netmouse | (no subject)

Kucinich calls for recount in NH.

In the last year not a lot of people have been talking about the fact that two years ago lots of watchdog groups were saying we were not ready to have a presidential election we could depend on--many of the electronic ballot-counting systems were actually worse at the time (for accountability) than New Hampshire's, which at least appears to keep a copy of a physical ballot. I'm not sure how far we've gotten since then.

One analysis group reports of the NH primary that comparison of *some* hand-counted ballots with *all* the electronic ballots show eerily switched percentages for Obama and Clinton compared to the total count reported. What's that Scalzi was just saying about how hard Clinton would fight for this election? Seriously, though, numbers do weird things sometimes. It's not always a conspiracy. But I'd like to see a recount like this done at a time when no one can argue the whole national economy is waiting with baited breath for the results and that therefore (this argument never held water for me) we have to stop counting the votes. Please, please, please, let's not have another Florida/Ohio/etc. situation. This is America. We really ought to be able to get this voting thing down. It's not really that complicated.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It would be nice if the US used hand-marked ballots.

We do in Michigan. They are read by a machine, but they are all marked by hand and available to be re-read. And unlike the "hanging-chad" monsters of yore, these ballots are clearly marked in ink by completely a line that forms an arrow pointing at the name of the person you're voting for.

Oh. I thought that everyone in the US had mechanical booths and never got to see the results of their actions.

Either way, if a representative of each candidate does not look at a ballot (or, at least is not offered the opportunity) I'm not sure that it should count.

Voting technology at the very least, varies by state. Mostly, the decision on what equipment to buy to assist in voting is done at the county level.

Making things more complex, absentee ballots are allowed - and these may or may not result in a piece of paper similar in form to what is generated by the voting machines in polling places. County elections departments may then have multiple types of machines to process different paper generated in different places.

If I recall correctly, I get my absentee ballots on regular eight-and-a-half by eleven paper.

I used to vote in Hamtramck until July of 2003 and we used paper ballots. I mean, they were the size of a concert poster and you made checks on them with a Sharpie. Pretty easy to read and really easy to recount. And we had lots of recounts. Mayors offices were often decided on 10 votes or less.

I believe everyone in the US has the option of a hand-marked ballot. It's called voting absentee. Which is what I do.

However, the number of races, issues and propositions on a ballot can be sufficiently complex, to make hand-marked ballots fraught with usability traps.

I'm of the opinion that the machine-assisted voting systems can be made good enough to deal with all the usability issues. However, a printed paper trail is also mandatory - the ideal system for me would be a machine that prints a ballot that I then read, verify that it says what I want, and carry to a collection box.