12 ms·

The shenanigans you seem to tolerate during elections are just incomprehensible to us foreigners. The number of horror stories I've heard in the last couple of

• veridies 14y ago
  For the most part, things aren't as bad as they seem. It's a huge country and any oddities gain a great deal of traction. Most votes go simply and smoothly. That being said, I'm taking a two hour drive later today to vote because my vote-by-mail ballot never arrived, so...
• MartinCron 14y ago
  It's possible that I'm getting a bleaker picture than reality, I suppose, since I only read about the broken stuff and not the instances where everything just works. You only hear about the ballots that crash, not the millions that land safely every election.
• pnathan 14y ago
  (1) We have > 300 M people. That's a huge population. (2) We are OK publicizing it. (3) Probability would indicate that we'll have a certain error, and it'll be shouted about. --- But it's very strange that it was "miscalibrated" to not select one particular candidate, no? :)
  • 3JPLW 14y ago
    Selection bias, perhaps. Sure, there will be a small amount of miscalibrated machines. And a smaller amount will happen to be miscalibrated to select the wrong candidate. But you'll only ever hear about those latter cases. The others will be caught and corrected without internet vitriol.
  • mindstab 14y ago
    > We have > 300 M people. That's a huge population Um, unless you're talking to India which manages to pull off votes with 1.2 Billion People. You are like 25% their population.
    • danielweber 14y ago
      If you vote with paper, you don't worry at all if it's counted right. Note that this doesn't mean it's counted right: it just means you have no way to worry about it. Maybe election officials are debating whether that line for Joe is a mistake or not. Now the problems are seen immediately instead of unseen, which was one of the driving forces for people who didn't want to ever go through the hanging chad issue again. I'm certainly not saying computer voting is better than paper voting -- they each have their trade-offs. (I'd prefer paper ballots that voters can "self-scan" by a machine that is very conservative in what it accepts, but that's a whole separate discussion.)
      • trhtrsh 14y ago
        An electronic voting machine may present an obvious error in the UI and ALSO may present a hidden error in pubishing the vote. So it's worse.
    • param 14y ago
      Dear Sir, As an Indian I can testify that we actually have far more election abuse - people being blocked from entering a voting booth, vote boxes(still vote on paper) being stolen, voting booths set on fire... Of course, again, there is media acting as a watchdog, and a hope that the manipulation is statistically insignificant.
      • masklinn 14y ago
        > vote boxes(still vote on paper) FWIW, most of the world votes on paper, and if history's anything to go by paper ballot is way more reliable than electronic, at least when it comes to auditability. I'm sure it's possible to design a secure and tamper-proof electronic voting system[0] with a great, useable interface... but nobody seems interested in doing that. [0] system, not machine, because you most likely want the machine recording votes and the machine tallying them to be fully separate.
  • citricsquid 14y ago
    > But it's very strange that it was "miscalibrated" to not select one particular candidate, no? :) The internet loves Obama. There are many stories of people that support Obama cheating the system (right now there's a popular story of someone admitting on Facebook to voting for Obama 4 times...) and that isn't on the front page of HN, when that is absolutely confirmed to be a misuse of the system. Everything that is a disadvantage for Obama is naturally going to get more attention, because most of the internet age that use sites like reddit and HN are the sort that want progress. I'll bet there are machines that have this problem (assuming this is not an isolated incident and his a software/hardware issue) that vote for Obama when Romney is clicked, but that won't be big news in this circle of news because who cares about Romney here? Edit: here you go, same problem that affects Romney votes on another machine http://www.cbs42.com/content/localnews/story/Voting-machines-switch-Romney-votes-to-Obama/m9dR8WDjbUKX8OFu4meIFQ.cspx http://www.cbs42.com/content/localnews/story/Voting-machines...
    • marshallp 14y ago
      The republicans are the party of liars. Who is more likely to actually commit these crimes? Republicans. Even the 4 votes thing you came up with is probably republicans spreading lies.
      • baltimore 14y ago
        Seriously? Why are you even here (HN)? This place does not suffer trolls lightly.
        • mkr-hn 14y ago
          HN loves trolls as long as they aren't lazy about it.
        • marshallp 14y ago
          What? Are you denying Romnesia, or the lies that led to the Iraq war. Or Nixon's party. Or that the military-industrial xomplex and big oil is allied with republicans. Or Peter Norvig's analysis of who you should vote for http://norvig.com/election-faq-2012.html http://norvig.com/election-faq-2012.html It's easy to call "troll" and try to sneakily shout out the other person. You should try some self-reflection if you're a republican. If you've got enough inquisitiveness to be on HN, apply that to deciphering what the republican party actually stands for.
  • tlrobinson 14y ago
    Note the video didn't show him trying to select other candidates.
    • eloquence 14y ago
      This. There have been similar reports of those trying to select Obama.
      • deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
  • skrause 14y ago
    I never understand the population argument. Counting votes is perfectly scalable, if one in a thousand people volunteers to count votes it doesn't matter if your population is 1000 or one billion. In Germany voting machines have been banned completely with good reasons, because they're unsafe and easy to to hack. And still we can pull off a purely paper-based votes with 82 million people completely without any lines in front of the voting booths and results within two hours after the election.
