Inventory management as a general industrial/commercial process is, I think, better understood and practiced in the U.S. than anywhere else in the world.
So how is it possible to (plausibly) lose/misplace/set aside boxes full of something that will determine the next president?
Why aren’t there the kind of controls on ballot boxes that would prevent this sort of thing? It seems to me that there are endless different ways to keep a real-time count and location on all the ballot boxes in the U.S., by state, district, and polling station. Any inventory manager will tell you that such systems exist, and work well given the necessary investment in the system itself and the training to use it.
That a ballot box could turn up the next day in Florida smacks so obviously of fraud that I don’t believe it is fraudulent. I have difficulty imagining anyone trying to fix an election in such a clumsy way, especially one with the most public attention focussed on it that the country ever experiences.
Hansel: I posted a reply about this in my thread. I don’t agree that it’s too clumsy to be fraudulent. This whole election in Florida reeks of blatant dishonesty. All of the “overlooked” ballots are in Democratic areas, which I find especially convenient for Gore. I’m not accusing Gore himself of fraud, but I suspect that someone in the Democratic party went down to these areas last night and waylayed a few ballot boxes long enough to alter the ballots. This election might end up with people being elected to prison time.
I wouldn’t be so quick to throw people in jail over the results in Florida. A misplaced ballot box might have happened because the people who sit at polling places tend to be retirees who sit around all day for about $50. They aren’t exactly the sharpest ones.
Also, most of the people overseeing elections in Florida are elected officials and they are predominantly Republican.
Well, this is why I’m skeptical that it’s actually fraudulent - regardless of the outcome, this election in Florida will be a source of conspiracy theories for decades to come. Doesn’t it seem as if, were you going to rig an election, you’d do it in a way that didn’t invite so much speculation and attention?
Well, this is part of my question: it’s a national election to decide the president. Why isn’t it managed in a way that avoids at least the obvious problems that we’re seeing now?
Perhaps, Hansel, but it may well be the case that the frauders (is that a word?) were caught off guard and had to act quickly. If it was Gore supporters stuffing ballot boxes, they may have assumed Gore had already taken Florida, just like the media did. Then when Florida was put back into play, they had to scramble and do something desperate.
Chriszarate: If the boxes had disappeared and never turned up, I would suspect the Republicans. The fact that they turned up later makes me suspect the Democrats. I guess it will depend of how the votes from those boxes turn out. Either they’ll be an unusually strong Gore turnout or an unusually light one. I’ll be EXTREMELY surprised if those votes are exactly as expected.
Anyways, I just heard on CNN that the overlooked ballot box from Dade county was not a ballot box. It was just a box full of stuff like pencils and “I voted” stickers. Weirder and weirder…
hansel, try convincing a senior citizen with the shakes or a paranoid right-wing zealot to sit down at a computer terminal and push some keys for their vote. We’ve got to ease into something like that.
It’s always dangerous to extrapolate from one’s personal experience to the rest of the world, but I think it would be very hard indeed to lose a ballot box.
Here’s how it was set up where I voted in St. Louis (which admittedly had some irregularity, but that happened after 7 pm):
Went to the Lutheran school’s gym.
Had my id looked at by the Democratic and Republican judges there.
Signed in.
Voted.
Dropped my ballot in the box that was SITTING OUT IN THE OPEN IN THE MIDDLE OF THE GYM
Why would a full ballot box be somewhere where neither the Democratic or Republican judge could find it?
There’s something very fishy going on here. I would be very wary of giving any credence to the ballots in that box, since there was no Decmoratic or Republican judge looking over it. It’s too bad if it’s for real, but it seems that the right of people to feel their elections are free from fraud should get some precedence.
When one is electing a man (or woman) who will control a multi-trillion dollar budget and several thousand nuclear warheads, one would think that easing the wingnuts into a secure system of electing the president should be the lowest priority.
I worked as an RO in a municipal election a few years ago. Several polling divisions across the city had ballot boxes temporarily go missing at the stations, or at the central counting office (not my box, of course). When you have numerous wards, multiple election races, and hundreds of polling divisions, these things can happen. Usually the election official and candidates are lucky enough that the materials are found in an untampered condition, and the race is wide open enough that a few hundred papers don’t make the difference.
The ballot boxes are carried in private vehicles, and sometimes taxis.
The drivers, being poll officials, are often retired or poor, having plenty of time or needing money.
Either way, their cars tend to break down.
They are supposed to call in with problems and get picked up, but often forget, or lock the phone number in the ballot box. Happens every time, as 20-50% of poll workers are new every time.
One does not have to be old or paranoid or a right-wing zealot to mistrust computers. I have been an IBM mainframe programmer for years, and I don’t trust computers 100%. The usenet newsgroup comp.risks has information on this subject.
On the OP: In the US, elections are typically one day every two years. No one is going to spend a lot money for a good inventory management system that would be out dated after being used 2 or three times.
When you voted, did you see all the other stuff in addition to the ballot boxes [voting booths, tables, chairs, signs, registered voter lists, etc]. This is all at a temporary location, and has to be taken down and moved out. It would be easy to put a ballot box in the wrong truck. You would know it is missing, and it would be safe since it is locked, but it could take a day or two to get it back.
Also, some locations are open for early balloting. Here you have 7-10 days of ballot boxes, presumably collected each day, but maybe not.
In Houston, at these early voting locations, any registered voter can vote. On election day, you have to vote in your precinct. So on election day, they also have to divide up all the early voters by precinct in order to get local vote totals.
And, as others have said, all of this is done by part time help who have not done it for at least two years.
