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Read the link in tokenadult's post about Minnesota. Paper is hardly easy to count when you get to the dolts who don't know how to mark a ballot. What does it m

Read the link in tokenadult's post about Minnesota. Paper is hardly easy to count when you get to the dolts who don't know how to mark a ballot. What does it mean when the guy marks a vote for every question but also writes "LIZARD PEOPLE" in every write-in ballot spot? Lots of people really don't like the fact that the senator is chosen based on how 3 people sit down and decide what that means, or whether this chad was punched out "enough." Computer touch-screen voting systems, like all other voting, have flaws, but one thing they don't have is any ambiguity how you count each ballot. (There are, of course, other ways to handle this. For example, you could fill out a paper ballot and have it read by a test machine that is very conservative in what it accepts, and alerts you to errors. I'm sure this has trade-offs, too.)

incongruity 14y ago
>Computer touch-screen voting systems, like all other voting, have flaws, but one thing they don't have is any ambiguity how you count each ballot. As someone who has designed questionnaires and computer interfaces, I think you miss a huge point here – electronic systems make vote counting easy because they constrain choice... but there's a lot less ability to verify that an electronic system actually captured the intention of the voter – just as this story shows. So, how do you do that? 3 parts: 1) Use paper ballots, as I've argued for, above. 2) Count/scan each ballot immediately, before the voter leaves. Reject ones that do not process properly (i.e. the one you described above would be rejected if there were conflicting indicators). I thought I remembered MN doing that (I lived/voted there ~a decade ago), for example, and I'm pretty sure my poling place here in Illinois did that last time as well (haven't been there yet today). It's not an impossible task to enforce the same constraints on a paper ballot, doing so with the voter present and able to clarify/fix their ballot. 3)You try really, really hard to design easy to understand and use paper ballots (for all the reasons I said above, you need paper for an audit trail). Good communication design (i.e.: how you design/layout the ballot forms) matters a lot and most of them are terrible. That, however, is no excuse for accepting an electronic system which gives up any ability to audit the count in a reliable way (and, unless the voter verifies a physical printout, no electronic system can be reliable, as discussed above).
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
grey-area 14y ago
There's no ambiguity about a spoiled ballot. It's a legitimate protest with a clear outcome - the vote is not counted. A simple system of slips of paper marked by hand and counted by hand works better than anything involving chads, touch screens or electronic counting. Paper ballots are really the best solution we have at present and I'd argue the involvement of as many people as possible in counting and supervision is a good thing. With clear evidence like this video of probable fraud and at the very least incompetetence the current touch screen voting machines should be removed at least until they are properly vetted and verified.
- incongruity 14y ago
  Paper ballots are a must, I agree, because they can be counted by hand, but they don't have to be, at least not at first. Electronic counting/scanning of paper ballots can be trusted – it's not that difficult to verify the counting for a small (known) set of test ballots and use the machine to count the rest. If there's doubt, then hand-count... but hand-counts are fallible too – mainly because the human is the weak link, of course (we make mistakes, even when we try not to) =)
  - grey-area 14y ago
    Yes that's true, machine counting would be just as good if the ballots are kept and can be verified later.
- danielweber 14y ago
  What if the bubble isn't fully filled in? What if it's 50% filled in? What if it there is a stray mark in another bubble? I'm not trying to play Loki's Wager -- there really have been incredibly close elections where you have puzzle out just what the voter intended and it's just not clear. Nor can you make the boundary be "well if it's not clear throw it away," because you can't tell when it doesn't become clear. This isn't the most worst thing ever, but it's part of a legitimate design to want to limit this[1]. Computer-voting systems do have problems, but they don't have that one. And it at least gives the voter a chance to fix it if they are paying attention. (Yes, I'm a fan of paper, but it's not strictly better than computer voting.) [1] http://blog.joeware.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/hangingChad.jpg http://blog.joeware.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/hangingCh...
gradstudent 14y ago
(1) A vote that cannot be understood should be considered informal and not counted. (2) Electronic voting machines are stupid. (3) Chads are stupid. The immediate solution to (2) and (3) is to use a pen and paper.
bruceboughton 14y ago
>> What does it mean when the guy marks a vote for every question but also writes "LIZARD PEOPLE" in every write-in ballot spot? Spoiled ballot. Vote not counted. What else would it mean?
- Dylan16807 14y ago
  If they don't check 'other' then it shouldn't matter what they put in the write-in spot. I would have accepted it as a perfectly valid ballot. Even if there is no checkbox next to the write-in spot you could reasonably argue that it still shouldn't matter what's written there unless none of the candidates have checks.

