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How should votes be tallied?

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Blahface

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Apr 1, 2008
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Illinois
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Atheist
What precautions do you think we should take when tabulating the votes? Should any of it be electronic or should it all be hand counted?

I personally think that we should use a scan-tron paper ballot. Once scanned in, a unique ID should be printed on the ballot and an electronic record of the ballot should be added to the database. The ballot database file should be made pubic (not in real time; after all the results are in) and every polling station should check in public view a small random sample of ballots and compare them to their electronic counterpart.

Is there any potential problems with this or do you think there is a better way? One potential problem I see is that maybe due to a bug it doesn't give out a unique ID or maybe the printer fails at the polling station. If this happens though, they can still be hand counted later, or they can be scanned in with a different machine later. I think this is the best compromise in terms of ensuring the integrity of the system and getting results without counting for days or weeks.
 
We count collate/count votes by hand in Australia. Having been involved in the last 5 commonwealth elections and worked for the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) for quite a while the system is quite good.
Granted it can be quite slow esp. for close seats but that is not as bad as some make out.
People forget that the sun will rise the next day, your mum will still love you and the machinery of government will continue even if a result is not known straight away.
The only people who really want the result quickly are the pollies who want their pay to start or continue or the journos who have to justify their ridiculous behaivour and predictions.
For the man in the street it makes no difference to their lives in any way if the result is not known for 2, 3 or n days.
 
Tigers! said:
We count collate/count votes by hand in Australia. Having been involved in the last 5 commonwealth elections and worked for the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) for quite a while the system is quite good.
Granted it can be quite slow esp. for close seats but that is not as bad as some make out.
People forget that the sun will rise the next day, your mum will still love you and the machinery of government will continue even if a result is not known straight away.
The only people who really want the result quickly are the pollies who want their pay to start or continue or the journos who have to justify their ridiculous behaivour and predictions.
For the man in the street it makes no difference to their lives in any way if the result is not known for 2, 3 or n days.
Click to expand...

I agree that there is no need to get it done quickly, and accuracy is infinitely more important. However, I can think of only positives for something akin to the OP with the addition of hand-counting the scantron as well as machine counting. Every ballot can be assigned a unique #, and the hand determined response entered into a spreadsheet that is then matched against the machine result. Any discrepancies can prompt simply pulling the original scantron. In fact, the voter could get a receipt that tells them their unique #, so they can verify against internet posted results that their ballot was counted correctly. It preserves anonymity while greatly increasing accountability.

The % of Americans (both left and right) that value a particular result more than they value protecting basic principles is on the sharp increase. Thus, the odds of fraud by any one method, including hand-counters without any way to catch fraud is increasing.
 
Blahface said:
What precautions do you think we should take when tabulating the votes? Should any of it be electronic or should it all be hand counted?

I personally think that we should use a scan-tron paper ballot.
Click to expand...

.....Generated, AFTER the voter's ID has been verified/recognized, as a result of their thumb-print scan.​
 
Medicine Man said:
Blahface said:
What precautions do you think we should take when tabulating the votes? Should any of it be electronic or should it all be hand counted?

I personally think that we should use a scan-tron paper ballot.
Click to expand...

.....Generated, AFTER the voter's ID has been verified/recognized, as a result of their thumb-print scan.​
Click to expand...

das rayciss!
 
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