7 ms·

We went from abacus to digital circuit painstakingly over thousands of years and you're using a compute-er with a screen to post this comment. There's nothing

by sova 6y ago

We went from abacus to digital circuit painstakingly over thousands of years and you're using a compute-er with a screen to post this comment. There's nothing wrong with paper except its extreme inefficiency in the human realm. We could have audit-able ballots and public/private keys to check that our ballots have been counted and tabulated correctly. Is it the case, perhaps, that ballots are supposed to be "private" and therefore we have "private" software count them?

chrisseaton 6y ago
> There's nothing wrong with paper except its extreme inefficiency in the human realm. They aren't inefficient. In the UK (paper ballots) an accurate estimate is available when the polls close, and a certain result is available within a few hours before next morning. This is much faster than US voting machines.
- c0llision 6y ago
  True, but: 1. You didn't have to count 151 million votes in the UK election 2. You didn't have to wait a few days for mail-in ballots that were delayed in transit to arrive 3. You didn't have to do this in the middle of a global pandemic that required poll workers to stay 6 feet apart Generally the US election results can be predicted the same day, this year had additional challenges due to extremely high turn-out, high use of mail-in ballots, and limited number of pool workers due to pandemic. In my opinion, elections should be done using paper ballots, and those ballots are counted using electronic tabulation machines. After a batch of ballots are counted, a random sample of them are selected and manually counted. Should the results match, then you can have a high certainty of the accuracy of the count. Electronic tabulation machines are actually more accurate than hand-counting, and by hand counting again, you reduce the risk of the machines making "mistakes" due to technical glitches or malicious backdoors etc.
  - brigandish 6y ago
    There were 32,014,110 in the last UK general election, which is one fifth of the US total, but then the population is also (roughly) one fifth of the US’.
- throwaway2245 6y ago
  11 states including Alaska, Arizona, Nevada, and Michigan have a larger land area than the UK. [Edited to add: 46 states have a lower population density than the UK, adding further logistical consideration]
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    I don't understand what impact you think this makes? If each community counts their votes... why does it matter how large an area they collectively cover?
    - throwaway2245 6y ago
      It already has an impact within the UK. St Ives constituency in the UK is generally the last to declare, presumably because the island populations are so small and remote it's considered unsafe for them to individually count and report the results for collation, for multiple potential reasons (Gugh: 3 residents)
      - chrisseaton 6y ago
        And yet they have it done within a few hours. Why is it about the US that means it takes a week... even with these machines which supposedly make it better?
        throwaway2245 6y ago
        If you reject my claim that US has many-times more remote places than the UK, that need additional logistical consideration, a further reason is that the US election has no particular hurry. If your count in the UK doesn't finish for a week, the parliamentary session opens, and you don't have local representation in parliament. There's an immediate procedural consequence that disadvantages the local area and may result in concentrated unrest. If your count in the US doesn't finish, the relevant [Congressional] term doesn't start until January 3rd, 2021. As such, there's no immediately comparable procedural consequence. The Electoral College doesn't cast its votes until December 14th. The Supreme Court won't get involved, to hurry you up, until December 8th. Correctly postmarked ballots will (in some states) still be counted if they arrive late, up to November 23rd. Today is still November 15th. In theory, not all the votes have even arrived to be counted yet.
- takeda 6y ago
  Don't know about UK, but I suspect it is because they start counting as soon as they receive them. In US there were some laws that counting couldn't start before polls are closed. Despite mail in ballots arriving a month earlier. In some places they weren't even allowed to prepare them for counting (like verifying signatures and removing ballots from envelopes).
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    The UK does not start counting until polls are closed. They count all ballots - both in-person and mail-in - within a few hours. They have a lot of people in gyms and just go through them quickly.
    - creato 6y ago
