Hey, why should YOUR vote be counted?

Great Debates
21

Good lord I’m sick of this. Please see my reply in this thread for a description of what using one of those punch cards is really like. I have an above average IQ (yeah, yeah, like that means anything, but since you declared that voters should meet a certain baseline of competency, I’m letting you know I believe I meet that qualification), and yet I still find that those stupid punch cards are a lot harder to use than those of you who don’t use them seem to understand.

And to clarify a point that might not be easy to gather from my above-mentioned reply, you have to insert the punch card into the machine in such a way that you can’t see the card itself as you’re using it. It’s completely hidden from view underneath the booklet where the names and propositions are written. That makes it totally impossible to actually see what you’re doing as you’re doing it. Then, once you pull the card out of the machine, I challenge you to tell me that you’re absolutely certain that all your votes got recorded properly on that card where there are no references to anything corresponding to a candidate name or proposition number.

Frankly, what that’s worth is absolutely zilch. First of all, we’re talking about Rush Limbaugh here - not the most non-partisan and unbiased person in the universe (and that’s being generous). Second of all, I’d ask the inventor whether the machine he sent had a trough filled with 8 YEARS of chad build-up in it, like the ones that were used in some of the Florida precincts. Have you ever tried to use a 3-hole paper punch that had never been cleaned out of all the little paper cut-outs? Once that thing gets filled up, the strength of Hercules wouldn’t put a hole in a new sheet of paper if you tried to use it.

And as I recall, the inventor of the machine had to admit in open court on cross examination that hanging chads that close up when run through the counting machine, as well as dimpled chads in the case of excessive buildup in the machines, are extremely likely and that hand counting ballots to visually spot chads that were not completely punched through was a much more accurate method of counting. Therefore, I doubt your assertion that the inventor of the machine “does not believe it can be done.” I think he does believe that and I think he admitted it on the stand.

22

ACK!!! I’m so embarrassed. There are so many election threads on this board that I completely forgot that I was already IN the thread that I just linked to above. The above should read…“Please see my reply ABOVE for a description of what using one of those punch cards is really like,” instead of clicking the link.

So now you can call my competency into question if you please. I overslept and was late to work and still haven’t had my morning coffee. So sue me for making a mistake. :wink:

23

Bricker,

Is this in any way analogous to product liability law? That is, if you have a really crummy design that will cause damage to someone, it really doesn’t matter how many warning messages you slap on your product, you’re still going to get your ass sued, and probably successfully.

24

Rush Limbaugh?!? In any case, what are we supposed to conclude from this observation? That the dimpled chads didn’t exist? Or that people dimpled them manually after removing them from the machine?

I think that this opinion comes back to the issue (often mentioned before) that some people seem to place more emphasis on the process of voting rather than the act of voting itself.

Hypothetical situation:
I am doing a hand recount of ballots where people were supposed to punch holes next to candidate names. I come upon a ballot where the voter circled the name instead of punching holes. (because they didn’t read the instructions, don’t know english well, etc…) Does that mean I should ignore the vote?
My answer is NO, I should not ignore the vote. A preference is clearly indicated, and even though the voter didn’t follow all the instructions to the letter, the intent is clear, and I don’t see any attempt at fraud.

In other words, this is a different situation than if I see, for example, an absentee ballot that is postmarked several days after voting date, in which cause the suspicion of “fraud” is justifiable.

25

I know this isn’t the point of your question, but I just have to point out (again) that there are no names on the punch cards, only numbers. That is one of the biggest reasons that it’s difficult to be certain your intended votes actually registerd on the card using this method of voting.

26

Shayna: First of all, I am not saying that the punch cards are the best system. Clearly, they should be scrapped.

Second, Sure, Rush is biased. So is Boies, and J. Jackson. That aside, Either he is fabricating the communications with the inventor or the inventor feels that it is very hard to create a dimpled chad. I leave it to you to decide for yourself.

