Comments on: Yet Another Opinion

By: 27 Stories to Read at Florida Progressive Coalition Blog

27 Stories to Read at Florida Progressive Coalition Blog — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 04:18:30 +0000

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By: Bryan

Bryan — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 01:11:12 +0000

My only problem with them is that the “bubble-type” are easier to scan and there are more manufacturers of scanning equipment to read them.

I have no major objections to any type of paper ballot that doesn’t involve chads.

By: hipparchia

hipparchia — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 00:32:08 +0000

my ballots look like michael’s. i find them easier to deal with than the circles.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 19:27:21 +0000

My county uses the standard test format of fill in the circle together with readers that can process other tests from the school system when there aren’t elections. I kind of like that possibility.

By: Michael

Michael — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 09:33:21 +0000

The ballots they use here in California are perfectly reasonable, though I don’t really trust the optical scan reader. You have a list of candidates and you just draw a straight line to connect the arrow to the candidate (which is already drawn but broken in the center). At least this is very easy to read and use and if the optical reader is challenged it wouldn’t be hard to recount manually. Real paper ballots, at least.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 06:01:08 +0000

Paper ballots are the only way to be sure.

Of course, it wouldn’t hurt if they would hire some graphic artists to design the ballots so that they are legible and understandable, but that’s probably too much to ask for.

By: Michael

Michael — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 05:41:12 +0000

Paper ballots are definitely the right way to go.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 00:38:17 +0000

They fail because they are machines, but the lever machine in New York have been used since the early twentieth century, my grandparents voted for FDR on one in 1932, and they are remarkably trust worthy because they are so simple.

The electronic versions are “failing” because they have never been shown to work, and are overly complex.

The problem in New York is that they didn’t wait for the official count. Now that they are getting the official count, they now the unofficial count was sloppy.

People don’t want to wait; they feel entitled to the results as soon as the polls close, so they buy the DREs that promise instant gratification at the cost of accuracy. If they would wait people would still be using paper ballots and it would be harder to steal elections.

By: Michael

Michael — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 21:32:56 +0000

Bryan, I’m sure there is always a good explanation for why voting machines fail. Always.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 02:30:14 +0000

Now, Hipparchia, I’m sure a lot of county commissioners commit suicide after crawling under their house, it just doesn’t get published. It was a bit odd for a funeral director to do it, and it just made this more difficult in the “end”.

Actually, Michael I’m familiar with the lever machines and know exactly what happened. There are two sets of counters: the unofficial counters you can see from the outside, and the real, official counters that are sealed inside the machine. The initial figures from local precincts are coming from the external counters which aren’t a priority in the repair department, and the actual figures come from the internal counters after the machines are retrieved. If the “real counters” are broken you can feel it in the lever used to open and close the curtain. Actually, you usually can’t move the lever when an internal counter breaks because it jams the system, while the visible counters are on the end of the gear chain.