by machine. Since each ballot is unique, you could easily have a machine recognize from what party it comes from. Not that you'd have too, it shouldn't take more than, say, 6-12 hours after the polls have closed to have a result counted by hand. In the last few years, I've never heard of any democratic and free country, that doesn't have wide-spread voter fraud (ie. psuedo-democracies, that deliberatly tamper with elections) messing up an election. Except for America.
I can think of very few things that are more stupid than elecronic voting. The manual system works perfectly, and has done so for a century! Why, ohh, why, mess it up.
Re:(sigh) (Score:4, Informative)
Well, pretty much all of Europe follows European voting - and U.S. voting. Sorry you guys don't care about the rest of the world, but I can't quite see how that justifies vote fraud)
The point is, these European countries manage just fine to vote on paper. Elections for the European parliament are done on paper, too. And to top it off, votes are counted extremely rapidly - the first precincts report within 30 minutes or so, pretty accurate numbers within two hours, and usually you have the results within a day at most.
Explain to me again why we should use electronic voting if the manual alternative works better *and* is more tamper proof?
There's "us guys" and then there's "the newsies" (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, pretty much all of Europe follows European voting - and U.S. voting. Sorry you guys don't care about the rest of the world,
Many of us DO care about the rest of the world.
Unfortunately, most of our news media are run by elitist morons with political agendas who think the rest of us are even dumber and more provincial than they are, don't need any actual news, but do need to be dragged by propaganda techniques (notably including strategic omission) into politically desirable ways of thinking and acting.
You'll notice the grandfater posting was talking about the focus of news agencies, and while he said "worldwide" he no doubt is basing his opinion on the pap served here.
They tell US about local "irregularities" whenever their candidates lose. They ignore any issues with votes in other countries: Mentioning problems elsewhere doesn't serve their interests. But omitting it gives the impression that voting irregularities here are a local anomaly, that the US system is more corrupt than those of other countries. This helps reenforce their message.
Neither can we. That's why so many of us are griping about it.
The dangerous thing about both election corruption and news of it that political stability depends on the perceived honesty of the elections. If a loser thinks they don't represent the will of the people (or at least the subset that's armed and willing to fight over the issue), he may convince himself that it would be possible to reverse the result by force of arms...
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In France, there's one candidate per piece of paper. There are piles for each candidate; you're supposed to take several to keep the secret (you're also getting some in the mail). Put one piece of paper in the envelope (in secret), put the envelope in the box (in front of election officials). I've never heard of voter fraud in Fran
OT: Your .sig (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, not quite so offtopic in this thread I guess.
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Actually, both systems would have their flaws and a determined individual could probably mess with either system if they truly desired to do so. Your statement though, seems to show me you definitely are not develop
Re:(sigh) (Score:5, Insightful)
As a fellow Canadian, I believe I can tell you the answer is "not always that simple" in the case of US elections.
People could be electing their Sherrif, councilmen, or a state refferendum on the same ballot as they also vote for either their state or federal representatives. It's my understanding that some ballots can have over a dozen issues on them. (Anyone who has better first hand knowledge of this feel to correct me if this is an inaccurate summation.)
I guess there is the perception that electronic voting is better, or less error prone, or people can understand what they are doing better. Or, that due to low voter turn out, get them to answer as many questions as you can so people get to voice their opinions on as many things as possible as once.
I do believe that a typical visit to the polls for our American cousins involves more than the greatly simplified answering of exactly one question we do here ("which candidate do you like for the job you're voting on")
Cheers (eh)
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Apparently next year we're getting machines installed. Grr.
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Unfortunately, proper design seems to be something of a stumbling block among e-voting manufacturers.
In related news... (Score:2, Interesting)
(I only wish the above were true...)
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If it isn't broken... (Score:2, Insightful)
I read alot of horror stories about the insecurities of 'modern' voting machines, and i ask myself 'what's the point?'
I live in Toronto, and the elections held in Canada use paper. Why? Becasuse there's an audit trail if a recount is needed, and it's simple. No duplicated effort. The system isn't broken, and it _just works_
Technology for it's own sake is fun, but in critical applications such as voting, I ask: "
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Depends on your point of view. If you are a citizen who wants to have their vote counted and counted correctly then no, nothing is wrong with paper. If you are a corrupt politico who want's to continue to abuse your position of power the people's will be damned, then paper is a flawed system that must be done away with.
Guess which of the two makes the rules.
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"Salus populi suprema lex esto." It's something more Americans should learn and assert.
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Unforunatly they would rather march in step with a party then think for themselves.
There are many advantages for electronic voting. It needs to be an open system with safegaurds in place.