    • anonymouz 14y ago
      > Counting votes is perfectly scalable, if one in a thousand people volunteers to count votes it doesn't matter if your population is 1000 or one billion. Unless you're trying to bribe the counters/interfere with the counting ;).
    • jusben1369 14y ago
      You are correct good Sir. Your error is to assume the US is a single country the way Germany is a single country. The US has some characteristics that best resemble Europe and some characteristics that resemble a single country. You'll get into trouble every time you try and put it into one bucket or the other.
      • skrause 14y ago
        Note that Germany is a federal republic with multiple states just like the USA, where each state has different voting laws. It just happened that our constitutional court declared that all current voting machines are inherently unsafe. This judgement applies to all states of the republic.
    • Riesling 14y ago
      I just looked it up on wikipedia and they are not banned completely. Still, effectively they are, since the court said that > "verification of the result must be possible by the citizen reliably and without any specialist knowledge of the subject."
  • grecy 14y ago
    > (1) We have > 300 M people. That's a huge population. It's hilarious when Americans use that as an excuse for things being sub-par in their country. I see it all the time for health care, roads, schools etc. Yes, your country has lots of people in it, but it also takes in an enormous amount of tax, and has enormous government agencies to organize this kind of thing. Everything should scale up appropriately, but you guys have no figured that out yet.
    • danielrhodes 14y ago
      You are right. Countries scale up linearly just like websites do. How stupid of us to think otherwise.
      • grecy 14y ago
        I did not use the word linear. Obviously scaling is hard, but I would expect that's one of the things a well functioning, well funded government should take care of, much like how Facebook and Google manage to scale well.
        • wpietri 14y ago
          Your mistake is in thinking that Americans want a well-functioning, well-funded government. Some do, but a substantial swathe of America is currently, for one reason or another, opposed to that.
          • grecy 14y ago
            Right. So it has nothing to do with the size of the population, and everything to do with people not wanting to pay tax. So to summarize, it's hilarious when Americans use the large population excuse for having sub-par services.
      • deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
      • mrb 14y ago
  • matthewowen 14y ago
    300m people is a complete red herring. That also means you have many more people available to process ballots / provide infrastructure.
    • danielweber 14y ago
      If you use "number of issues that come up" as a measure of how bad things are, size is absolutely an issue. One-in-a-million errors will occur 300 times if everyone votes.
• jarek 14y ago
  I had a similar reaction. The regulations on what is required to vote differ between states?! Cities run polling stations?! David Frum weighing in: http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/05/opinion/frum-election-chaos/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/05/opinion/frum-election-chaos/in...
  • moultano 14y ago
    The US is schizophrenic about whether it wants to be one country or not.
    • runjake 14y ago
      s/country/republic/ Opinions on whether something should be handled at state vs federal seems to ebb and flow in great proportions in the US.
  • sp332 14y ago
    Did you miss the States part of "United States of America"? Ever since Madison's brilliant compromise at the founding of our current government http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut_Compromise http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut_Compromise the USA has tried to be mindful of the sovereignty of the states. (America's previous government, under the Articles of Confederation, was a loose agreement among the states http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State%27s_rights#Controversy_to_1865 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State%27s_rights#Controversy_to...) The balance got out of hand in the mid-1800's and a civil war broke out over the issues of states' rights vs. the federal government. Generally, states have the freedom to run elections in any way they want without interference from the federal government. In fact there was a case in my home state of New Hampshire a few years ago, where a state worker was investigated for not using funds that had been made available by the federal government for each state to use for elections. The state worker's defense was that the money had strings attached; basically there were some restrictions on how the federal money could be used during the election. The investigation was dropped immediately, in favor of the worker. Basically my state would rather spend millions of extra dollars to run the elections than allow the federal government to put restrictions on the way they run elections.
• ars 14y ago
  Actually it's quite the opposite: People get so worked up about these things because they don't tolerate it. If you never hear about these things in your own country that means that apparently no one there cares.
  • jarek 14y ago
    > If you never hear about these things in your own country that means that apparently no one there cares. Or that they don't happen...
    • orenmazor 14y ago
      what is this fantastic place?
      • Emouri 14y ago
        Denmark? I've never heard of these sort of things happening around here.
    • ars 14y ago
      > Or that they don't happen... Yah, somehow I doubt that, unless you managed to hire god to run your elections. Humans make mistakes, and machines and systems that humans build mess up. If you never hear about problems that's quite worrying - that means no one is even checking.
      • sebbi 14y ago
        Well ... I live in a country without voting machines and we still manage to count all votes on the same day. There is no need for faulty machines, is there?
      • michaelhoffman 14y ago
        Other countries rely less on machines where this sort of thing is even possible. The fact that human-built systems are likely to contain errors is an argument for making these system as simple as possible. The fact that we use touchscreen voting machines in the U.S., with all the hidden errors (honest or malicious) they can introduce into the canvass, is insane.
