E-Voting: a Flawed Solution in Search of a Problem 376
blorg writes "In the promised follow-up to last-week's I, Cringely column on E-Voting (discussed on Slashdot here), Robert X. Cringely discusses his proposed solution to the electronic voting mess. The ideas in this piece have all appeared already on Slashdot, but this stands as a well-argued condensation of them into a single article.
In the article, he looks briefly at possible solutions for the auditability problem but ultimately argues that technology introduces more problems into elections than it solves. Instead, he suggests that elections can be run quicker, cheaper and fairer using the paper-based Canadian model."
Cringely is a fraud (Score:5, Funny)
This is yet another Canadian plot to intimidate, impersonate, and infiltrate our precious bodily fluids!
Re:Cringely is a fraud (Score:2, Flamebait)
Re:Cringely is a fraud (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Cringely is a fraud (Score:2, Informative)
(nb: I'm in Canada)
In the last civic election we used electronic machines but all they did was take the piece of paper we marked our X on and scanned it in. There was still a paper trail if a physical audit was needed.
Re:Cringely is a fraud (Score:4, Funny)
-B
Had to do it.
Re:Cringely is a fraud (Score:2)
The Canadian Progressive Reform Conservative Alliance Party of Canada is going to have to wait a few more terms at least before the dictatorship can be overthrown
Re:Cringely is a fraud (Score:4, Funny)
If you can't see the acronym, people, don't ask me to spell it out.
Re:Cringely is a fraud (Score:2, Interesting)
- A mark outside the circle, even if incidental.
- Not a perfect check mark, dash, or X
While a "Oui" vote written with a swaztika would be just fine.
Re:Cringely is a fraud (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Cringely is a fraud (Score:3, Insightful)
That's only part of the "problem" (Score:5, Insightful)
Until more people get involved in the political process, the majority will be subject to the will of the minority-those that actually get out and vote, and get involved in election campaigns, writing to their representatives, etc.
-cp-
President Bush to Liberate Alaska! [alaska-freegold.com]
Re:That's only part of the "problem" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:That's only part of the "problem" (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's how: "An often overlooked approach to getting the attention of your representatives is to get involved in their campaign. Very few people contribute money or time to a campaign, and those that do are rewarded by having the ear of the politician when they are elected. Even if they aren't elected, they usually have influence on those that are elected, and there is always the possibility that they will run again." Source [alaska-freegold.com]
-cp-
President Bush to Liberate Alaska! [alaska-freegold.com]
Re:That's only part of the "problem" (Score:3, Insightful)
I understand your frustration with the vacuous candidates of the two major parties. But if you don't find Sock Puppet 'A' or Sock Puppet 'B' as viable choices, then write in Sock Puppet 'C' or abstain. But not showing up on election day means that you do not get counted. It could be that you disagree with the candidates or it could be that you were too drunk to drive to the polling place. The rest of us will
Re:That's only part of the "problem" (Score:4, Insightful)
While we're talking about the "real" problem, I think it's corrupt and selfish people. Why should we have to worry about people cheating? I'd be much more worried about someone buying their way into power than if some people who don't really care not voting. The fact we have to worry about that is sad.
Don't get me wrong, people should vote. But if they don't want to, that is their right just as much as it is to vote.
Vote! (if you feel like it...) (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Vote! (if you feel like it...) (Score:2)
Re:Vote! (if you feel like it...) (Score:3, Informative)
Sorry, but no scandinavian country have compulsory voting. People just vote anyway - cause they care about the society.
Re:That's only part of the "problem" (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't vote but it isn't because of "apathy" (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I don't vote but it isn't because of "apathy" (Score:3, Interesting)
Well that depends...How much do you want to pay for it?
It is not a question of exercising my right to vote. One cannot exercise what one does not really have, can they? I refuse to play a role in a fake vote. I the kind of guy that Hussian would have had shot because I wouldn't have voted in his "election" either. We don't have elections in t
Re:That's only part of the "problem" (Score:5, Insightful)
Second, given IRV, you have a good deal more incentive to remove the electoral college, which again makes voters feel empowered, and incents voting.
Re:That's only part of the "problem" (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:That's only part of the "problem" (Score:5, Insightful)
Third parties in the US are pretty much screwed because people know about the 'vote stealing' effect. If people that would normally vote for party one vote for party three, party two ends up with the majority of votes, even if party one would have gotten the majority if party three had not been running.
Its dumb, and I think its a problem that electronic voting could help to solve (ranking candidates on a screen that can dynamicly reorder the names to show preferences could be much easier for stupid people to use than anything on paper)
Re:That's only part of the "problem" (Score:2)
For one thing, most of us are smart enough to only mark one place, unlike some Americans who can't punch a hole in a piece of paper properly -- it's actually *easier* to NOT mark a box than to make sure a hole is punched correctly.
For another thing, when we vote, we vote for one party. Not 50 different individual people each
Re:That's only part of the "problem" (Score:5, Insightful)
You're seeing the scism between fresh-faced young college kids with enthusiasm for all things technological and us old hands who have almost every project we have ever had the misfortune to work on fail in one way or another. The fresh faced college kids are all ra-ra for technology ("Technology for all! Arn't computers great? We'll change the world!") while us old hands are simply looking at yet another project that is surely going to fail in oh-so-many predictable ways.
Trust the old hands. Technology is all shit, and none of it works.
Paper receipts (Score:5, Insightful)
I do like the old-tech method. Put an X next to the person on paper. It is cheaper, and give old people something to do. (They staff all the voting over here, providing a very valuable service.)
Re:Paper receipts (Score:2)
Any paper-base receipt is suseptable to abuse. Specifically, this allows someone to confirm how another person voted.
