Comments on: Canada Going To The Polls

By: Bryan

Bryan — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 03:25:53 +0000

In reply to Badtux. In San Diego my polling place was a carport at a private house. The lady used really scary extension cords to provide light to vote by, so there is no way she could have supported a half-dozen terminals. There were cookies, however, after you voted, if you went early. Yes, absentee is the best way to be sure your vote doesn't get messed with.

By: Badtux

Badtux — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 19:49:01 +0000

My local polling place is the banquet room of a local restaurant. Not that I’ve ever seen the insides of it, since my ballot gets delivered to my mailbox about a week before election day, I bubble it in, stick a couple of stamps on the thing, take it to work, put it in the “Out” basket at the front desk, voila. But anyhow, yeah, I doubt that this banquet room is exactly poppin’ with power either. There’s probably one plug on the wall every twenty feet or so just to plug in a vacuum cleaner, and they’re all on the same circuit because, well, how often do you use more than one vacuum cleaner in a banquet room? 😈

By: Bryan

Bryan — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 03:06:08 +0000

In reply to Badtux.

The election process, as well as many other things, is truly screwed up in the US.

We use paper ballots locally because our local supervisor of elections just didn’t trust the results she was getting from any of the electronic systems that she saw tested in real world circumstances. One of our biggest problems with electronic systems was a lack of adequate electricity at local precincts. Church halls, community centers, etc. aren’t known for needing a lot of power, and they don’t have it.

She tried everything, including voting over the Internet for people who are deployed, but if it didn’t work accurately and reliably, she rejected it. Her deputy replaced her after she retired, so we have paper and no drama in our future, if you ignore the people who get elected in Florida.

Yeah, Canada just isn’t very exciting when it comes to a lot of things – it just works.

By: Badtux

Badtux — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 01:58:40 +0000

And their ballots are paper. And counted at the polling place, in front of representatives of all parties, with the final count certified at each polling place with the signatures of all representatives present, with no possible shenanigans as ballot boxes are transported from the polling place to some central counting center. Wow, what a concept, no hanging chads, no Box 13’s, nothing like that! What next, they decide that, like, everybody should have a right to health care or some such nonsense like that? Oh wait… 😈

– Badtux the Snarky Penguin