Third, I have not yet heard of a single person that could actually prove that someone was unable to punch out a ballot. IT is just guesswork on the part of those whose horse lost the race. If the voter can’t determine anything by looking at his own ballot, how does a stranger?

27

Mr. Zambezi, there were once literacy tests to determine such a “baseline”. They were declared unconstitutional. I agree that voting does in fact imply a certain responsibility, that in no way means that the current set of responsibilities are in fact fair.

Registering to vote is damned easy. One phone call. The board of elections sends you a card telling you where to vote. You go on your lunch hour. Or before work. Or after work. You do not have to follow special instructions. You do not have to guess what number the phone operator at the BOE is thinking in order to register. You do not have to rig your phone in some special way in order to get through. Hence I do not think that these tasks are comparable to operating an antiquated, error-fraught machine.

FWIW, the inventor of the machine was utterly humiliated by the Gore team in court two weeks ago. He spent hours systematically refuting the democrats’ claims that the machine is prone to error. That is, until the democrats asked him to read aloud an affidavit he wrote almost twenty years ago, urging that the machines be withdrawn for revision because they were causing so many problems.

I wouldn’t believe the inventor of the vote-o-matic if he told me the sky was blue.

MR

28

On the contrary, he asserted that the chads are so thin that you could have a 20-year build up without any impedance, unless the machine has been tiltled so the chads pile up in one area. He was adamant in his position that the machine never gets titled, but admitted on cross that it was possible.

He also had to admit that he designed a new stylus due to the fact that the stylus in use had to be inserted exactly perpendicular to punch out the chad completely. The new stylus has never been used.

29

No, what you said was…

I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t make such incorrect assumptions about people you don’t even know, regarding equipment with which you aren’t even familiar first hand. Please read my above :wink: replies which refute this assertion.

I suggest you read the court transcripts. There is nothing to “decide,” as it’s clear from the testimony that your claim (and/or that of Mr. Limbaugh) is, in fact, incorrect.

Are you honestly trying to tell me that you haven’t heard of a single one of the documented cases of real life existing ballots with dimpled or hanging chads on them that have been reported repeatedly throughout this election coverage? Are you really trying to tell me that you don’t believe in their existence? Honestly?

There weren’t any horses in this race. Last I heard they were 2 human beings.

And if you’ll re-read my posts again you will see that I never claimed that the voter can’t determine anything by looking at his own ballot, I said it was difficult to tell if you punched the right holes or if your holes were punched at all because there are no names on the ballot card itself. That doesn’t mean that someone who’s checking to see if hole #15 has a punch on it or not, after the fact in a manual recount, can’t tell whether or not one exists. They already know they’re looking for marks for hole #15. The voter won’t know this unless he stands there comparing his punched card to the booklet after he removes the card from the machine. People don’t generally do that and it’s ridiculous to say they should have to.

30

begging the question. Assuming that the machine is error frought to prove that the machine is error frought.

Listen, if you can’t figure out how to put the little stick through the little hole, you are an idiot. I can’t think of any other way to say it and it is what I have been tap dancing around. If you can dial a phone, you can do this simple task. If you can’t, God help us if your vote counts.

Following your argument, If I use a machine with levers, and don’t know how to use a lever, I could argue that the vote is invalid.

Shayna, since you cant tie any punch ballot to an individual voter, it is impossible to prove that anyone created a dimpled chad. There may be a mark on the ballot that an observer could think is possibly, maybe a sign of some intent. But that proves nothing other than what that person thinks. It could have been caused in other ways.

Even if it existed, it does not prove intent. It migh have been a stylus placed in for a second then withdrawn. I did hear testimony to that effect in the Martin county case.

31

Thank you for your reasoned and intelligent contribution to this discussion.

I’m done with you.

(Now I know how Cecil must feel. Fighting ignorance is hard!)

