How do you vote in your country? I’m mean the actual casting of the ballot. Paper? MAchine? Punch-card?
How are the people manning the polling stations selected?
For example, in Peru:
All votes are paper ballots. Each party (usually more than 10) has a symbol.
For congress, we also have preferential vote. You vote for your party and select (if you want) 1 or 2 congressmen by writing their number.
Each “polling group” is about 200 people. 6 people (3 members + 3 alternates) are selected by draw, you have to go or you pay a fine.
In Mexico (not my country, but I’ve been privileged to attend national elections twice), they use paper ballots. They also have a photo voter ID card that matches with a photo in the voter registration book (and we bitch about needing to present a friggin’ ID here in Michigan). There are multiple ballots and multiple drop boxes that coincide with the number of elections. For example, one ballot for president of the republic, another for governor, etc. It’s a big friggin’ symbol that represents the party, so the illiterate have a chance, too. There may be text – I don’t recall. I hate airline emergency exit instructions because I can read a lot better than I can follow pictographs. The Mexican ballots remind me of that! Also, it strikes me as odd that during campaigning, the pictograph is used for publicity, with a strong, hand-stroked X through it. Of course, it means you should strike your X on that symbol on your ballot in order to effect you vote; but to this gringo, it always reminds me of our “prohibited” signs, you know, a P (for parking) with a strike though it, or a cigarette with a strike through it. My instinct when seeing (for example) the PAN pictograph with the strike through it is “down with the PAN!”, whereas the intent is precisely the opposite!
How do we vote in Canada? Paper ballots with pencil. X marks the spot.
How are the people manning the polling stations selected? Through the auspices of the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer. In my province, Saskatchewan, further information can be found about it from their website here. From that website, part of the description about the responsibility of the Chief Electoral Officer:
“The Chief Electoral Officer’s primary responsibility is to maintain a state of provincial election readiness. To that end, the Office must appoint and train requisite numbers of constituency returning officers and election officials to ensure electoral preparedness throughout the government’s mandate. Assistance must also be provided to registered political parties, candidates, chief official agents and business managers to facilitate their compliance with the Election Act and to ensure effective execution of electoral events - in relation to electoral participation and financial conduct and reporting. To those ends, the Office is responsible for the preparation and dissemination of electoral information materials and for the conduct of educational workshops throughout the Province.”
**1) How do you vote in your country? ** In the U.S. it varies by state and sometimes by precinct/ward/whatever within the state. There are at least 50 answers to this in the U.S. In Montana alone, I’ve used punch cards, paper ballots with little circles to darken with an Election Official provided #2 mini pencil, and an irritable touch-screen with attached stylus for Federal elections. A certain Town Council election used scraps of legal-pad paper & whatever writing instrument the voter could beg, borrow or steal until they bought an obsolete punch card counter.
2) How are the people manning the polling stations selected?
In Colorado, one person from each “majority” party for X number of registered voters in that precinct. Archuleta County, in the 1970’s needed 1 Republican and 1 Democrat at each polling place. The Election Judges volunteered, since my grandmother had to register Republican a few times so that her little town’s voters wouldn’t have to drive (60 miles, in November, over mountain passes) to Durango to vote.
In the US, each state can require its own voting methods, and they usually permit different localities to choose their own voting technologies. Also, in the US, each election typically has multiple candidates running for multiple offices along with ballot initiatives. For instance, this year, in the November election, a particular locality might have (1) federal elections: President/Vice President, Senator and Representative; (2) state offices: governor, state treasurer, attorney general, state senator and state representative; (3) county offices: county executive, prosecuting attorney, county court judge(s), family court judge(s), probate court judge, county legislator; (4) city/town offices: mayor, city counsel member, city judge(s). Although most of these offices won’t be up all at the same time, typically many will be. As such, tallying simple paper ballots will be ineffective in all but the smallest voting precincts.
In New York City prior to this year’s election we have used mechanical lever voting machines like those pictured here. I don’t know whether they will be replaced by November’s elections.
Actually, New York faces some fines if they don’t ditch the lever machines (which are clearly the best voting mechanism available*) by the next presidential election.
*Why?
Impossible to tamper with unlike electronic devics.
Quick to count (it has to be done manually, but it’s just a case of opening the back and writing down the numbers).
Dependable. They do break down from time to time, but polling places generally have at least two in operation.
Why are they being phased out?
They were expensive. Though New York hasn’t had to replace them in decades, the initial cost was high. States went to punch cards and other systems because they were cheap. In New York, election integrity was important (what with Tammanny Hall), so it was worth the extra expense.
No one manufactures them any more. This wouldn’t preclude someone from starting up, but when the time came to make the laws, no one was around to pay the politicians (oh, excuse me. I meant contribute to their campaign with no thought of quid pro quo) to vote to use their system.
For the last 8 years we’ve been hearing, in Peru, about electronic voting.
I can’t think of anyone trying it for real. THe chances for “mistakes” are just too high.
Counting is not a real problem here. Even with the maddening tallying of preferential votes, counting lasts 2 hours, because each station is 200 people.
Voting for more than 3 or 4 things on the same day is something I can’t imagine. One you vote for the “big ones” your interest quickly declines.