incongruity 14y ago

>Computer touch-screen voting systems, like all other voting, have flaws, but one thing they don't have is any ambiguity how you count each ballot. As someone who has designed questionnaires and computer interfaces, I think you miss a huge point here – electronic systems make vote counting easy because they constrain choice... but there's a lot less ability to verify that an electronic system actually captured the intention of the voter – just as this story shows. So, how do you do that? 3 parts: 1) Use paper ballots, as I've argued for, above. 2) Count/scan each ballot immediately, before the voter leaves. Reject ones that do not process properly (i.e. the one you described above would be rejected if there were conflicting indicators). I thought I remembered MN doing that (I lived/voted there ~a decade ago), for example, and I'm pretty sure my poling place here in Illinois did that last time as well (haven't been there yet today). It's not an impossible task to enforce the same constraints on a paper ballot, doing so with the voter present and able to clarify/fix their ballot. 3)You try really, really hard to design easy to understand and use paper ballots (for all the reasons I said above, you need paper for an audit trail). Good communication design (i.e.: how you design/layout the ballot forms) matters a lot and most of them are terrible. That, however, is no excuse for accepting an electronic system which gives up any ability to audit the count in a reliable way (and, unless the voter verifies a physical printout, no electronic system can be reliable, as discussed above).

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

grey-area 14y ago

There's no ambiguity about a spoiled ballot. It's a legitimate protest with a clear outcome - the vote is not counted. A simple system of slips of paper marked by hand and counted by hand works better than anything involving chads, touch screens or electronic counting. Paper ballots are really the best solution we have at present and I'd argue the involvement of as many people as possible in counting and supervision is a good thing. With clear evidence like this video of probable fraud and at the very least incompetetence the current touch screen voting machines should be removed at least until they are properly vetted and verified.

incongruity 14y ago
Paper ballots are a must, I agree, because they can be counted by hand, but they don't have to be, at least not at first. Electronic counting/scanning of paper ballots can be trusted – it's not that difficult to verify the counting for a small (known) set of test ballots and use the machine to count the rest. If there's doubt, then hand-count... but hand-counts are fallible too – mainly because the human is the weak link, of course (we make mistakes, even when we try not to) =)
- grey-area 14y ago
  Yes that's true, machine counting would be just as good if the ballots are kept and can be verified later.
danielweber 14y ago
What if the bubble isn't fully filled in? What if it's 50% filled in? What if it there is a stray mark in another bubble? I'm not trying to play Loki's Wager -- there really have been incredibly close elections where you have puzzle out just what the voter intended and it's just not clear. Nor can you make the boundary be "well if it's not clear throw it away," because you can't tell when it doesn't become clear. This isn't the most worst thing ever, but it's part of a legitimate design to want to limit this[1]. Computer-voting systems do have problems, but they don't have that one. And it at least gives the voter a chance to fix it if they are paying attention. (Yes, I'm a fan of paper, but it's not strictly better than computer voting.) [1] http://blog.joeware.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/hangingChad.jpg http://blog.joeware.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/hangingCh...

gradstudent 14y ago

(1) A vote that cannot be understood should be considered informal and not counted. (2) Electronic voting machines are stupid. (3) Chads are stupid. The immediate solution to (2) and (3) is to use a pen and paper.

bruceboughton 14y ago

>> What does it mean when the guy marks a vote for every question but also writes "LIZARD PEOPLE" in every write-in ballot spot? Spoiled ballot. Vote not counted. What else would it mean?

Dylan16807 14y ago
If they don't check 'other' then it shouldn't matter what they put in the write-in spot. I would have accepted it as a perfectly valid ballot. Even if there is no checkbox next to the write-in spot you could reasonably argue that it still shouldn't matter what's written there unless none of the candidates have checks.