32

Assuming for a second that this fatuous reasoning is true…

Perhaps if you showed me where in the Constitution of the United States the minimum level of intelligence required for voting is stated, I would get off your back?

I do believe that what you are saying is dangerously close to “stupid people don’t have a right to be represented.”

Know what? I agree. If that were the case, Bush would have lost by a landslide. :smiley:

33

Not exactly, they have a right to vote, but they do not have a right to be counted if they can’t figure out how to vote.

I am not talking about excluding any citizen from voting. WHat I am against is trying to go back and figure out what certain people were attempting to do ex post facto.

Take my example of not knowing how to work a lever. What if I come back 2 days after the election and say “hey, no fair! I meant to vote for Bush but i don’t think I used the lever right.” Does that justify an additional vote for Bush? See, I was given the opportunity to vote. I was just to stupid to figure out the machine or to ask for help.

I would like to see a cite from the Constitution that guarantees the individual a right to vote for president at all.

Perhaps what we have here is similar to what we have in the economy. Some people have more votes than others, so we should tax those who vote well and get counted and redistribute the votes to those less fortunate :wink: .

“There are no idiots, just people that get to be able to do anything they want and get bailed out for it later”

34

It certainly has the same flavor – the idea that warnings and instructions cannot completely substitute for a correctly made, safe product.

In the case, the contention seems to be that the punched-card ballot system is inherently flawed, and produces too many errors amongst the populace for us to conclude otherwise.

Other commentary in this thread has hinted that there’s not a minimum intelligence level required for voting. Probably this deserves yet another thread all it’s own… but I’m too lazy.

So - should there be some bare minimum intelligence required for voting? Heinlein half-farcically suggested that there should; he envisioned a voting booth system with no age limits, and when you step into it, a screen lights up with a quadratic equation. Solve it and you can vote, fail and you must leave.

I certainly don’t endorse this… but in a sense, the ability to submit a vote which is actually counted, in any county used a punched-card system, seems to require a certain ability that some members of the public don’t have.

Other posts above have pointed out that any voting, short of “ESP machines,” will require some minimum level of competence in doing something (marking a card, pushing a button, etc).

As I understand it, though, these are not meant to be barriers. Were I illiterate, for example, I am permitted to ask the poll workers to assist me in casting my vote, or to bring along a helper of my own choosing. The right to vote is not supposed to be limited by any inability to complete (or comprehend) the process of voting.

Returning our attention to Florida - is this not the case there? Isn’t it true that person confused by the process, or unsure if their ballot were counted, could ask for help?

So let me amend my OP question to say: should a voter who fails to follow the above instruction, and also fails to ask for help, be heard to later complain about being disenfranchised?

  • Rick
35

I’ll be happy to provide you with that cite… just as soon as you show me where the Constitution says that you have the right to speak to a lawyer before the police question you.

  • Rick
36

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Bricker *
**

I think not, because in order for someone to be culpable, they first have to realize that a erroneous situation exists. Part of a good human interface is ensuring that you get good feedback so that you know you’ve accomplished the task successfully. If you think you voted successfully (as did the people who voted for Buchanan on the butterfly ballot), then you have no reason to ask for help. (And those who asked for help were in several cases given the wrong answer, according to published reports.)
In particular, non-technical people may not have very clear ideas of how their ballot is actually counted, so the importance of checking chads was not as foremost in their mind as it is now, with the BENEFIT OF HINDSIGHT.

As I said in another thread, I also think people are not sufficiently taking into account the physical limitations of the people voting in the Florida election. Many of them are quite elderly and their perceptions are not sharp, and their motor skills are not as good as they were. Despite mean-spirited comments to the contrary, this does not translate to stupidity or incapability. It DOES mean that an elderly person voting may have trouble even examining the ballot for chads, even if they wanted to.

Another barrier to asking for help is that the voting stations were quite busy and quite possibly understaffed. There may not have been enough staff to provide the necessary help; especially as the elderly are reluctant to admit their frailities.

