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

These are separate issues; proposed radical changes to how voting works — changes to how voting has worked for thousands of years — does not come under the heading of "problems" with accurate counting in our current system.

You're defining the category arbitrarily -- if the category is "Problems with our election system" (especially as effected through and illustrated by the current two-parties-dominant system) then comments as to how voting ought to be counted in order to enable the populace to elect people the populace wants to elect are very much on topic.

Accurate counting is needed either way, but I would also like to see different ways of tallying votes, e.g. the australian run-off ballot like we use for the Hugo Awards.

The comments started on the topic of accuracy in counting; that's a different conversation that methods of voting. I'm willing to have both conversations.

I happen to like the current system, and I also happen to like the electoral college. Other systems will produce different sociological results and I'd prefer to see them tested on a smaller scale before being introduced at a national level.