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> It has potential to greatly reduce ballot problems, both crap like hanging chads, "voter used an X mark instead of filling in the circle" Should people who s

> It has potential to greatly reduce ballot problems, both crap like hanging chads, "voter used an X mark instead of filling in the circle" Should people who screw up their votes that much even get their votes counted? Maybe these problems are filtering out people whose votes shouldn't be counted in the first place. If they don't understand the (very simple) mechanics of the voting process, I can't imagine how they can understand politics enough to make an intelligent vote. Also, by the same logic, they could botch what they touch on the screen anyway, and the output of the machine wouldn't give us any insight into what happened during that process.

wool_gather 8y ago
Sure, we can come up with all sorts of reasons why various groups' votes "shouldn't be counted". Or we could live in a pluralistic democracy where the right to vote is fundamental enough that we expend some effort making sure it works for everyone.
christoph 8y ago
This is in my opinion, a solved problem. Us Brits have numerous rules around how paper ballots are marked & counted, for example - https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/06/vote-with-a-smiley-face-electoral-guide-says-x-doesnt-have-to-mark-the-spot https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/06/vote-with-a... The fact is, in any election, you only get a few people marking papers like this. At the final local counts, the total spoiled, unmarked, etc. ballot counts are read out as separate totals. Very rarely is this total a number that has any affect on the overall outcome. Average rejection rate of ballot papers is around 0.28%. In those rare instances where it's that close to matter, there would be recounts & additional checks against those spoiled ballots. As a side note, it baffles me that any country would ever not have simple paper ballots with pens/pencils. Pens are safest IMO & pencils should probably be discouraged, I don't personally agree with the (generally historic) reasons for pencils being preferred.

wool_gather 8y ago

Sure, we can come up with all sorts of reasons why various groups' votes "shouldn't be counted". Or we could live in a pluralistic democracy where the right to vote is fundamental enough that we expend some effort making sure it works for everyone.

christoph 8y ago

This is in my opinion, a solved problem. Us Brits have numerous rules around how paper ballots are marked & counted, for example - https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/06/vote-with-a-smiley-face-electoral-guide-says-x-doesnt-have-to-mark-the-spot https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/06/vote-with-a... The fact is, in any election, you only get a few people marking papers like this. At the final local counts, the total spoiled, unmarked, etc. ballot counts are read out as separate totals. Very rarely is this total a number that has any affect on the overall outcome. Average rejection rate of ballot papers is around 0.28%. In those rare instances where it's that close to matter, there would be recounts & additional checks against those spoiled ballots. As a side note, it baffles me that any country would ever not have simple paper ballots with pens/pencils. Pens are safest IMO & pencils should probably be discouraged, I don't personally agree with the (generally historic) reasons for pencils being preferred.