Re:If it isn't broken... (Score:4, Insightful)
Paper does not ensure that the counters will count accurately. Paper does not ensure that the counters are not subject to a poltical bias or bribes. Only a well-defined process with proper auditing, traceability, etc. regardless of the actual method used to poll the constituents, is the method that will be accurate.
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Now what were you saying again? Paper ballots work well for small numbers of people. The mechaincal ones NY had were great for us and reliable literally for decades. The New and Improved Diebold electronic ones running Windows XP are nothing but a diaster in need of an event.
bring back the solid mechanical machines and all will be well
Population (Score:2)
In each polling station you already have the people crossing names off the list, and watching things. At the end of the day, they count.
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The US has 10 times the number of people, but probably half as many actual voters.
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I live in Toronto, and the elections held in Canada use paper. Why? Becasuse there's an audit trail if a recount is needed, and it's simple. No duplicated effort. The system isn't broken, and it _just works_
The problem is where analog imperfectly meets digital. Is that a pregnant chad? A hanging chad? A dimpled chad? If the glitches with electronic voting are worked out, it could allow for better error checking of the votes from people who screw up paper ballots.
Personally, I consider the use of pap
User Error (Score:5, Informative)
The people setting up the system forgot to bring along required material to the voting places. Big Oops! Once the material was brought in, it worked fine.
This has nothing to do with voting machines. It would have been the same if they forgot to bring the paper ballots to a voting location that was using paper ballots instead of machines.
Move along.
Re:User Error (Score:5, Insightful)
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If they were able to remember to deliver paper ballots to the polls, then they should be expected to be able
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Congratulations. Out of hundreds of freaking posts, you seem to be the first one to realize this! When I first read the article, I'd actually thought they'd forgotten the special paper ballots that are mechanically counted. It would have been the exact same result.
The whole fiasco is nothing more than a huge mismanagement issue. Somehow the ballots got left in a war
Not All User Error (RTFA) (Score:5, Informative)
But, towards the end of the article, there is this:
Louise Bradley said she arrived at her polling station after the electronic cards had been delivered, but her card did not work properly. When she got to the section of the ballot listing candidates for the Democratic central committee, it was already filled out. Bradley said she had to remove the computer's choices and insert her own.
Now *THAT* is a problem with electronic voting, and a severe one.
NOT user error (Score:2)
Don't move along just yet. (Score:4, Insightful)
So you missed things like this
Louise Bradley said she arrived at her polling station after the electronic cards had been delivered, but her card did not work properly. When she got to the section of the ballot listing candidates for the Democratic central committee, it was already filled out. Bradley said she had to remove the computer's choices and insert her own.
and this
At Luxmanor Elementary School in Rockville, Larry Schleifer cast a provisional ballot, then groused that it would not be counted along with the electronic tallies expected later in the day. He said he was frustrated that no one had crossed his name off the voter registry when he was handed a paper ballot and was concerned that election workers would not keep track of who had done what.
"What's going to stop somebody from voting twice?" he fumed. "I think it's unconscionable that this has happened."
No Big Deal (Score:5, Funny)
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Prince Georges "the armpit of MD" County, maybe, but not Montgomery.
Machines Wreak Havoc (Score:2, Funny)
DECEPTIVE ARTICLE, User Error (Score:3, Informative)
Boxes of automated voting cards that are required to work the electronic machines were mistakenly left behind in a Rockville warehouse in the run-up to Election Day, elections officials said
The cards began to be delivered by shortly after 7 a.m. and had been dropped off at all polling stations by 9:50 a.m., election officials said, and voting returned to normal
It doesn't sound like machine error, but instead stupid user error.
Backup solutions (Score:2)
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Exactly. And I don't understand what the problem was here? This article and the uproar caused are retarded. It says right in the article that until the electronic ballots arrived, users could fill out provisional paper ballots. So what's the big deal? Nobody missed out on voting? It's just that users before
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It doesn't sound like machine error, but instead stupid user error.
Except for this last part which didn't sound that great:
Is that a voting machine feature? It fills in some
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Agreed, sounds like a machine error, and the programmers, or more likely, the testers should be shot. But it doesn't sound like a critical, election stopping error. I mean, seriously, when you go to cast a vote, I would assume that you LOOK at what / who you're voting for, and therefore, if you're going to vote for John, but Aaron is selected, I would assume you would change it to John. If you're voting for
The people that RUN them are the problem (Score:4, Interesting)
"They didn't get to use voting machines to cast their ballots because the county's 238 precincts didn't get needed voter access cards.
"These are the cards that you put into the machines to activate the machines," Nancy Dacek, president of the Montgomery County Board of Elections, tells WTOP. "We have a crew that packs them and for some reason, inadvertently, the access cards were left out."
