How? The method of tabulating votes has to take into account the number of votes that were cast. Voters in the US rarely go to the polls to cast just one vote. I’ll vote around 25 times in one go this November, and so will the other eighty thousand or so voters in just my county. The “teachers and council officials” would have to count two million votes.
What do you mean “the election that is actually being called”? They’re all being called. On November 6th this year, voters in my state will vote for presidential electors, members of Congress, a senator, state legislators, county sheriffs, state supreme court justices, school levies, and all kinds of other stuff. It’s not all world affairs, but it’s still (mostly) important.
There were plenty of complaints. Many districts had only tiny Democratic representation, and Republicans controlled the process outside of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. A common trick was to start the count on the machines with the Republican candidates ahead. This could be done on some machines with levers designed to reset the counters, or to record a low number for the starting count for the Republican candidates. Another tactic was simply to alter the card inside machine to listing the candidates so Democratic candidates weren’t even listed, or the wrong name was used. They would also send operatives out, even illegally at the polls, to tell voters they could be heard splitting their tickets when the levers were flipped.
I said “Democrat echo chambers”. As in Democrat leftie boards. Would you like a few dozen links to people claiming the only reason for the defeat in Wisconsin was fraud?
It is, in fact, about perception - perception of unreliability. If it was about reliability, then there would be multiple examples of exposed huge errors in counting. There aren’t.
Look in the OP - something about “ease of hacking”, supposed vulnerability of electronic voting machines and the supposedly nefarious ownership of the voting machine-producing companies. Which does not equal reliability, but perception.
he discussion is about perception of unreliability, and not about actual reliability, because there is no (well, very little) evidence of actual unreliability.
No more so than any other voting method used in the US for the past 200+ years. I don’t know why people think paper or analogue voting machines are/were sacred or whatever, but both methods were rife with fraud in the past. Ballot box stuffing and the like have been part of our system from the get go…as have disgruntled ravings about stolen elections and voting fraud. It’s ironic (to me) that both sides here have their own pet theory (that’s dismissed by the other side) about voting/voter fraud based that are subtly different yet from my perspective pretty much the same.
So, I work for a state government and am involved on several levels with voting as well as in the past at the state and local levels in other places (IT generally works with the BOE or equivalent directorate fairly closely, even if the voting is done by ballot). I’ve seen voting progress from the old paper ballot days, through the use of analogue machines and manual counting, to analogue machines and automated counting to the mixed system we currently are using (with some electronic voting, some analogue machines with automated counting as well as, unbelievably to me, some manual counting still happening, and lots of absentee ballots which actually seem like one of the larger vote generating technologies at least here). I’ve seen all manner of screw up from ballot boxes left in a trunk or at a precinct to wild miscounts to votes on PCMCIA cards in a box that had a coffee pot spilled on them, and everything in between. And that doesn’t even count some sort of fraud (I’ve never personally witnessed any, but I’ve had suspicions in the past).
All this is by way of saying that folks who are afraid of the current technology and think that the past way of doing things (with manual ballots or whatever) was secure are, sadly, deluded…they just never realized what was happening or all the flaws in the system or all the slip. The past methods sucked AND they were manually intensive, slow, rife with potential places for mistakes…and pretty easily circumvented for the sake of fraud and corruption. The new systems are more secure (note…nothing like perfect or perfectly secure), but leaving that aside they take less people to run and they are a hell of a lot faster, which is really the key aspect that matters today. People want to know the election results literally a few hours after the polls close…that’s their expectation today.
The perennial boogie man.
There never was any reason for blind faith in American election results…any more than there is any reason for blind faith in ANY election process anywhere in the world. What, you think it’s different in other countries? It’s not. And in the past it was worse, not better. I’d say that today, voting is closer to the actual reality of the voters intent than it’s ever been in the past (and I’m not just talking about the US, or recent past). The folks who man the election bureau out there are better trained (which isn’t to say they are well trained today btw) and more motivated than in the past…and have better tools available to them to allow them to do their jobs. There are better checks and balances involved today as well…vote taking, at least in my experience, is far less informal today than it was in the past where you had some poll workers taking the ballots to a central counting facility in the back of their car and less processes to oversee the system.