Here in Oregon, it’s 100% vote-by-mail. There are no polling places as such, but they do set up various drop-off sites for those people who want to personally deliver their ballot. Also for those who wait too long to use the mail (ballots have to be delivered to the elections office by election day – post mark doesn’t count).
Four years ago I worked at one of these drop-off sites on election day. The drop-off sites are actually set up when the ballots go out, some three weeks before election day. But since there’s always a big election day rush, the sites are manned for that day. I think I answered an ad in the newspaper and then went in for a short training session.
Well, it varies in the US (has anyone said that yet?) but here’s what I do:
Step 1: Enter building
Step 2: Tell old woman at banquet table your name, if she doesn’t already recognize you
Step 3: She crosses it off her list, then gives you a ballot
Step 4: Take ballot to other end of table -or- Take into a provided curtained-off cubicle
Step 5: Use the provided marker to draw an arrow to the candidate and/or question you want
Step 6: Hand ballot to old woman on the other side of the banquet table
Step 7: She will add you to her tally to make sure none of the ballots go missing
Step 8: Exit building, maybe getting a sticker, if they have any
How the old women are selected, I don’t know. They’re always the same, I assume they volunteer.
For elections here at all levels (Commonwealth, state and local) we vote using a paper ballot and a pencil. Voting is compulsory. Most people vote in person at a local polling booth (usually in a school or church hall). There are other options though: pre-poll voting, postal voting, absentee voting.
There are different rules depending on the election, but in general we vote by placing the numbers 1, 2, 3… etc against the individual candidates’ names in order of preference. In some cases we can also express a preference for a party’s candidates en masse, rather than individually.
The people manning the polling booths are employed by the relevant electoral authority.
I remember using those old lever machines; I saw one in our voting museum recently.
But I greatly disagree that they were “clearly the best voting mechanism”.
Some reasons:
Any old-time political hack can tell you ways to tamper with those machines. Using such high-tech implements as toothpicks, or even the golf-size pencils so conveniently provided by the elections office.
Slow to count, because it had to be done manually by 2-3 people on each machine, and there were generally several machines at each precinct. Much slower than electronic or printed paper tape methods. (And error-prone, too. Transpositions or other errors were quite common when humans were writing these results down.) And there was no way to do a recount of the ballots on these machines.
Undependable. Big old clunky mechanical machines with many moving parts would often fail. And when one failed, the lines at the others would start to get longer, and people would start to leave without voting. (And this varies by party – democrats are more time-constrained, and thus more likely to leave without voting.) And pretty much unusable by any voter that was blind, in a wheelchair, etc.
They were definitely expensive. Though not much more than the modern machines. And that purchase cost was paid many years ago.
The problem was the continuing expenses:
the machines are big, and so require a lot of warehouse storage space for the couple of years between each use.
the machines are big & heavy, so they require several crews of strong men with trucks to haul them out to the polling locations and set them up. And then retrieve them after the election.
Because the machines are big & heavy, and must be hauled around by crews, it takes longer for set up & take down. So the polling places must be rented for several days more.
Hauling these big machines around can get them out of adjustment. So the elections crew for each precinct has to come in a day early, to test out each machine. And to have time to call the (overworked) repairmen when they found a problem.
since you only use the machines every couple of years or so, each election year your crew of repairmen needs to spend a day or two in a refresher course on these machines – valuable worker time spent on this.
All these add up to make these machines quite expensive to maintain, compared to newer machines.
No one manufactures them any more. Which means spare parts are getting hard to find. As well as experts, trainers, etc. As more and more wear out, each year you have to work with fewer machines. Or try to find some used ones for sale somewhere.
The new machines we use are much better: faster, easier to operate, and much cheaper overall. And our optical scan machines are basically reading pencil marks on paper ballots – we can trust that we can always fall back to a manual count if needed.
Huh. In Arizona and California, the poll workers are recruited by the county registrar without regard to what their party affiliation is. They’re paid for their work, but I dunno if it’s the county or the state’s money. Every party (not just the Dems and Pubs) can have (up to two, I think) observers at each precinct but generally don’t bother. If they get paid, it’s by their party.
Voting here in Maricopa county is by a big paper ballot. There’s an arrow with a big gap in the middle pointing to each candidate or proposition answer, and you fill in the gap with a marker pen. The ballot is then fed (face-down) into a machine that registers the count and checks for over-votes. If you have over-voted (voted for three city-council members when you’re only supposed to vote for two, for example) it’s spit back out and you can try again with a fresh ballot. The actual vote counting is done at the registrar’s office after the ballot box is sent there.
I manned a polling station back in Hawaii. I don’t remember if there were restrictions on the percentage of party affiliations represented, but I do remember that the person in charge of a polling station had to belong to the party in charge of the state at the time.
I also remember when this blind voter came in. Regulations required two of us to accompany him into the booth, and we each had to be from different parties, to keep an eye on each other. I remember the lady who went in with me was a Republican, I was an Independent. (You had to register as an Independent in Hawaii if you did not belong to a regular party.) That went off very well.
The last time my Alzheimer’s stricken grandmother ever voted was in 2004. By that time she was legally blind and completely senile. My grandfather just went into the booth with her and voted for her.