Which isn't much different than someone not delivering boxes of good old fashioned paper ballots, if that's what those precincts had been expected to use. But no, I'm sure we'll hear how somehow the Governor of the state made the "crew that packs them" hose it up on purpose, blah blah. Or better yet, GWB personally slipped out of the White House to remove the cards from the trucks, just to get everyone even more riled up. *sigh*
Re:The people that RUN them are the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Parties are full of people...some people will do anything to win.
The right thing to do would have been a revote.
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- these systems are vastly more complicated than is necessary
- they don't degrade gracefully
- there's no paper recount
As a bonus (if you're already office), they're also incredibly easy to hack and tamper with, should you want to alter the count or prevent certain blocks of votes from being counted.Re: (Score:2)
While this is true, it's much less likely that an inadaquately trained poll worker would forget the paper ballots. A paper system is simply easier for regular people to understand, so they are less likely to make errors.
What we really need is for one of these electronic voting systems to produce an outrageous, obviously bogus outcome (like electing Fidel Castro governor of Maryland or something). Maybe th
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Re:The people that RUN them are the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Electronic voting machines just add another big layer of complexity to a process that really doesn't need to be so hard. A paper ballot has just two parts, the ballot sheet and a pen. If the ballot sheet breaks, the voter can just grab a new one, and the whole process gets held up for a minute, instead of hours or more. If someone forgets the pens, you can run to corner store and grab a box, or chances are enough of the first batch of voters will happen to have pens with them that they don't mind leaving behind.
Instead we have computerized machines that require specialized knowledge to set up and service, and which can break in a huge number of ways.
Even a secure, tamperproof, open-sourced electronic voting machine is a waste of money. The only problem it solves is speeding up the tallying of votes. And all that is really good for is letting the media report on partial results before half the people out there have even had a chance to vote. That benefit hardly seems worth the extra complexity or cost.
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It's not the machine.... (Score:2, Funny)
Speaking... (Score:2)
Havoc (Score:4, Funny)
I don't like the voting machines, but it doesn't help to have sensationalist articles against them. This is akin to someone forgetting to bring the power cords.
No Need To Worry (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:No Need To Worry (Score:4, Funny)
I actually RTFA... (Score:5, Insightful)
Based on how the equipment in Arizona works, I suggest the following: If one has a voter registration card then the voter should be able in this technological era to go to any balloting site and with the card have the appropriate PAPER ballot generated on the spot. If they're not at the normal for that precinct then their ballot, after being optically scanned is fed into a seperately collated output bin so that it can be sent to the proper storage bin later. This allows people to vote for their district regardless of where they happen to physically go to cast. I also suggest that anyone over hte age of 18 who is a citizen be able to vote so long as they can get to a polling place, and that everyone that has any kind of government-issued ID is automatically registered simply by obtaining that ID. This eliminates people being disenfranchised on account of name confusion with convicted felons, which was a documented problem in Florida in 2000. It also ensures that every American Gets The Right To Vote and doesn't infringe on anyone. Yeah, some won't like convicted felons voting, but if they've been released from prison and are part of the civilian population then they've been released back to society and therefore should be let to vote, in my humble opinion.
The more complex the voting system gets the worse the process gets. Yeah, it's labor-intensive to physically count ballots, but we must maintain a paper record of all voting activities in case the electronic count doesn't work. The optical-scan ballots allow for that, and still give us the near-instant return that we like without compromising the ability to audit or recount.
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If you replace 'stabbing little old lady' with possessing weed, breaking DRM, or having an abortion?
What if belonging to the opposing political party is a crime?, or being Black?, or Gay?
outsource it! (Score:2)
And remember kids... (Score:4, Insightful)
Not really about electronic voting (Score:2)
The answer is simple. (Score:5, Funny)
Just eliminate voting. It is apparent that voting is a bad idea that *just doesn't work*. I mean the free market can and *should* be allowed to solve all of our governance problems and so we should just auction off our federal, local and state governments to the highest bidders; who will eliminate taxes and replace them with 'users fees'. Though corporate users will get breaks and 'bulk discounts' since they are so important for the economy and preserving freedom.
Really, anything else is just creeping socialism.
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Not all about user error (Score:5, Informative)
Poll workers found that screens on new electronic poll books froze or shut down as they tried to record arriving voters.
Note that these are the books which are supposed to record who has shown up. In other words, there may not be a way to verify who showed up and voted and in some cases people might be able to vote twice.
Also from Page 3:
At Luxmanor Elementary School in Rockville, Larry Schleifer cast a provisional ballot, then groused that it would not be counted along with the electronic tallies expected later in the day. He said he was frustrated that no one had crossed his name off the voter registry when he was handed a paper ballot and was concerned that election workers would not keep track of who had done what.
"What's going to stop somebody from voting twice?" he fumed. "I think it's unconscionable that this has happened."
See my above quote regarding double-voting.
