What about this scenario, because it is a point of contention in an area I used to live:
Let’s say that there is a race for the state legislature where the top 4 candidates are elected. The ballot lists the 4 GOP nominees and the 4 DEM nominees, again with the top 4 overall vote getters winning the seats.
A voter selects straight party GOP at the top of the main ballot, and then selects only one GOP candidate in the field.
Should only the one GOP candidate be credited with a vote, or all 4 GOP candidates, or no votes at all for the race, or no votes at all for the ballot?
Then you’re in disagreement with a vast number of computer scientists who actually know something about this stuff. There are several inherent features of digital systems which makes challenging to construct a voting system. These are not things that can be designed around, they’re baked into the system.
I agree. I think your vote is a power a person should take seriously. If there’s a problem with your ballot, ask a poll worker and start over. There are simply too many concessions to help people vote correctly and people still screw it up. I saw one ballot that had one oval filled, crossed out and another oval filled in.
If you can speak, you can vote. If you don’t know whether or not you’re following the rules, ask, otherwise just give up.
I can do my banking online, manage my 401k, give my social security number, my credit card number for purchases, date of birth, all kinds of sensitive information that is protected by encryption technology.
Yes, I’d like to be enlightened about this point as well. I study Computer Science so I think it’d be interesting to hear these argument. Banks trust ATMs with their money, it must be possible to trust a similar machine with votes.
I don’t really know what you mean, to be honest, but the first place I’d start would be to have a usb port that can be physically locked with a metal door. In fact, have the entire machine encased in metal. The amount of force that would be required to open it would have to draw attention.
Also, if the bank system fucks up your account, you’re really the only one affected by it. If it screws over 10,000 people, the unfortunate consequences are still confined to that group. If a voting system messes up 10,000 votes, that can have a much wider impact.
It can be done, but it hasn’t yet. Until good electronic voting methods are in place, people are correct to mistrust electronic voting.
jtgain, do you mean there’s actually a spot to fill in on the ballot that says “Vote straight ticket Republican for all races” and a similar one for Dems? Certainly there are those who choose to vote straight tickets, but in all the places I’ve lived, you have to do that by voting for each of them individually.
I say go back to good old technology. Little levers above the name of the candidate you want. Pull down the lever if you want to vote for the guy.
Disadvantage is someone has to make certain the lever for candidate A moves the counter for A.
Yes. I’ve lived in West Virginia and Florida in my adult life, and in both states there is an option at the top of the ballot to mark a straight party ticket, and out the door you go.
It takes only one mark, for example, if I mark straight party DEM, then every DEM on the ballot gets my vote.
I was thinking about this last night as I fell asleep, and I came to the conclusion that the biggest problem is man-in-the-middle attacks. Even the most secure transaction system is going to be somewhat vulnerable to MITM spoofing. If it’s my bank account, well, I’ve got a receipt, and I can go to the bank and start an investigation. If it’s a voting system, there is no way I’m going to be able to tell if my vote has been switched by a rogue server along the way. Encryption helps, but isn’t foolproof.
In West Virginia, but not in Florida (or at least not in my lifetime). Here’s a link to a sample of the ballot used in Leon County (PDF).
And here’s the one for your county (PDF again - based on your stated location).
In neither case is there any “straight party” option. I’ve been voting in Florida since 1986 and don’t recall ever seeing this option. How would that option account for non-partisan races, amendments, etc?
A quick Google reveals that there are 15 states that allow for “the straight party ticket” (down from 17 in 2004). They are:
Alabama
Indiana
Iowa
Kentucky
Michigan
New Mexico
North Carolina*
Oklahoma
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Carolina
Texas
Utah
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Although the Party vote does not include the Presidential race!
Sometimes my wife buys something online, and uses my name and credit card information, especially if it’s on a website where I have an existing account. This is perfectly fine because I approve of the transactions, we have shared finances and I have no issue with it being under my name instead of hers. She also uses my login for our bank account.
OTOH, she is barred by law from voting under my name, and I am barred by law to allow her to vote under my name. If she and I live under the same roof, it is trivial to see how she would be able to use my vote without my approval, or vote for me with my approval, in violation of the law.
It is also fairly easy to see how someone could spoof a vote, pretending to be someone else. Identity theft happens all the time, and it’s probably a lot easier to catch someone in regular identity theft, because they’re trying to steal money, so there has to be some sort of money trail from the victim to the perpetrator. No such trail needs to exist for voter fraud, once the vote is done, nothing comes back to the fraudster.
God forbid the encryption gets cracked, a guy could spoof votes from his car, using random open Wi-Fi connections to insert votes.
I stand corrected about Florida. I could have sworn that I saw it, but it must have been from growing up in WV earlier. And my hypothetical was from WV.
The problems are many, but the most prominent are two. First, it has been proven that it is trivial to bypass protections on electronic voting machines. Physical security is extremely weak. The key to voting machines was successfully reproduced using photographs on Diebold’s website, for example. The source code of the software has vulnerabilities and is not properly controlled or tested. Etc, etc, etc. See Ed Felten’s web page or the web page of California Secretary of State for substantial reading about the problems.
Second, one person can change thousands (or more) of votes on a single electronic machine while one person would have an extremely difficult altering any large number of paper ballots. It is also much easier to detect altered paper ballots because of the amount of time and manpower required to alter any substantial number, plus the evidence of the changes likely remaining on the actual ballots.
The amount of time it takes to alter electronic votes after the fact is trivial, in addition to the possibility that the software can be changed beforehand to automatically alter votes as the election occurs. Paper ballots are just not as vulnerable to widespread alterations and fraud.
There has to be a way where folks can fill out a ballot, get some sort of confirmation on what the ballot thinks they want to do and then submit the actual ballot or create a new one if the voter is unsatisfied. Then the onus is opn the voter to confirm their own intent.
Yes.
I’ve mentioned before that I think a good system consists of touch-screen voting, along with a machine-printed ballot. Once the user is done voting, the computer prints the actual ballot. Then, the user can verify that their vote was recorded correctly, and the ballot can be saved for a hand re-count.