4 ms·

Why use voting machines at all? Just stick to pen and paper.

by ParksNet 4y ago

npc54321 4y ago
npc54321 4y ago
einherjae 4y ago
Misled techno-optimism mostly. A lot easier to secure a pen and paper election, but also a bit slower to count.
- postalrat 4y ago
  Here we have pen and paper and scanners. To vote you fill in the ballot with pen then stick it in the scanner on way out. As long as they aren't stuffing more ballots or modifying existing ones it should be easy to do a recount at any time.
  - dsr_ 4y ago
    Stuffing should be hard: you get checked off (name and address) when you receive your ballot, and again when you deposit your ballot. Vote totals need to match in both those places and the ballot box.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  I think it's not just techno-optimism. Profit motivated media wants faster results to keep people excited on the edge of their seat, eyeballs glued to the advertisements.
- mikepurvis 4y ago
  The best of both worlds is hand-marked paper ballots that are then counted by machine.
  - brendoelfrendo 4y ago
    There's no reason to need the "best of both worlds." People will doubt the validity of the electronic count anyway, you might as well skip that step and go straight to a hand count.
    - einherjae 4y ago
      The more counts the better, let a machine count first to give quick results, but use multiple machines and software solutions, kept fully airgaped. Then count by hand. A tiny horror story from the last Norwegian election was when some results were delayed due to problems with a scanner. The news story about that machine mentioned that the machine was connected to the internet (shudder), and ran Win XP (facepalm). The internet should only be used for reporting preliminary numbers, and the counting machines should not be talking directly to the net at all.
- dsr_ 4y ago
  Massachusetts uses hand-marked printed paper forms that are fed into an optical-scanner, with the paper dropping into a lockbox for auditability. The paper is the vote, the scanner just allows you to count faster. If you're blind or otherwise need assistance marking your form, you can bring along a person of your choosing or you can ask for two officials to help you out. If you need accessibility and online voting, you're hosed: there's a system and it sucks. Overall, there's room for improvement but it's better than all of the electronic-first systems.
  - duxup 4y ago
    Minnesota uses the scanning ballots too. Very handy, ballots are tied to each machine for random validation and etc. I like that system, best of both worlds.
  - elliekelly 4y ago
    For anyone who might need to know: in the US you have an affirmative right under federal law to have someone of your choosing (although IIRC you may not choose your boss/employer) accompany you into the voting booth in order to assist you in casting your ballot. And assistance isn’t limited to people who are blind or have a disability that prevents them from being able to mark a ballot. If you struggle to read or if you struggle to understand how to fill out the ballot you have a right to get assistance.
- soulofmischief 4y ago
  Anything less than an open source machine with a cryptographically secured, auditable trail from my vote to the final tally is 100% untrustworthy. There is no reason for an American citizen today to trust the security of pen and paper elections. There never was, but now we have digital tooling.
mburee 4y ago
There's a small but significant advantage to some partys when using voting machines, just with touch screen being more likely to malfunction in humid/hot weather, which really is only an issue in poor districts lacking AC.
fabian2k 4y ago
They are an entirely unnecessary risk. There are plenty of countries that manage to count elections a lot faster than the US while using only pen and paper. It provides a lot more transparency as observers can actually follow every single step of the entire process and verify everything. A voting machine is a big black box that you have to trust (unless they also have a paper trail, and you actually verify it).
- retrac 4y ago
  > It provides a lot more transparency as observers can actually follow every single step of the entire process and verify everything. Simple folk physics gives everyone an understanding of the security of ballot boxes. There's thousands of ballot boxes, each in a different physically-secured location, with various personnel keeping track of them, many of them citizen volunteers and workers, as well as partisan observers. Everyone intuitively understands the security, as well as security flaws, of this system. All of that is lost with electronic voting. Even with complete confidence/faith in the system, it simply becomes a black box. Press button and the vote total is spit out. Only a few experts understand the system in a way that they could explain how that total was arrived at and why you should have confidence in it. And even fewer would be able to actually verify that the black box does what it says it does and that you should by confident in it. Otherwise it's just a box that spits out a number. And computers make up numbers all the time.