      The states that had long delayed results were due to being close, and accepting mail in ballots long after polls closed. It's not a matter of counting speed.
      - chrisseaton 6y ago
        The UK does recounts in hours, not weeks.
        godelski 6y ago
        This election is an anomaly and should not be considered the norm. But there's also some confusion where winners get announced before the total counting is done. They are just announced when there is believed to be statistical certainty. A nation wide (full) recount is not happening in a few hours and if it was I would expect it to have a decent error margin. The UK also doesn't have as many options on the ballots as the US you have president, house, senate, judges, reps, measures, state constitution amendments, etc. You can't make a one to one comparison.
    - treis 6y ago
      Aren't UK elections generally just for your individual MPs? That's different than the US where you will have numerous races and ballot issues during the same election. For example, I voted for President, 2 senators, a congressman, probably a dozen state & local officials, and three state constitutional amendments.
- rootusrootus 6y ago
  > This is much faster than US voting machines. That's actually pretty much on par for much of the U.S. We have paper ballots and results mostly finished before the next morning. There are stragglers, of course, for good reasons, but you don't really hear much about those unless they are possibly going to decide the election, like this year. And then of course 2020 is it's own special kind of fun, not typical of any other year.
- jcranmer 6y ago
  Honest question here: how many races and questions do you vote on at once in the UK? This year, my ballot had about a dozen individual races (including two state referendums and an advisory question) to vote on, and this is probably about or below the US median ballot complexity each presidential election.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    I'm sure you have more on your ballot than us. But can you not return a presidential result in the first few hours, and then go back in priority order?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
heavyset_go 6y ago
> We could have audit-able ballots and public/private keys to check that our ballots have been counted and tabulated correctly. With electronic voting, the bar for being able to validate vote counts is raised to requiring computer experts who understand public-key encryption. With paper ballots, anyone who can count is able to validate votes. Electronic voting would be prime for obfuscated attempts at influencing elections because only a handful of people would be able to verify that the machines counted votes correctly.
jrumbut 6y ago
Inefficiency is a feature, having every state and every county slightly different makes systemic fraud very difficult. All these phishing schemes that are extremely effective with IT workers and other security conscious people. I say just keep elections analog for the time being. Perhaps someday the technology will be mature, well understood, and distributed far enough to work but I don't see it happening this decade.
- xur17 6y ago
  > Inefficiency is a feature, having every state and every county slightly different makes systemic fraud very difficult. I agree with this - in addition, it makes it a lot easier for everyone to understand the system, and therefore more likely to trust it.
  - Closi 6y ago
    > makes it a lot easier for everyone to understand the system, and therefore more likely to trust it. Is this the USA system we are talking about? Because a significant proportion don’t seem to understand or trust the system right now!
- sova 6y ago
  That's an interesting point because it effectively nullifies the argument for more nuanced voting mechanisms such as Score Voting. Since more nuanced voting would require a stronger reliance on vote tabulators. It is somewhat deflating that better voting methods must be discarded in favor of "inefficiency as a feature." I long for an upgrade to voting, but all these arguments _in favor of_ hand-counting-only make me think we are stuck with plurality voting for a long time.
  - jrumbut 6y ago
    I have a suspicion that a complex voting system (like, anything more complex than "most votes win") would spread greater confusion and distrust, that's just my pessimism. I would be happy if we could have a national popular vote to choose the president, that reduces complexity. I'm wary of anything more, though I do like that there are now some experiments here and there with other systems. Edit: I've recently come to the conclusion that the real value of elections is as a national show of force. "1xx,000,000 of us are here and paying attention and expecting the government to respond to our interests and willing to do something about it"

