I voted in the federal election yesterday

Great Debates
1

the Canadian federal election, that is, at the advance poll. They gave me a nice little paper ballot and a pencil, and I went behind the little cardboard screen and marked an “X” beside the candidate I wanted. Next week, on the day of the general election, the poll clerks will count all the ballots by hand - no machines anywhere, and certainly no chad.

When I was leaving the polling booth, I was thinking that making an “X” and hand-counting may seem primitive, but it also seems to work better than the vote-counting in certain areas of Florida.

Plus, the form of the ballot and the procedures to be followed are the same across Canada, since they’re all governed by federal law. The elections are run by Elections Canada, a non-partisan agency established under federal law. In case of problems, recounts go in front of a federally appointed superior court judge.

So, am I just being insular, or do people think the US system could be improved?

2

Me no understand…I thought y’all didn’t have anything like primaries? What’s an “advance poll”?

State’s rights are a big deal down here, hence our patchwork of laws regarding stuff like guns and the death penalty (FWIW, my state, Massachusetts, hasn’t used the DP since 1947, which is probably more than Canada can say, and recently rejected legislation to reinstate it). The feds already have plenty of laws about elections but the nuts-and-bolts stuff is usually left to the states/cities/towns/wards/precincts/that nice lady from the League of Women Voters, and it simply doesn’t attract attention or money until it’s a problem. Like now. I’m sure that punchcards have breathed their last after this election, but we have everything from complete-the-arrows-with-a-magic-marker-on-oaktag like I did, to giant gray 1962 safe-like lever no-paper machines like in NYC. I would not be surprised if there was legislation to introduce some sort of nationwide system if and when this is all cleared up (I think we’ll see President Hastert as a Trivial Pursuit question someday) but the money to fund it is another story. It’s such a massive country with so many people. And mechanical problems, bad weather, miscommunication, and voter stupidity will ensure that no election is ever perfect.

3

You’re right, it’s not a primary. The parties selected their candidates late last month, after the election was called. The advance poll is for people who won’t be able to vote on Election Day (next Monday). I’m going to be out of town on election day, nursing a Grey Cup hangover, so I voted in the advance poll this weekend. The ballot boxes from the advance poll get sealed and are opened after the general polls close on election night.

I’m not sure what the relevance of the death penalty is to the inquiry, but Canada last executed someone in 1962 or '63; Parliament formally abolished the death penalty in 1973 or '74.

4

jyi: Constitutionality aside (it’s unclear at this moment whether a nation-wide federal standard for voting procedures are Constitutional, as nothing in the Constitution explicitly allows for or against such a thing), such sweeping reform would have to be federally funded, less the States challenge it on the “unfunded mandate” principle.

Even then, it’s a toughy that I’d feel more comfortable letting more knowledgeable Dopers answer.

But considering the mess we are currently in, I don’t see a whole lot of opposition arising to at least a debate/fact finding study as to some form of nation-wide standardization of ballot format and counting procedures.

5

Sorry; jti.

6

or even at the state level - nothing’s stopping Florida from trying to get more uniformity, is there?

BTW, am I right that when you guys went to the polls, you voted for everything, President/Senate/Reps, State officers, and municipal officers? is that why it’s done at the county level, so you can do everything at once?

7

Sorry, JTI, I was just using it to point out, as I had to in a few political discussions I had up there, that certain things that people think “America does / believes in” are simply what the feds might permit and certain states do / believe.

I think you can cast an absentee ballot ahead of time here too, as long as you have a good reason.

8

jti: (I made sure I got it right this time)

We did it at the ongressional District level, which may encompass several counties, or part of a county, depending on the population spread.

Congressional Districts are determined by population density, as determined by the U.S. Census taken every ten years (which is why it was so important for people to correctly fill out their Census forms).

Accusations of gerrymandering crop up every time the districts are redrawn to reflect changing demographics.

9

That’s right - the local ballot included, IIRC:

  • President/VP (this was the shortest section)
  • US Senator
  • not Governor this time (middle of 4 year term) but a lot of states did
  • Congressperson
  • State Senator
  • State Representative
  • no county gov’t in Mass. but lotsa county offices elsewhere
  • a whole bunch of town offices
  • 9 referenda (amount varies by state) - these are political hand grenades that the state legislature can’t force themselves to decide on for the record, or refuse to take up, but are put on the ballot by popular petition drive.
10

ahh - that’s why it’s important in your system to have the voting done at the county level.

here, each level of government has its elections at different times: Parliament and the provincial legislatures at no fixed dates, municipalities usually on fixed electoral cycles. That’s probably one of the major institutional differences that contributes to the feds here running their own elections.

now I’ve got a follow-up for Ex-Tank: isn’t it an unfunded mandate for the counties to run the federal elections in the first place? could a county refuse to run it unless the feds covered the costs? or are they required to do so by state law?