37

Juxtapose this:

with this:

to see the utter bankruptcy of Mr. Zambezi’s argument.

There is no inherently correct way to vote. Voting mechanisms are designed and implemented by people. The people who implement ballot collection and counting schemes are not even elected officials. Amid tremendous public outcry against these schemes, what right do they have to assert their arbitrary procedures? Just because The Man says that you have to jump through hoops in order to vote does not translate into actual responsibility.

Mr. Z is excluding citizens from voting who do not comply with arbitrary procedures. I will not hesitate to say that I find this blanket adherence to authority extremely distasteful. It appears to stem from an “I got it right, so you have to, also” mentality. Mr. Z would be that student in class who protests against the curving of a test that the entire class failed but he passed because he would not benefit as much as the others.

No. But if 10,000 other Bush voters were singing the same tune, I’d reevaluate the lever process. If Gore received 10,000 votes in a traditionally republican stronghold, I’d be looking for a fair way to remedy the situation.

38

Here’s my thought now: we need a bright-line rule, or process, by which we can judge whether a particular voting process works.

If, for example, we have 1,000,000 attempted votes, and three people were baffled by the ballots and failed to cast their votes properly, I would opine that it’s their tough luck – the vast majority can do it correctly, and spending money fixing the problem is probably not justified.

If we have 1,000,000 attempted votes, and 200,000 of them are spolied, I think it’s equally clear that we have a serious problem, which needs to be fixed.

Is there a better way of measuring? After all, we don’t hold ‘test’ elections. Those 200,000 voters above just gave up their votes so we could discover a problem.

Is there a way other than just counting spoiled ballots as a percentage of total votes? What’s the right procedure, and the right way to validate it?

  • Rick
39

Yeah, following a rule laid out beofore hand is “blanket adherence to authority.” I suppose, if the teacher made it clear numerous times that there would be absolutely no curve, that those who failed should be able to change the rules after the test because they didn;t bother reading the test instructions?

And how can instructions on how to use a voting machine be “arbitrary procedures”? Stick the stylus in the hole. Clean off the chad. Arbitrary? It is not like they are telling them to list the capitols of Africa, demonstrate a 48" vertical jump and do a backflip. They are merely instructions.

Maeglin, at what point does the failure to vote properly become a non vote? If they dont’ mark the balloit, if they don’t drop it off, if they fail to actually go to the booth?

Bricker my point was that there is no right to vote other than that possibly given by the state legislature if it is within the parameters set forth by the constitution. . IN Miranda they interpreted due process. In this case, they interpreted equal protection. But they never said that there is a right to vote granted by the constitution. They did say that there is a right to equal protection.

ngbout whether we count some ballots in the same box one way, and other ballots a different way. Note that in the same counties, some people had a problem voting for too many candidates. I wonder how you (not you Bricker, just “you” in general) explain that one.

40

That is so not what this is about, Mr. Z. Here are the steps:
[ol][li]Receive a punchcard that looks like an obfuscated scantron.[/li][li]Take it to a voting booth.[/li][li]Insert it into the voting machine, being careful to make sure the holes line up with the pins on the voting machine[/li]At this point, you have put the ‘punchcard’ into a black box into which you cannot see.
[li]Page through the ballot and stick pin A into hole B or C depending on party affiliation. This is the only step for which your statement above applies, and I agree with you![/li][li]The problem comes here: Remove the punchcard from the machine and inspect it as Shayna describes above. Sure you can verify if there are no hanging chads, but how can you tell if you punched the right hole or if the voting machine malfunctioned?[/li][/ol]
Please note that in the use of the machine the easiest thing to do is stick the pin in the hole. I therefore label your above statement straw man.

Maybe instead you should say:

At least then you wouldn’t be throwing up a straw man so you can dance around singing “Begging the question! Begging the question!”

Please tell us Mr. Z, have you ever used one of these machines? Have you ever seen one up close?