Continuing from Page 3:
Bernice Wuethrich, voting at Grace United Methodist Church on New Hampshire Avenue, said she cast her ballot on the electronic machines after they were up and running. But even then, she said, not everyone's name was coming up on the computer.
"They don't have a printed list" of eligible voters, "they don't have a backup," Wuethrich said. "So when the computer goes down, they can't even look at a list to see who's eligible to vote."
Hmmm, no paper trail to verify who can vote. Sounds suspiciously like the call for a paper trail for your actual vote.
Still futher on:
Louise Bradley said she arrived at her polling station after the electronic cards had been delivered, but her card did not work properly. When she got to the section of the ballot listing candidates for the Democratic central committee, it was already filled out. Bradley said she had to remove the computer's choices and insert her own.
So anyone who didn't notice the selections could have inadvertently cast a wrong vote. Yes, this is user error but also computer error. There should never, EVER, be any selection already chosen when one uses an electronic machine.
The issue is both user error, for forgetting the cards, but also programming and equipment error on both voting machines and registration books. I can't wait for the lawsuits to fly after this fiasco. If nothing else hopefully this incident will encourage more people to force their officials to have paper ballots which can always be gone back to to be counted.
I'm not sure why one even needs an electronic registration book. The big paper ones we use in my area have worked since I was able to vote (a few decades in case you were wondering).
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Another good example of why websites that break their stories into pages are useless. Just from the
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So anyone who didn't notice the selections could have inadvertently cast a wrong vote.
And just as bad, how do we know she did not wipe someone elses vote out in the process?
Why?? (Score:3, Interesting)
Irresponsible summary (Score:3, Informative)
Holy incomplete journalism, Batman! The delay was not because of computer problems. The delay was due to incomplete packets being sent to the polling locations. This could happen with computerized voting, with paper ballots, or with clay tablets. The organizers forgot to include the plastic cards that are inserted into the voting computer. If this were purely paper-based, it would be like forgetting to include the lock for the ballot box.
Caveats: I may not be a lawyer, but I do live, vote and electioneer in Montgomery County. Also, please don't interpret this post as an indication that I like computerized voting---I deplore Diebold and any voting scheme they support. But, I won't throw my vote away by staying home. Finally, I need to get back out there, so my apologies if this is redundant.
It happened to me (Score:3, Insightful)
I showed up at the polling place, very smallish in a local elementary school. I knew there were problems because the line was out the door, yet none of the voting booths were busy.
By the time it got to me, they inserted, the card into the "activation" station, and then they said something like "Oh, the system has crashed again", and they called over the election official. They timed it until it came up and it seemed to be a few minutes. They inserted my card again. They told me "Oh, the system said you already voted" and they called over the election official.
They ran to the back of the auditorium looking in a big manual. After 10 minutes, they came back and said "The manual is missing the part where it tells us what to do now. You can wait until we get it figured out, fill out a provisional ballet, or come back later". I opted for a provisional ballot which means that your vote is no longer a secret vote, and it takes 5-10 minutes to do, because you have to fill out two forms, and sign in two places.
I checked out the equipment while I was waiting, and sure enough it was Diebold. When I see this equipment in use, I feel like I might was well take my vote and throw it in the trash. Based on the errors that I saw for other people while I was waiting, the chances of a meaningful result in the primary seem somewhat in doubt.
We have a very good punch-card system in Montgomery county (nothing like the chad based system in florida) which produced a nice computer card that was obvious if it was correct when it was done and then you dumped it in a ballot box, ensuring anonymity and also making sure your vote was going to be counted as cast.
This new system did nothing except make a mess.
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Yes, but would you have the presence of mind to keep your yap shut when you don't know what they hell you're talking about? Obviously not.
The machines all worked just fine. The people who provision the polling places forgot to pack and deliver the smart cards that are part of casting your vote. They were late. They delivered them later, and every
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Maybe before going ballistic you should read the article CAREFULLY. The part of the problem that the article highlighted was, as you say, human error: the elections staff forgot to bring the cards that activate the machines. But the article also reported two problems with machines. One was that many of the machines used by the staff to check voters off the voter list didn't work. The other was that the cards that activate the machines either didn't work or had choices already filled in. So, yes, there were
RTFA (Score:2)
fta: Boxes of automated voting cards that are required to work the electronic machines were mistakenly left behind in a Rockville warehouse in the run-up to Election Day, elections officials said.
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Keep it on Tuesdays (Score:2)
Are you nuts? Take away my free time? I would prefer to keep it on Tuesdays, but make it a law that work must release you for at least one PAID hour in order to allow you to vote. Therefore it's win-win
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As an example, we most certainly do not elect judges! In the UK judges are non political, and we want people who are good at being judges, not people who are good at winning elections. Similarly "city officials" are appointed by normal recruitment processes, with elected l