richieb 4y ago
Machines are mostly used to count votes. Ballots are still on paper.
- anecdotal1 4y ago
  Not every state has a paper trail for ballots. It should be required by law, but it's not.
- pavon 4y ago
  That isn't universally true. Many counties in the US have used or still use touchscreen machines with no paper ballot.
elliekelly 4y ago
You must be too young to remember the 2000 election. Butterfly ballots. Hanging chads. The threshold level of “filled” a Scantron circle must be to qualify as “a vote” vs merely an errant mark. When one side is determined to scrutinize a large-scale process until it falls apart the process will inevitably breakdown.
yardie 4y ago
Not sure about your state but mine uses paper scantron with a scanner/lockbox. If there is a dispute/recount they verify the paper record against the digital record. The results at each poll site are ready 30-60 minutes after polls close. Rarely, if the results aren't ready by 9pm its usually because a long line at 7pm at that polling station.
lazyninja987 4y ago
r00fus 4y ago
The HAVA [1] legislation was extremely misguided and IMHO designed to create an industry where none was needed to line even more rich pockets. Ostensibly it was done to support disabled (blind) folks to vote without anyone else seeing their ballot, but has introduced a massive potential for fraud (lack of paper ballots originally) and distrust (can you verify your vote?) in the process. MAGA just took that distrust and weaponized it. [1] https://www.eac.gov/about_the_eac/help_america_vote_act.aspx https://www.eac.gov/about_the_eac/help_america_vote_act.aspx
citilife 4y ago
> Why use voting machines at all? IMO, for the same reason people are concerned about them... France handles elections via paper and pen and has everything counted within 24 hrs. Somehow the U.S. had trouble even doing it in a week last election.
- cwmma 4y ago
  the reason it took a while was mainly absentee ballots
howinteresting 4y ago
It is important to present results as quickly as possible to prevent the sorts of fuckery Trump did. So voting machines with a paper trail and risk-limiting audits (basically randomized audits—the closer the result is the bigger the sample) are ideal
jimbob45 4y ago
There's one very clear answer as to why we still use electronic voting machines: money[0]. States have to fund their own elections and machines are cheap. When you're choosing between a funding shortfall for schools, firehouses, or elections, it's really no surprise that the elections don't come out the winner. [0] https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/election-costs-who-pays-and-with-which-funds.aspx https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/electi...
preinheimer 4y ago
Some possible advantages of voting machines: - They can provide different accessibility assistance than pen and paper, allowing people to vote on their own. Multi-language support should be easy. - They can provide UI improvements over paper. Consider situations where the voter needs to select up to 3 candidates out of a list of 12. Or a long ballot with lots of distinct questions. - Hopefully less lead time for updates to the ballot if someone drops out of the race, is replaced, etc. The past few times I've voted (Canada) it's been pencil on paper, stuck into a machine that confirmed it could read the ballot, then I left. When it's been a longer ballot for municipal election it's actually felt like a bit of a test. We are voting for: city councillor, mayor, regional representatives, multiple school board trustees from one of two different school boards (but not both).
- asdff 4y ago
  OTOH you can get a paper ballot in any language an electronic ballot is served, and the UI is the same "fill in the bubble by the name" only its a virtual bubble you tap to fill. Disability wise it seems worse. You need to have access to some way to get to the polling site, the polling site has to be accessible itself for you, you need to be able to read the screen well and have a good finger to touch the buttons. Meanwhile if you are very disabled, you get a paper ballot mailed to you wherever you live, and your nurse/friend/pastor/whoever can help you fill out the ballot and sign off as having helped you fill it out.
themitigating 4y ago
People got upset that they were still counting at night or the count changed the next day. How would this help?