It’s not perfect, and sure there is fraud out there (as well as incompetence and screw ups), but by and large for the vast majority of elections the folks involved work their asses off, they are clean, the tools they are using work the way they should and so does the process.
Voting machines in general do not allow audit and verification of the vote without going back to the voters and asking them who they voted for. And they may not accurately report for various reasons. A two part paper system allows elections results to be verified while maintaining secret balloting. It can still be rigged, but it takes more effort and leaves more evidence than simple vote count methods. And of course, electronic systems can be easily hacked in many ways.
The point being that paper systems WERE rigged in the past. This isn’t a theoretical, it happened. Yeah, electronic systems can androbably have been rigged as well. So what? I’ve seen zero evidence either in my own personal experience or presented in the pst threads on this subject that the current systems are less secure than the past. Mostly what I see is fear of the new technology coupled with a mistaken view of how secure voting systems in the past were plus liberal paranoia about perceived rampant corporate corruption. It’s the flip side of conservative paranoia about voter fraud.
I’ve been an election judge in Illinois for many years. Because of our state’s reputation, every effort is made to ensure that the voting is fair and accurately recorded, each step of the way. The voting machines scan hand-marked ballots, and totals have to match (number of ballots cast at end of day must agree with number of votes signing in – otherwise, we’re there for hours trying to reconcile. In the six years I’ve been doing this, we once were off by one ballot, out of about 2,000, which we couldn’t get reconciled after an hour’s work, and the site manager just reported it as a discrepancy.)
To sign in, a person needs to sign the registration form, and two election judges verify that the signature matches. If the signature doesn’t match (or if there is no signature, which can happen if the person hasn’t voted in many years), then ID of some sort is required – but it can be almost anything, as long as it has the name and address. We’ve accepted a gas bill, for instance. Election judges are not allowed to greet a person by name until they’ve stated their name. Every action by an election judge (signing in, handing out ballots, etc), howevere trivial, is confirmed by another judge for verification.
Sure, there’s always the possibility of fraud. No human endeavour is fraud-proof. But I think we do an excellent job of minimizing the possibilities.
The poll volunteers, the State Board of Elections, and the Chicago Election Board have done a remarkable job of preventing illegal voting. The Chicago Election Board even removed Rahm Emanual from the voter rolls (twice) because he actually lived near DC. (Emanual still owned home in the Chicago area that he was renting out.) Emanual was reinstated both times.
The last time I voted in Chicago, 1980, I arrived 15 minutes before the polls closed and was told that I had already voted??? While I was still allowed to vote, I noticed that my brother, who had lived in Wisconsin for the last three years, had also voted??? Just another SSDD (SSDY?) election in olde Chicago.
I question the use of any computer driven voting machine that doesn’t produce a paper record that the voter, and anyone recounting a vote, can visually verify the actual vote selections. Every computer can be hacked and voting machines are, usually, only used every two years (excluding Wisconsin. hehehe). There is plenty of time to service or modify these machines.
The computers software codes are only available to a few individuals and none of them work for the election boards. A software program that compares the vote totals and awards the highest number to a pre-selected candidate could actually remove itself at the end of the day leaving only a vague or odd line of code.
Just wanted to mention that reputations don’t have much to do with the actual fairness and accuracy of elections.
So the election boards have no idea how votes are being recorded and reported. I’m sure quality control works best when you can’t actually look at the product. :dubious:
Yes. People are too busy trying to keep up with all the other technilogical wonders that surround us. I’ve even been told that since voting machines are not connected to the internet, there is no way they could be infected by a virus. While that statement is true, it doesn’t mean the software can’t be manipulated. Oh well.
Living in the “land beyond O’Hare”, I have the option of using either the computer voting machine or the punch card type. I opt for the punch card. I believe Chicago voters have the same options.
What do you mean “the election that is actually being called”? They’re all being called. On November 6th this year, voters in my state will vote for presidential electors, members of Congress, a senator, state legislators, county sheriffs, state supreme court justices, school levies, and all kinds of other stuff. It’s not all world affairs, but it’s still (mostly) important.