• eumenides1 14y ago
  I don't understand why isn't there a national council responsible for maintaining consistent and well run elections. To me it would seem like an easy win to push for it and push it through. "We need to preserve our democracy!" "Any one who doesn't vote for this bill, is unamerican!" "We cannot let our ability to vote be assaulted!" etc.
  • MartinCron 14y ago
    Our government is structured in such a way that elections are run at the local level, which can be seen as a strength. Imagine how dangerous it could be if one company manufactured every single voting machine used in every single polling place.
    • morsch 14y ago
      How many companies does it take to cover 90% of the electronic vote? Five companies are more difficult, but hardly impossible to manipulate. One company may be easier to audit, on the other hand.
      • MartinCron 14y ago
        In some ways, one company would be more difficult to audit than multiple companies, as the auditor wouldn't have any frame of reference. If we are looking at a future with pervasive electronic voting machines from multiple manufacturers, I would insist on having multiple different kinds of machines in each polling place. That way, any meaningful differences between machines would stand out.
  • toufka 14y ago
    There's an interesting line of thought that a fragmented and diverse set of technologies and policies is more robust than a consolidated 'council'. You might be able to mess up any given district - but if you corrupt the council then you straight up win. This makes a bit less sense when you look at how it ends up that a very few districts end up deciding the race - but I think the idea itself is sound. Those battlegrounds will shift, likely more rapidly than endemic corruption can take hold.
• simonsarris 14y ago
  Well to inject a bit of optimism here let me tell how of how it "just works" in the second largest city in New Hampshire. There are several "wards" in the city, and each contains a school that is the voting location. Outside of each location will be people holding signs of all candidates, but all they said this morning are things like "Happy voting" and "Thank you for voting." Inside the location there will be about 8 lines with last name letters. A-D and E-H, I-M, etc. If your last name was Dorette you would get into the A-D line. This is one bottleneck, but it resolves very quickly. You say your name, they find your name and cross it off, and you are handed a paper ballot. With the paper ballot you then wait in a second line until a booth (containing nothing but a marker pen and writing surface) is free. There are about 16 of these booths, with privacy screens behind them. If all the booths are filled you will have to wait, BUT if you do not mind people being able to possibly see your vote you are welcome to go to a temporary booth, that is just a series of lunch tables with cardboard dividers. Less privacy, far more seats. Maybe 30-40 people can fill out ballots at once at the ward I was in. You fill out your ballot with a black marker and bring it to the end of the room where there is a single machine. This machine does nothing but take your ballot and scan it, so the line here processes near instantly. The ballots are kept to be recounted by hand if need be, and most importantly, the machine portion of voting is not a bottleneck. It went very smoothly today.
  • morsch 14y ago
    Thanks for sharing what I'm sure is a fairly normal experience. It sounds very similar to the last time I voted (also in a school building), except I never experienced a line longer than, say, 2 persons -- I guess we have more, smaller locations/voter --, and of course there was no computer at the end, you just put your ballot in the box. And there were no people picketing near the location, and nobody thanked me for voting. Well, that's not true, the people inside said thanks (and so did I). Representatives of all parties are present when the votes are counted (and recounted). We get the results in the evening, 2 or 3 hours after the elections close. It's not entirely comparable since our ballot is quite simple, two pages with large letters, it takes about a minutes to fill out with two crosses in the right place. From what I understand you often vote on loads of things at the same time and it takes a while to fill out correctly.
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• iterationx 14y ago
  you are correct it is ridiculous http://www.youtube.com/mhfm1?v=OynCgwmD-HM http://www.youtube.com/mhfm1?v=OynCgwmD-HM
• philwelch 14y ago
  In the state of Washington (not to be confused with the city of Washington; our largest city is Seattle), everyone gets the chance to vote in the privacy of their own home even weeks before the election and mail in their ballot, or drop it in a drop box. There is an outer envelope one signs and an inner privacy envelope which is left unopened until the count starts. It's possible that there are hidden shenanigans, but if there are observers for the vote-counting process I can't imagine any problems. I have no idea why other states don't do this.
• api 14y ago
  Americans tend to have this unbelievably naive idea that there's no high-level organized or institutional crime in their country.
  • dignan 14y ago
    How many Americans do you know?
    • api 14y ago
      Lots. I am one. What I've found is that it roughly correlates with education, and not in the inverse sense. More educated and accomplished Americans usually scoff at any and all hint of real not-an-isolated-incident systemic corruption as "conspiracy theory," grouping it in the same category as David Icke's tales of shape-shifting reptiles. There is no organized crime in America, no systemic corruption. Everyone is just doing their job.
• animal 14y ago
  It's incomprehensible to me as an American how so many citizens of the country I live in are so fundamentally ignorant, but that doesn't change anything. I voted, but I honestly doubt my vote even gets counted. I wouldn't even be surprised if eventually it becomes public knowledge that the entire election process has been a complete sham and the totals mostly made up for the past few decades at least. In any case, what am I supposed to do besides vote (at the polls - I'm all but convinced this is pointless), spend my money wisely (this is the best method I've come up with to enact some kind of change, but it's hardly effective since I'm not a billionaire), and write my "representatives" (who invariably respond with some boilerplate bullshit and go on doing whatever the folks paying for them (global business) want)?