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In the UK we go to a voting place. We get given a piece of paper. We walk to a little booth, we mark an X next to who we want, we put that piece of paper in a b

In the UK we go to a voting place. We get given a piece of paper. We walk to a little booth, we mark an X next to who we want, we put that piece of paper in a black box. Your name is crossed off on a piece of paper to say you've voted. That black box gathers a few hundred votes over the course of the day. There are multiple people in the room with that black box throughout the day. At the end of the day the number of people who have voted and the number of pieces of paper that have been used, are both counted to ensure they are the same. The box is then sealed (with tamper tape) and transported to a central hall, usually in a car, but sometimes by ferry or helicopter depending on weather and location. Obviously this takes longer for rural areas than for urban areas. When it arrives, it is unsealed in front of many witnesses, and the ballots emptied. They are counted (how many pieces of paper), and this number matches the above paperwork. The ballots are then put into a pile in the middle of the room where all the candidates and their teams can see, and are counted by a team of however many (say a team of 20 for a district of 60k votes - tend to be local council workers being paid overtime). From the counts I've seen, 300-600 an hour is a reasonable speed. Those are bundled into bundles of 100 and put into piles on display. Any ambiguous marking that the person counting or the people watching think is amigious is set aside (the famous "WANK/WANK/NOT WANK" case [0]), and the candidates and their agents get to see and agree on the paper. Urban counts of districts with c. 70,000 voters tend to get the first ballot boxes about 10-15 minutes after polling closes and start counting. Some have large numbers counting in an aim to get the count done first (in an hour or so), others take longer, but the majority of districts are verified, counted, and recounted after about 6 hours. Some places have to wait for the aforementioned ferry etc so don't report to maybe 12 hours after. I don't understand why you need machines to vote or machines to count. Breaking the system above by a few votes is probably possible with a small team of conspirators, but breaking it beyond that doesn't scale. [0] https://www.joe.co.uk/politics/voter-writes-wnk-all-over-ballot-paper-puts-not-wnk-next-to-greens-deemed-acceptable-as-a-vote-233070 https://www.joe.co.uk/politics/voter-writes-wnk-all-over-bal...

puffoflogic 4y ago
> Your name is crossed off on a piece of paper to say you've voted. In the US, this is racist. > where all the candidates and their teams can see In the US, this is insurrectionist.
eru 4y ago
My thoughts exactly. When I was still living in Germany, the system worked pretty much the same. (No clue whether they changed anything since then?) However this sane and simple system would probably not work in eg Australia? Their voting system is too complicated.
- fabian2k 4y ago
  Germany hasn't changed anything. And there are also seriously complex ballots on the local level, so that isn't a limit.
SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
Yes, exactly. Canada still does manually counting federally. It works. Ironically, it doesn't stop the complaint about bad voting machines, but that's because people get their news from the states. There are no voting machines, no way for software to fudge the numbers just enough for someone's decided candidate to win. Is it more of an effort than trusting a machine is working correctly? Yes, absolutely, but this is the literal fundamental foundation of democracy we are talking about - let's put in a bit of effort.
- capableweb 4y ago
  On the other hand, Brazil have been electronic voting exclusively since ~2000 with no evidence of fraud/mistakes since then, AFAIK. If it seems to be possible in a country like Brazil, why not in Canada/UK/USA?
  - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
    Fair enough, but is Brazil a target that would be valuable to destabilize by electronic tampering in its elections?
  - BlueTemplar 4y ago
    AFAYK seems to be a big downside, AFAIK the Brazilian elections were quite "hot" ? P.S.: Sure enough, here's an example of a "contester" : https://www.newsweek.com/mike-lindell-hints-brazil-election-rigged-cyber-guys-watched-race-1756803 https://www.newsweek.com/mike-lindell-hints-brazil-election-... AFAIK not a Brazilian citizen, but this gives an example of democracy-sapping claims that are avoided with manual vote counts.
  - xorcist 4y ago
    The important thing with elections isn't necessarily some abstract idea that the process itself is perfectly fair, but that people accept that it is. The process must be well known in advanced and every step auditable by all sides in real time. It is important that the losing party can not blame the process, in order for the result to be accepted by both sides. Brazil is as we speak a very clear example on the risks of not heeding this advice.
bmacho 4y ago
> I don't understand why you need machines to vote or machines to count. Breaking the system above by a few votes is probably possible with a small team of conspirators, but breaking it beyond that doesn't scale. Exactly. Replacing a system that is guaranteed to work with an another system that is guaranteed to not work is foolish.
- capableweb 4y ago
  Why is one guaranteed to work VS the other one not? Seems a bit simplistic. There are electronic voting systems that have been running without issues for decades, why couldn't the US accomplish the same?
mrweasel 4y ago
> I don't understand why you need machines to vote or machines to count. The voting machines isn't for you, it for the politicians. Denmark have system pretty much identical to what you described. We normal have a result for parliamentary voting within five to six hours of the polling station closing. After three or four hours we normally have enough votes counted to call the election, on a party basis. The issue is the individual candidates, the well known politicians are interviewed a few hours into an election night, when their seats are secured. The lesser known politicians may have to wait for a day, or two, in order to have their seat confirmed. So they get no airtime, no interviews, because the media don't care when the personal votes are finally counted and confirmed. The voting machine are for those low ranking politicians ego. As for the US, who don't have a parliament and only two, or three, candidates in each election... I have no idea. Because they f-ed up their election system and closed to many polling stations, resulting in ballot counting taking to long?
- iso1631 4y ago
  I'm not sure how closing the stations makes any difference. The number of votes to count id directly proportional to the population, and if a democracy can't afford 5 cents per vote once every few years then maybe it shouldn't be a democracy