Why use voting machines at all? Just stick to pen and paper.

npc54321 4y ago

einherjae 4y ago

Misled techno-optimism mostly. A lot easier to secure a pen and paper election, but also a bit slower to count.

postalrat 4y ago
Here we have pen and paper and scanners. To vote you fill in the ballot with pen then stick it in the scanner on way out. As long as they aren't stuffing more ballots or modifying existing ones it should be easy to do a recount at any time.
- dsr_ 4y ago
  Stuffing should be hard: you get checked off (name and address) when you receive your ballot, and again when you deposit your ballot. Vote totals need to match in both those places and the ballot box.
MichaelCollins 4y ago
I think it's not just techno-optimism. Profit motivated media wants faster results to keep people excited on the edge of their seat, eyeballs glued to the advertisements.
mikepurvis 4y ago
The best of both worlds is hand-marked paper ballots that are then counted by machine.
- brendoelfrendo 4y ago
  There's no reason to need the "best of both worlds." People will doubt the validity of the electronic count anyway, you might as well skip that step and go straight to a hand count.
  - einherjae 4y ago
    The more counts the better, let a machine count first to give quick results, but use multiple machines and software solutions, kept fully airgaped. Then count by hand. A tiny horror story from the last Norwegian election was when some results were delayed due to problems with a scanner. The news story about that machine mentioned that the machine was connected to the internet (shudder), and ran Win XP (facepalm). The internet should only be used for reporting preliminary numbers, and the counting machines should not be talking directly to the net at all.
dsr_ 4y ago
Massachusetts uses hand-marked printed paper forms that are fed into an optical-scanner, with the paper dropping into a lockbox for auditability. The paper is the vote, the scanner just allows you to count faster. If you're blind or otherwise need assistance marking your form, you can bring along a person of your choosing or you can ask for two officials to help you out. If you need accessibility and online voting, you're hosed: there's a system and it sucks. Overall, there's room for improvement but it's better than all of the electronic-first systems.
- duxup 4y ago
  Minnesota uses the scanning ballots too. Very handy, ballots are tied to each machine for random validation and etc. I like that system, best of both worlds.
- elliekelly 4y ago
  For anyone who might need to know: in the US you have an affirmative right under federal law to have someone of your choosing (although IIRC you may not choose your boss/employer) accompany you into the voting booth in order to assist you in casting your ballot. And assistance isn’t limited to people who are blind or have a disability that prevents them from being able to mark a ballot. If you struggle to read or if you struggle to understand how to fill out the ballot you have a right to get assistance.
soulofmischief 4y ago
Anything less than an open source machine with a cryptographically secured, auditable trail from my vote to the final tally is 100% untrustworthy. There is no reason for an American citizen today to trust the security of pen and paper elections. There never was, but now we have digital tooling.

mburee 4y ago

There's a small but significant advantage to some partys when using voting machines, just with touch screen being more likely to malfunction in humid/hot weather, which really is only an issue in poor districts lacking AC.

fabian2k 4y ago

They are an entirely unnecessary risk. There are plenty of countries that manage to count elections a lot faster than the US while using only pen and paper. It provides a lot more transparency as observers can actually follow every single step of the entire process and verify everything. A voting machine is a big black box that you have to trust (unless they also have a paper trail, and you actually verify it).

retrac 4y ago
> It provides a lot more transparency as observers can actually follow every single step of the entire process and verify everything. Simple folk physics gives everyone an understanding of the security of ballot boxes. There's thousands of ballot boxes, each in a different physically-secured location, with various personnel keeping track of them, many of them citizen volunteers and workers, as well as partisan observers. Everyone intuitively understands the security, as well as security flaws, of this system. All of that is lost with electronic voting. Even with complete confidence/faith in the system, it simply becomes a black box. Press button and the vote total is spit out. Only a few experts understand the system in a way that they could explain how that total was arrived at and why you should have confidence in it. And even fewer would be able to actually verify that the black box does what it says it does and that you should by confident in it. Otherwise it's just a box that spits out a number. And computers make up numbers all the time.

