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I think this is bad but.. given the money required it seems like it with always be one or the other that owns these? Maybe governments should own the machines

I think this is bad but.. given the money required it seems like it with always be one or the other that owns these? Maybe governments should own the machines (people would still complain) disclosure, i am biased and think everyone should use paper.

School-Cotton 1y ago
You're right, there is absolutely no reason to use voting machines. Elections in other countries work perfectly fine with paper ballots.
- bell-cot 1y ago
  IIR, the US's huge push to (computerized) machine voting was after the 2000 election, when Florida's Democrats demonstrated just how badly they could screw up with paper ballots: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidential_election_recount_in_Florida#Palm_Beach_County's_butterfly_ballot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidentia... And of course, the magic cure for "we f*cked up at the simple job of doing X" is always "let's try to do something far more complex than X instead".
- ekr____ 1y ago
  Other countries tend to have only one or two contests, which makes counting easier. In the US, it's very common to have 10s of contests on a ballot, and it's much more efficient to count via optical scan. You can still have high confidence in this case if you do a risk-limiting audit.
  - School-Cotton 1y ago
    > In the US, it's very common to have 10s of contests on a ballot, and it's much more efficient to count via optical scan. Then hire 100x the number of poll workers as are needed in other countries. The cost is still trivial relative to the importance.
    - johnnyanmac 1y ago
      Ha, you want America to focus on quality over cheaping out the working class.
tonfreed 1y ago
We use paper in Australia and generally have a result by the next day (2010 being an exception due to hung parliament). We also have a very strict chain of ownership and auditible vote counts ledgers, if they're really looking for anti-fraud measures they could come and observe our AEC
platevoltage 1y ago
Don't the vast majority of states use paper ballots? I don't know of any regular citizen that wouldn't agree.
actionfromafar 1y ago
Paper is great, paper is scalable. It's also easy to understand.
beloch 1y ago
In the U.S. each state runs their own part of the federal election. In Canada, federal elections are run by Elections Canada, which is a non-partisan independent agency. It's responsible for both defining ridings (to avoid gerrymandering) and running the elections themselves. I'm probably biased as a Canadian, but I have a lot more confidence in our approach than the U.S.'s. After this, even more so.

School-Cotton 1y ago

You're right, there is absolutely no reason to use voting machines. Elections in other countries work perfectly fine with paper ballots.

bell-cot 1y ago
IIR, the US's huge push to (computerized) machine voting was after the 2000 election, when Florida's Democrats demonstrated just how badly they could screw up with paper ballots: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidential_election_recount_in_Florida#Palm_Beach_County's_butterfly_ballot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidentia... And of course, the magic cure for "we f*cked up at the simple job of doing X" is always "let's try to do something far more complex than X instead".
ekr____ 1y ago
Other countries tend to have only one or two contests, which makes counting easier. In the US, it's very common to have 10s of contests on a ballot, and it's much more efficient to count via optical scan. You can still have high confidence in this case if you do a risk-limiting audit.
- School-Cotton 1y ago
  > In the US, it's very common to have 10s of contests on a ballot, and it's much more efficient to count via optical scan. Then hire 100x the number of poll workers as are needed in other countries. The cost is still trivial relative to the importance.
  - johnnyanmac 1y ago
    Ha, you want America to focus on quality over cheaping out the working class.

tonfreed 1y ago

We use paper in Australia and generally have a result by the next day (2010 being an exception due to hung parliament). We also have a very strict chain of ownership and auditible vote counts ledgers, if they're really looking for anti-fraud measures they could come and observe our AEC

platevoltage 1y ago

Don't the vast majority of states use paper ballots? I don't know of any regular citizen that wouldn't agree.

actionfromafar 1y ago

Paper is great, paper is scalable. It's also easy to understand.

beloch 1y ago

In the U.S. each state runs their own part of the federal election. In Canada, federal elections are run by Elections Canada, which is a non-partisan independent agency. It's responsible for both defining ridings (to avoid gerrymandering) and running the elections themselves. I'm probably biased as a Canadian, but I have a lot more confidence in our approach than the U.S.'s. After this, even more so.