puffoflogic 4y ago

> Your name is crossed off on a piece of paper to say you've voted. In the US, this is racist. > where all the candidates and their teams can see In the US, this is insurrectionist.

eru 4y ago

My thoughts exactly. When I was still living in Germany, the system worked pretty much the same. (No clue whether they changed anything since then?) However this sane and simple system would probably not work in eg Australia? Their voting system is too complicated.

fabian2k 4y ago
Germany hasn't changed anything. And there are also seriously complex ballots on the local level, so that isn't a limit.

SketchySeaBeast 4y ago

Yes, exactly. Canada still does manually counting federally. It works. Ironically, it doesn't stop the complaint about bad voting machines, but that's because people get their news from the states. There are no voting machines, no way for software to fudge the numbers just enough for someone's decided candidate to win. Is it more of an effort than trusting a machine is working correctly? Yes, absolutely, but this is the literal fundamental foundation of democracy we are talking about - let's put in a bit of effort.

capableweb 4y ago
On the other hand, Brazil have been electronic voting exclusively since ~2000 with no evidence of fraud/mistakes since then, AFAIK. If it seems to be possible in a country like Brazil, why not in Canada/UK/USA?
- SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
  Fair enough, but is Brazil a target that would be valuable to destabilize by electronic tampering in its elections?
- BlueTemplar 4y ago
  AFAYK seems to be a big downside, AFAIK the Brazilian elections were quite "hot" ? P.S.: Sure enough, here's an example of a "contester" : https://www.newsweek.com/mike-lindell-hints-brazil-election-rigged-cyber-guys-watched-race-1756803 https://www.newsweek.com/mike-lindell-hints-brazil-election-... AFAIK not a Brazilian citizen, but this gives an example of democracy-sapping claims that are avoided with manual vote counts.
- xorcist 4y ago
  The important thing with elections isn't necessarily some abstract idea that the process itself is perfectly fair, but that people accept that it is. The process must be well known in advanced and every step auditable by all sides in real time. It is important that the losing party can not blame the process, in order for the result to be accepted by both sides. Brazil is as we speak a very clear example on the risks of not heeding this advice.

bmacho 4y ago

> I don't understand why you need machines to vote or machines to count. Breaking the system above by a few votes is probably possible with a small team of conspirators, but breaking it beyond that doesn't scale. Exactly. Replacing a system that is guaranteed to work with an another system that is guaranteed to not work is foolish.

capableweb 4y ago
Why is one guaranteed to work VS the other one not? Seems a bit simplistic. There are electronic voting systems that have been running without issues for decades, why couldn't the US accomplish the same?

mrweasel 4y ago

> I don't understand why you need machines to vote or machines to count. The voting machines isn't for you, it for the politicians. Denmark have system pretty much identical to what you described. We normal have a result for parliamentary voting within five to six hours of the polling station closing. After three or four hours we normally have enough votes counted to call the election, on a party basis. The issue is the individual candidates, the well known politicians are interviewed a few hours into an election night, when their seats are secured. The lesser known politicians may have to wait for a day, or two, in order to have their seat confirmed. So they get no airtime, no interviews, because the media don't care when the personal votes are finally counted and confirmed. The voting machine are for those low ranking politicians ego. As for the US, who don't have a parliament and only two, or three, candidates in each election... I have no idea. Because they f-ed up their election system and closed to many polling stations, resulting in ballot counting taking to long?

iso1631 4y ago
I'm not sure how closing the stations makes any difference. The number of votes to count id directly proportional to the population, and if a democracy can't afford 5 cents per vote once every few years then maybe it shouldn't be a democracy