Comments on: Is This a Joke?

By: Jim Miller

Jim Miller — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 00:36:22 +0000

In answer to your question, Teresa LePore was elected to her position—as a Democrat. After Democrats urged her to cheat in 2000 recount, she switched to calling herself an independent, at least temporarily. (Although I don’t believe she cheated, the results of the first recount in Palm beach produced implausible gains for Gore.) Those even moderately familiar with Florida elections can tell you that fraud and incompetence are most often found in the counties controlled by Democrats. Try a search on Broward for some recent examples.

By: aphrael

aphrael — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 00:20:06 +0000

Mat – oops. :) The point still holds, though; if voters can’t figure out how to use the new ballots, it’s the fault of the people who are supposed to teach them, NOT the ballot design. The ballot design is standard.

By: Dlanod

Dlanod — Mon, 23 Aug 2004 23:01:53 +0000

This is an easy to use optical scan ballot. The beauty of it is if you try to connect arrows from different lines or connect multiple lines for one race the scanner beeps and spits the ballot back out at you. It also provides a easy to read and hand tally paper trail. Everyone should be using this style.

By: Matt Weiner

Matt Weiner — Mon, 23 Aug 2004 22:59:53 +0000

the poll workers should be trained on how to demonstrate to the voters the way to sue the new system Nah, the campaigns will be doing a good job of that. (Yes, yes, typo-mongering is the lowest form of blogcommentary….)

By: aphrael

aphrael — Mon, 23 Aug 2004 21:30:42 +0000

This is a standard form factor for the optical scan ballot. I find it less intuitive than the fill-in-the-bubble variety, but i’m told it’s easier for people with unsteady hands to mark correctly.

I really don’t see the problem here. It’s a new system, so the poll workers should be trained on how to demonstrate to the voters the way to sue the new system, and they should have lots of demonstration ballots on hand, but really … it’s an easy-to-use system that, if people can’t figure it out, it’s because the election staff is incompetent, not because the voting system sucks.

By: Njorl

Njorl — Mon, 23 Aug 2004 21:02:26 +0000

Next election, in heavily Democratic Florida counties, voters will need to compose an original Haiku for each candidate they vote for. Njorl

By: Mary

Mary — Mon, 23 Aug 2004 18:32:55 +0000

The paper ballot with the checkbox, counted by hand, works just fine in Canadian federal elections, but we also used the connect the arrows optical scan ballots in Toronto municipal elections with no apparent problem. We got the advantage of fast counting and a reliable paper copy on hand for any required recount. Or were the two arrows really broken up and on different lines? Yeah, that could be confusing.

By: paperwight

paperwight — Mon, 23 Aug 2004 16:36:55 +0000

I think this is the same kind of ballot they use here in San Francisco. It’s dead easy. There’s a BOLD broken arrow about half an inch (1 cm+) long next to each choice, and you just color in the broken bit next to the choice you want. No harder than (actually, much easier than) filling-in-the-bubble. I proctored 2 elections last year and we didn’t have any trouble explaining it (generally didn’t have to), even to some quite elderly and one slightly developmentally delayed voter. I’ve used poke-out-the-chad absentee ballots, and they’re a royal pain. The optical scan machines are really good, IMO —allow for immediate feedback, create a paper trail, and would be damn hard to tamper with.

By: chris

chris — Mon, 23 Aug 2004 13:13:52 +0000

An ISO 9000 spec could say that the electoral doohickey had to reflect the intention of voters to a probability of 0.1 and if it did that, it would be 9000 compliant. Good innit?

By: Robin Green

Robin Green — Mon, 23 Aug 2004 12:58:49 +0000

What most impresses me about the debate over voting messages is the absence of commentary from the quality control exponents, ISO 9000, five 9’s types. That rather confirms my view that ISO 9000 is more about marketing and generating make-work for expensive consultants, than it is about an actual concern for quality.

By: bad Jim

bad Jim — Mon, 23 Aug 2004 10:29:47 +0000

voting messages? What have I been drinking? (Baron Herzog Zinfandel, $8.99 at Trader Joe’s) voting methods Note also that “optical scan” refers to paper ballots.

By: bad Jim

bad Jim — Mon, 23 Aug 2004 10:23:01 +0000

The American problem with hand counting is the number of issues on the ballot in a major election. This year in California we have to vote for president, senator, congressman, state assemblyman, city council at least; possibly also judges, board of education, local college administrators or water district, and so forth. Not to mention various propositions, referenda and initiatives. We’re also multilingual, so the ballots have to be available in English, Spanish, Vietnamese and I don’t know what else. Counting them by hand would be a tedious, error-prone process and has generally not been done hereabouts for a few dogs’ ages. What we have instead has been an ongoing disaster, continual embarrassment, yet largely untainted by scandal. A good electronic voting method would be a godsend. No god so far has provided us with anything like it, of course, and though we’ve been through two elections with electronic doohickeys I think the courts have found them wanting and we’ll do the next election with optical scan. What most impresses me about the debate over voting messages is the absence of commentary from the quality control exponents, ISO 9000, five 9’s types. There is no commitment to a verifiable, repeatable process. In every election one or more precincts should be subject to a recount merely to determine the error rate. The higher the error rate, the wider the auditing.

By: schwa

schwa — Mon, 23 Aug 2004 09:22:41 +0000

I’ve gotta go with Jesse’s commenters on this: this is an incredibly common form of optical-scan ballot, used all over the shop for some years with no significant problems. The real problem is the fetish for machine-readable ballots, pure and simple. If US election authorities would just suck it up and switch to hand-counting, all of these problems would disappear.