richieb 4y ago

Machines are mostly used to count votes. Ballots are still on paper.

anecdotal1 4y ago
Not every state has a paper trail for ballots. It should be required by law, but it's not.
pavon 4y ago
That isn't universally true. Many counties in the US have used or still use touchscreen machines with no paper ballot.

elliekelly 4y ago

You must be too young to remember the 2000 election. Butterfly ballots. Hanging chads. The threshold level of “filled” a Scantron circle must be to qualify as “a vote” vs merely an errant mark. When one side is determined to scrutinize a large-scale process until it falls apart the process will inevitably breakdown.

yardie 4y ago

Not sure about your state but mine uses paper scantron with a scanner/lockbox. If there is a dispute/recount they verify the paper record against the digital record. The results at each poll site are ready 30-60 minutes after polls close. Rarely, if the results aren't ready by 9pm its usually because a long line at 7pm at that polling station.

lazyninja987 4y ago

r00fus 4y ago

The HAVA [1] legislation was extremely misguided and IMHO designed to create an industry where none was needed to line even more rich pockets. Ostensibly it was done to support disabled (blind) folks to vote without anyone else seeing their ballot, but has introduced a massive potential for fraud (lack of paper ballots originally) and distrust (can you verify your vote?) in the process. MAGA just took that distrust and weaponized it. [1] https://www.eac.gov/about_the_eac/help_america_vote_act.aspx https://www.eac.gov/about_the_eac/help_america_vote_act.aspx

citilife 4y ago

> Why use voting machines at all? IMO, for the same reason people are concerned about them... France handles elections via paper and pen and has everything counted within 24 hrs. Somehow the U.S. had trouble even doing it in a week last election.

cwmma 4y ago
the reason it took a while was mainly absentee ballots

howinteresting 4y ago

It is important to present results as quickly as possible to prevent the sorts of fuckery Trump did. So voting machines with a paper trail and risk-limiting audits (basically randomized audits—the closer the result is the bigger the sample) are ideal

jimbob45 4y ago

There's one very clear answer as to why we still use electronic voting machines: money[0]. States have to fund their own elections and machines are cheap. When you're choosing between a funding shortfall for schools, firehouses, or elections, it's really no surprise that the elections don't come out the winner. [0] https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/election-costs-who-pays-and-with-which-funds.aspx https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/electi...

preinheimer 4y ago

Some possible advantages of voting machines: - They can provide different accessibility assistance than pen and paper, allowing people to vote on their own. Multi-language support should be easy. - They can provide UI improvements over paper. Consider situations where the voter needs to select up to 3 candidates out of a list of 12. Or a long ballot with lots of distinct questions. - Hopefully less lead time for updates to the ballot if someone drops out of the race, is replaced, etc. The past few times I've voted (Canada) it's been pencil on paper, stuck into a machine that confirmed it could read the ballot, then I left. When it's been a longer ballot for municipal election it's actually felt like a bit of a test. We are voting for: city councillor, mayor, regional representatives, multiple school board trustees from one of two different school boards (but not both).

asdff 4y ago
OTOH you can get a paper ballot in any language an electronic ballot is served, and the UI is the same "fill in the bubble by the name" only its a virtual bubble you tap to fill. Disability wise it seems worse. You need to have access to some way to get to the polling site, the polling site has to be accessible itself for you, you need to be able to read the screen well and have a good finger to touch the buttons. Meanwhile if you are very disabled, you get a paper ballot mailed to you wherever you live, and your nurse/friend/pastor/whoever can help you fill out the ballot and sign off as having helped you fill it out.

themitigating 4y ago

People got upset that they were still counting at night or the count changed the next day. How would this help?