Tuesday, November 07, 2006
NOTE ON MACHINE VOTING
“I don't care who does the electing, so long as I get to do the nominating.”
- William Marcy "Boss" Tweed
Boy, they really are an oddly designed piece of crap - though the machines used in Illinois, a least in my precinct, print an official paper ballot. While I voted in about a minute, the voters older than, say, 45, appeared bewildered by the computer format and took inordinately long to cast their ballot. I was bewildered by the bizarre hand-crank wheel user interface - who thought adding a feature from a Ford Model T to a voting booth was a good engineering choice ?
It would also seem that the ID code you need to enter coupled with the tear-off tab from the voters registration file pretty much would eliminate the secret ballot, if anyone cared to correlate the information. Maybe Dave can explain that feature to me ? ¶ 4:12 PM
“I don't care who does the electing, so long as I get to do the nominating.”
- William Marcy "Boss" Tweed
Boy, they really are an oddly designed piece of crap - though the machines used in Illinois, a least in my precinct, print an official paper ballot. While I voted in about a minute, the voters older than, say, 45, appeared bewildered by the computer format and took inordinately long to cast their ballot. I was bewildered by the bizarre hand-crank wheel user interface - who thought adding a feature from a Ford Model T to a voting booth was a good engineering choice ?
It would also seem that the ID code you need to enter coupled with the tear-off tab from the voters registration file pretty much would eliminate the secret ballot, if anyone cared to correlate the information. Maybe Dave can explain that feature to me ? ¶ 4:12 PM
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That sounds absolutely awful.
Printing out a "receipt" doesn't guarantee what the machine has registered inside.
Seems to me the only reliable kind of electronic machines are the optical readers: the voter marks the ballot, and the machine reads it. That's what we have in New Mexico.
The voter-marked ballots can be counted by hand, the old way, if necessary.
CKR
Printing out a "receipt" doesn't guarantee what the machine has registered inside.
Seems to me the only reliable kind of electronic machines are the optical readers: the voter marks the ballot, and the machine reads it. That's what we have in New Mexico.
The voter-marked ballots can be counted by hand, the old way, if necessary.
CKR
# posted by 
: Wednesday, 08 November, 2006
: Wednesday, 08 November, 2006
Hi Cheryl,
Dave Schuler told me a quote from Earl Long recently -" I can make those machines sing 'Sweet Home' " -which would apply equally well in this instance.
I'm not certain that every county in Illinois used these paticular machines though. I wouldn't be surprised if downstate ( culturally, Southern Illinois is more like Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri than they are like the Chicago area) used the old paper ballots.
Then again, I don't follow state politics much as the corruption level is so endemic as to make Lousiana and New Jersey look clean.
Dave Schuler told me a quote from Earl Long recently -" I can make those machines sing 'Sweet Home' " -which would apply equally well in this instance.
I'm not certain that every county in Illinois used these paticular machines though. I wouldn't be surprised if downstate ( culturally, Southern Illinois is more like Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri than they are like the Chicago area) used the old paper ballots.
Then again, I don't follow state politics much as the corruption level is so endemic as to make Lousiana and New Jersey look clean.
When I checked in to vote, they wrote the serial number of my ballot down next to my name. The guarantee of anonymity stands only so long as there's no evidence of foul play.
The wheel works just fine for navigation if you think of the text as linear rather than a two-dimensional page. My blind spouse had not the slightest difficulty navigating the thing (though considerably smarter than average, so not a good judge of that, I suppose), and really got a kick out of being able to vote without help.
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The wheel works just fine for navigation if you think of the text as linear rather than a two-dimensional page. My blind spouse had not the slightest difficulty navigating the thing (though considerably smarter than average, so not a good judge of that, I suppose), and really got a kick out of being able to vote without help.
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