11

jti: I believe that the districts receive some federal and/or state funding, but with little or no federal oversight. Maybe some general guidelines for accuracy and such.

But then again, voting in a Democracy is a participatory process; an “it’s your vote, your responsibility” mind-set regarding financing.

That might be in keeping with the disparity of vote-counting methods/devices.

Where I live, in Garland, TX (Dallas County), our voter registration cards have bar-codes on them. When you arrive at the polling station, they scan the code into the computer, and you verify your identity with picture I.D.

We had nifty flat screen computer devices, with some kind of tape-counter insert. Apparently, the tape-counter gets uploaded with your voter registration info, directly from the scanner device. You inserted the recording device, the screen lights up. There were several pages asking you to confirm address and age and stuff. On the actual election pages, your choices were presented in about as straightforward manner as I could conceive.

If you wanted to vote sraight party ticket (the first option on the first screen), you simply marked either the “yes” or “no” boxes with the touch-pen. It then went to the last page, asked you to confirm your decision. Once done, it told you to remove the recording device and return it to the election staff.

If you wanted to elect folks individually, it went screen-by-screen, showing the positions, the candidates and their party affiliation. Each candidate had their own seperate line and box. You couldn’t mark two boxes for the same position. If you marked one, and then tried to mark another, the computer simply moved your “X” from the box of the first candidate you selected to the second. The font was large and unmistakeable, easy to read. Supposedly, there were headsets available for the blind, where a computer voice would walk you through the process.

No votes were recorded until the last page, when it asked you to confirm your choices. At any point, you could go backwards or forwards, and weren’t required to vote for each and every last position up for election (I could have completely skipped the judges, had I wanted to).

There were no keyboards or any other input devices on the machines, so “hacking” the system would have to be done from an outside source (assuming some kind of modem or WAN connection) or from the master control station.

I don’t know how expensive those little black-boxes are, but I think that they, or something like them, should be everywhere. Especially in Florida in time for the next election.

12

I’ve seen two schools of thought on voting reform:

  1. Give everybody touch screens which make it virtually impossible to double vote or get confused and they provide quick totals. However, there is no paper trail and no way to know that someone isn’t screwing with the equipment.

  2. Give everybody paper ballots and have them counted by the local precincts. This sounds nice, but you might have a hard time getting people to sign up for this job.

Most likely, we’ll just muddle along the way we always have. I don’t see how the upcoming Congress will be able to make any changes.

13

I presumed that such electronic gadgetry were in use, if not the norm. How widespread are they?

Could you (or anyone else) offer some insight into the technical and logistical issues of electronic voting? Are physical copies of the completed ballots retained at the polling station in case of dispute. What happens in the case of power or telecommunication failures? What safegards are to ensure that votes cannot be electronically siphoned off? Are these nifty flat screens used away from the magor population centres?

The Australian electorates are still hand counted and the counts are phoned into the central tally rooms. Naturally, we’re only counting 5% of the number of votes the USA does, but we cover a similar land mass.

As the extreme example, the electorate of Kalgoorlie (in Western Australia) with an area of 2.3 million sq km (as comparison, Texas is 0.692 million sq km) and has a population of just 168,000. A substantial portion of this area doesn’t have mains power or much else for that matter. :slight_smile:

I would expect the same sort of logistical issues would be encountered across a fair portion of the US. Or do isolated people just have low voter turn-outs? Australian compulsory voting means that we have to service these dispersed communities completely.

14

There are some precincts in California, where there is no polling place because there are too few people in the area. In those areas, you have to mail your ballot in.

Riverside County, California used all touch-screens I believe. I don’t believe anyone thought that anything went wrong there, but I can see a whole host of problems.

The computers would have to be set up so that each terminal just records one set of votes on some sort of disc that can then be fed in to a central computer.
However, there was no paper trail I believe. I don’t know what Riverside would have done if someone demanded a recount.

15

Why do we elect the president on the same day as all the other stuff? Is it mandated by law, and if so, to what end?
I think I’d like to see the presidential elections held seperately. You get a ballot (a big one) with the candidates names, party affiliations, and pictures. Mark it with a magic marker.
Peace,
mangeorge

16

Ex-Tank, that voting system sounds great. I do wonder about the recount, though - do they save the little electronic storage units for each voter, I wonder?

17

You have it backwards. The date of the Presidential elections is set by the Constitution as the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. State, county, and municipal officials get elected on the same day simply for convenience and cost.

Since we have direct elections of our state and local officials rather than a parliamentary system, they all serve for fixed numbers of years. States etc. could legally set their own dates at some other time if they wanted to, but there’s no compelling reason to.

Note that primary elections can be on any date, and presidential primaries are often on different dates from state/county/local primaries. That’s LESS convenient and cost-efficient, but an early presidential primary gets a state attention and power.