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Australia has a simple and trustable election system. Paper ballots, reinforced by the fact that more or less every citizen can get a job working on election da
by dannyw 5y ago
Australia has a simple and trustable election system. Paper ballots, reinforced by the fact that more or less every citizen can get a job working on election day. Your duties include looking up people based on what they say their name an address is (no ID required; although many electors hand me their ID anyway) on a big electoral roll book, cross out their name, and hand them a ballot with your initials.
They go to one of the booths and mark their selection, and drop it off into a zip-tied big ballot box (that is visible to the general public, and of course election staff at all times).
After the polls close, the polling official cuts the zip-ties on the ballot boxes, everyone working sorts ballots into piles and count them, along with scrutineers from political parties who can watch. An officer-in-charge records and publishes the results continuously, and everything is saved and shipped for OCR-based recounting to verify the numbers. The process is federally operated and the same processes are followed everywhere.
Results are almost always revealed on election night.
The electoral roll books are processed centrally after every election, so someone who votes twice would be quickly caught. Someone who votes under fake names and addresses would most likely cross-over with someone else, hence an investigation would still happen. (We also have compulsory voting, which is another subject for debate, but it does mean "vote under multiple names" is mitigated without the need for ID laws).
The job pays reasonably well (A$457 for the day), more or less everyone who applies gets hired (I believe there is a bias towards maximizing first-time applicants), and it's hard to think about election fraud when every citizen can be part of the election process itself, and it's hard to conceive of how fraud can happen.
- smt88 5y agoThe US systems are often similar to this, including the several steps of checks. None of that matters in the face of conspiracy theorists who live in non-reality.
- sidlls 5y agoNot really. Most of the US is run on a very opaque system of electronic machines and poorly thought out processes ostensibly to make it more secure.
- smt88 5y agoSource? I haven't heard of a large part of the US that doesn't have a auditable paper ballots as a backup for the electronic system.
- syshum 5y agoauditable paper ballots are only good if there is an actually full audit, that almost never happens, and today if you advocate for one you are a "far alt-right wing conspiracy theorist" That is far far far different that what is being talked about fro AU and Canada, where there is no electronic middle man that is trusted first...
- smt88 5y agoThere were full audits in the contested parts of the US this year. Where did they refuse to do one?
- syshum 5y agoSource... the only full audit is the one still in progress in AZ. Some (very very few) did "Risk Limiting" Audits, that audit a random sampling (some times as low as 2%) of ballots. I am unaware of any full, hand recount not using any electronic machines audits that took place anywhere in the US outside of AZ.
- smt88 5y agoGeorgia did two full recounts that didn't use machines[1]. It was observed by Republicans, Democrats, and independents, and it was organized by Republican state officials. The audit in progress in AZ is a partisan sham that has been challenged as unnecessary and politically motivated by local Republican researchers[2] and officials. 1. https://sos.ga.gov/index.php/elections/historic_first_statewide_audit_of_paper_ballots_upholds_result_of_presidential_race https://sos.ga.gov/index.php/elections/historic_first_statew... 2. https://tucson.com/news/local/political-notebook-tucson-republican-challenges-recount-in-maricopa-county-to-a-count-off/article_627efb2c-c968-11eb-92d8-43d5b34405be.html https://tucson.com/news/local/political-notebook-tucson-repu...
- btgeekboy 5y agoYes - it’s been a few years since I lived there, but this was effectively the process we used in my California county. I’ve come to admire the simplicity of Scantron-esque ballots vs. many of these overengineered touch screen systems.
- jdavis703 5y agoAt least in my California we do have touchscreens for people with disabilities who can’t read (they need an audio ballot) or fill out a ballot with a pen. But when the one time I worked on the polls, no one even used the touchscreen.
- URSpider94 5y agoIn most places in CA, the touchscreens spit out a marked paper ballot that is then counted and stored with the rest.
- trident5000 5y agoI appreciate the conspiracy theorists. Id rather have crazy people shout fire and things be looked at than have the election system taken for granted perpetually.
- smt88 5y agoI would agree with you if they were good-faith actors motivated by caution. Unfortunately in this case, they won't accept anything that invalidates their baseless belief that the election went the other way.
- milliondollar 5y agoAgree. I've voted in 4 states (NC, NY, VT, NH) and it has all been like above. And I've also served as election volunteer, checking absentee ballots against the voting rolls.
- xvedejas 5y agoI'm trying to understand the operation of the rollbook. Is the voter required to go to one specific place to vote? This seems at least moderately inconvenient.
- emmelaich 5y agoNo, not necessary to go to a specific place. If someone found voting at two places, that's dealt with afterwards.
- dannyw 5y agoYou can vote in any polling place in your state. If you are out of state, you need to go to dedicated interstate polling centers (or vote by mail). The roll book is very, very big, and includes every registered elector in the state. It's alphabetically sorted by last name. Every election official gets their own roll book that they mark names off. The way you are supposed to do it is ask: 1. "What is your name?" (flip through the book and find the right page with the last name, usually just takes a few seconds) 2. "Where do you live?" / "What is your address?" (find the entry with the right name and correct address; if you can't find it, ask them to go to the 'help desk' where a provisional ballot is provided). 3. "Have you voted before in this election?" (they should say no, and then you initial a ballot and hand it to them). These books are centrally checked after the election, so people who vote twice can be investigated.
- HighPlainsDrftr 5y agoI wonder and muse about this. Could we possibly use PKI electronically to do this? The gov sends you a private key as your a citizen. We anonymize it somehow. You sign your ballot. I don't have a clue how this would work, but it seems like it could be feasible. Obviously, voting must remain anonymous. Could it happen? I'm guessing this would be similar to presenting your SSN. Its troublesome. But regardless, I'd think that we could prove the voting record. Edit: the more I think about this, I don't think PKI could work. Voter identification would always be available in some way shape or form. I'm not sure this can be solved with tech. Maybe we should just have paper ballets.
- sokoloff 5y ago> The process is federally operated and the same processes are followed everywhere. The US has state-run elections, as provided in the Constitution (Article II, section 1). Each state could individually opt-in to use a federally run system (or portion thereof), but the feds can’t mandate it, absent a Constitutional amendment. The USA is really a republic of states in many regards and the states have [or at least started with and in theory still have] a lot more power than in many other countries where the central government is stronger.
- syshum 5y ago16th and 17th amendment neutered alot of power the States had.. With the 16th the federal government was able to extort/bribe the states with money... With the 17th the states lost their voice in Congress... The 2 combined has really hurt the idea of State Sovereignty. Personally I would like to see that power restored back to the States
- sokoloff 5y agoI agree with your overall preference. I’m not as sure that the 17th stripped power from the states, so much as defined how that power was elected. (It’s clear that it could make some difference but not clear that it shifts overall power federally.)
- syshum 5y agoBecause before the 17th the Senate was the State Governments representative in the congress. Senators represented the desire of the State Legislatures not the People of the states. This is why all spending bills have to start in the House, because the House is the peoples voice in congress, and if they want to spend the peoples money it has to start with the peoples voice, not the States. The US was to be a republic with only a single part of the new federal government democratically elected, there was / is a reason for that. Separation of Powers and distributed power being the key concepts. By changing congress to have both the house and the senate become democratically elected the State Governments lost their voice in the federal government.
- mcspiff 5y agoThis more-or-less describes the Canadian system as well. We get “voter cards” mailed to us that make it easier to look up the person on the voter rolls, that’s the only notable difference. And they aren’t required, similar to what you say.