by sova 6y ago

chrisseaton 6y ago

> There's nothing wrong with paper except its extreme inefficiency in the human realm. They aren't inefficient. In the UK (paper ballots) an accurate estimate is available when the polls close, and a certain result is available within a few hours before next morning. This is much faster than US voting machines.

c0llision 6y ago
True, but: 1. You didn't have to count 151 million votes in the UK election 2. You didn't have to wait a few days for mail-in ballots that were delayed in transit to arrive 3. You didn't have to do this in the middle of a global pandemic that required poll workers to stay 6 feet apart Generally the US election results can be predicted the same day, this year had additional challenges due to extremely high turn-out, high use of mail-in ballots, and limited number of pool workers due to pandemic. In my opinion, elections should be done using paper ballots, and those ballots are counted using electronic tabulation machines. After a batch of ballots are counted, a random sample of them are selected and manually counted. Should the results match, then you can have a high certainty of the accuracy of the count. Electronic tabulation machines are actually more accurate than hand-counting, and by hand counting again, you reduce the risk of the machines making "mistakes" due to technical glitches or malicious backdoors etc.
- brigandish 6y ago
  There were 32,014,110 in the last UK general election, which is one fifth of the US total, but then the population is also (roughly) one fifth of the US’.
throwaway2245 6y ago
11 states including Alaska, Arizona, Nevada, and Michigan have a larger land area than the UK. [Edited to add: 46 states have a lower population density than the UK, adding further logistical consideration]
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  I don't understand what impact you think this makes? If each community counts their votes... why does it matter how large an area they collectively cover?
  - throwaway2245 6y ago
    It already has an impact within the UK. St Ives constituency in the UK is generally the last to declare, presumably because the island populations are so small and remote it's considered unsafe for them to individually count and report the results for collation, for multiple potential reasons (Gugh: 3 residents)
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      And yet they have it done within a few hours. Why is it about the US that means it takes a week... even with these machines which supposedly make it better?
      - throwaway2245 6y ago
        If you reject my claim that US has many-times more remote places than the UK, that need additional logistical consideration, a further reason is that the US election has no particular hurry. If your count in the UK doesn't finish for a week, the parliamentary session opens, and you don't have local representation in parliament. There's an immediate procedural consequence that disadvantages the local area and may result in concentrated unrest. If your count in the US doesn't finish, the relevant [Congressional] term doesn't start until January 3rd, 2021. As such, there's no immediately comparable procedural consequence. The Electoral College doesn't cast its votes until December 14th. The Supreme Court won't get involved, to hurry you up, until December 8th. Correctly postmarked ballots will (in some states) still be counted if they arrive late, up to November 23rd. Today is still November 15th. In theory, not all the votes have even arrived to be counted yet.
takeda 6y ago
Don't know about UK, but I suspect it is because they start counting as soon as they receive them. In US there were some laws that counting couldn't start before polls are closed. Despite mail in ballots arriving a month earlier. In some places they weren't even allowed to prepare them for counting (like verifying signatures and removing ballots from envelopes).
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  The UK does not start counting until polls are closed. They count all ballots - both in-person and mail-in - within a few hours. They have a lot of people in gyms and just go through them quickly.
  - creato 6y ago
    The states that had long delayed results were due to being close, and accepting mail in ballots long after polls closed. It's not a matter of counting speed.
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      The UK does recounts in hours, not weeks.
      - godelski 6y ago
        This election is an anomaly and should not be considered the norm. But there's also some confusion where winners get announced before the total counting is done. They are just announced when there is believed to be statistical certainty. A nation wide (full) recount is not happening in a few hours and if it was I would expect it to have a decent error margin. The UK also doesn't have as many options on the ballots as the US you have president, house, senate, judges, reps, measures, state constitution amendments, etc. You can't make a one to one comparison.
  - treis 6y ago
    Aren't UK elections generally just for your individual MPs? That's different than the US where you will have numerous races and ballot issues during the same election. For example, I voted for President, 2 senators, a congressman, probably a dozen state & local officials, and three state constitutional amendments.
rootusrootus 6y ago
> This is much faster than US voting machines. That's actually pretty much on par for much of the U.S. We have paper ballots and results mostly finished before the next morning. There are stragglers, of course, for good reasons, but you don't really hear much about those unless they are possibly going to decide the election, like this year. And then of course 2020 is it's own special kind of fun, not typical of any other year.
jcranmer 6y ago
Honest question here: how many races and questions do you vote on at once in the UK? This year, my ballot had about a dozen individual races (including two state referendums and an advisory question) to vote on, and this is probably about or below the US median ballot complexity each presidential election.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  I'm sure you have more on your ballot than us. But can you not return a presidential result in the first few hours, and then go back in priority order?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

heavyset_go 6y ago

> We could have audit-able ballots and public/private keys to check that our ballots have been counted and tabulated correctly. With electronic voting, the bar for being able to validate vote counts is raised to requiring computer experts who understand public-key encryption. With paper ballots, anyone who can count is able to validate votes. Electronic voting would be prime for obfuscated attempts at influencing elections because only a handful of people would be able to verify that the machines counted votes correctly.

jrumbut 6y ago

Inefficiency is a feature, having every state and every county slightly different makes systemic fraud very difficult. All these phishing schemes that are extremely effective with IT workers and other security conscious people. I say just keep elections analog for the time being. Perhaps someday the technology will be mature, well understood, and distributed far enough to work but I don't see it happening this decade.

xur17 6y ago
> Inefficiency is a feature, having every state and every county slightly different makes systemic fraud very difficult. I agree with this - in addition, it makes it a lot easier for everyone to understand the system, and therefore more likely to trust it.
- Closi 6y ago
  > makes it a lot easier for everyone to understand the system, and therefore more likely to trust it. Is this the USA system we are talking about? Because a significant proportion don’t seem to understand or trust the system right now!
sova 6y ago
That's an interesting point because it effectively nullifies the argument for more nuanced voting mechanisms such as Score Voting. Since more nuanced voting would require a stronger reliance on vote tabulators. It is somewhat deflating that better voting methods must be discarded in favor of "inefficiency as a feature." I long for an upgrade to voting, but all these arguments _in favor of_ hand-counting-only make me think we are stuck with plurality voting for a long time.
- jrumbut 6y ago
  I have a suspicion that a complex voting system (like, anything more complex than "most votes win") would spread greater confusion and distrust, that's just my pessimism. I would be happy if we could have a national popular vote to choose the president, that reduces complexity. I'm wary of anything more, though I do like that there are now some experiments here and there with other systems. Edit: I've recently come to the conclusion that the real value of elections is as a national show of force. "1xx,000,000 of us are here and paying attention and expecting the government to respond to our interests and willing to do something about it"