Not if the paper's deposited in a sealed ballot box before the person leaves the voting station and has nothing to link it to the person. Of course, then you've got the "Florida Problem" - corrupt election officials stuffing ballot boxes. But you've got this even without electronic voting, so...
Re:Paper receipts (Score:2)
Re:Paper receipts (Score:2)
So there's no reasonable opportunity to stuff the ballot box.
Re:Paper receipts (Score:3, Insightful)
So there's no reasonable opportunity to stuff the ballot box.
In theory. In practice, the member of one party could be paid off, disloyal/disgruntled, not actually a member of that party, or have to get up to use the washroom. In any of the above cases, the other party still gets a chance to engage in illegal behavior. And this is ignoring the fact that both could collaborate to prevent a third party with large popular support but without the institutional support needed to count as a "major" party (and
Re:Paper receipts (Score:4, Interesting)
California's Secretary of State announced last month that California will have a paper trail for its electronic voting machines (starting in mid-'05). It's a good thing IMHO. press release(PDF) [ca.gov]
Re:Paper receipts (Score:3, Interesting)
I almost spit my soda all over the da
Re:Paper receipts (Score:5, Insightful)
I have heard this several times, and don't understand it. The whole point of a paper receipt is so that you can do a manual recount latter on to see if the machines are correct. Who cares if the machine can print out the same thing it is displaying on the screen, that doesn't help at all to verify that it is working correctly. The reason the people verify that the paper is the same as on the screen is to verify that the paper is correct, in case it is used for a recount. So the paper would have to stay at the voting place to be of any use at all.
Secondly, there is no reason the paper receipt would have to link the vote to the voter, indeed it should not. It would be nice if the electronic record of the vote could be linked to the paper ballot using some ID, but there is no reason for either of those to be linked to the voter.
Receipts do not compromise any sort of privacy whatsoever.
I do like the old-tech method. Put an X next to the person on paper.
The best method that I have heard of is the inverse of the electronic voting machines with reciepts. Voters fill in a scan-tron ballot. Then, within the privacy of their voting booth, they would scan the form and a machine would display their vote to double check that the ballot was readable and that they had not made a mistake. This machine would not be connected to the network or count their vote in anyway to prevent user errors from messing up the count.(Think about what happens when a fast food employee makes a mistake, and what they have to do to correct it. Now think about someone who has never used the voting machine making a mistake and needing to correct it, or worse needing to get a volenteer to correct it potentially violating their voting privacy) If the vote displayed is correct they deposit the ballot in a voting box (also in the privacy of their booth). Otherwise they correct it, or if necisarry dispose of the incorrect ballot and start over, and rescan until it is good. Another nice feature is that absentee ballots could be identical to other ballots.
It is more user-error proof than any other method I have seen. The technology is well-proven, secure, and familiar to voters and volenteers. There is no more room for fraud than anything else I have seen. Very efficent to count and recount, and can be recounted by hand if necisarry. And less expensive than what diebold et all are offering.
Re:Paper receipts (Score:3, Insightful)
However, a crypto-based system has been developed [slashdot.org] which provides paper receipts that make it possible to confirm that a vote was correctly counted without revealing what that vote was.
Re:Paper receipts (Score:3, Interesting)
This receipt itself can then only be "verified" at the voting booths by using a computer in the similar fashion as to which the person voted.
Selling this receipt to anyone would then be useless (you can't verify the receipt unless the original person is physically there, just like the voting process). Unless of course that person already had access to
Stop calling them "reciepts". They're BALLOTS! (Score:5, Insightful)
Cringley is perpeutating a misunderstanding about the so-called "paper receipts" - that the voter takes them home, and can show them to another person to collect his graft. This is NOT what they are about.
They are not "receipts". They are "ballots". They are the OFFICIAL record of the vote. They are collected in at the polling place and placed in the ballot box. If there's any question about an automated count, a manual recount of these papers becomes the final tally.
The voting machine helps you fill them out, so there's no issue of improperly marked votes (like "hanging" or "dimpled" chads, Xes outside the box, or lightly filled-in mark cards) and no ballots "spoiled" by over-voting or other improper marking. But after the machine fills out your ballot you can check that it did that part of its job correctly - and try again if it screws up.
The voting machine MAY also count your vote as it creates these cards, to speed up the report. But the marked cards trump the voting machine's tally, which means they're the REAL record.
So let's clear the air by calling them what they are - human-verifiable machine-printed BALLOTS.
The Big Fuss (Score:5, Insightful)
The evoting systems are coming from a flawed decision making process.
The development of closed source voting systems is also very anti-democratic. Ideally, voting sytems would have each logical step in the process open for criticism and review. Electronic voting is part of the democratic process. So this is a very good place for people favoring OSS to show case their ideals.
How do you choose? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How do you choose? (Score:2, Funny)
One thing few slashdotters consider (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:One thing few slashdotters consider (Score:2)
It does work pretty well here. (Score:5, Insightful)
On election day you're in and out in 10 minutes, with one neat x, and merrily on your way!
-s
Of course he has some good points... (Score:3, Funny)
--jeff++
Blame Canada (Score:5, Insightful)
The Canuck system is 100% open, 100% low-tech.
I'm screaming like some kind of Cliff Stoll now, but this shit is getting ridiculous.
Canadian cost per capita: $1.81
US cost $3.27
Go Canada! (Score:4, Insightful)
--Mike--
Re:Go Canada! (Score:2)
1/2 :-)
1/2 :-(
Republic, not Democracy. (Score:3, Insightful)
Naw.
As long as you're voting on who will represent you you only get a real Republic.
Now if you change the rules so you vote directly on all the issues, rather than electing people to do it FOR you, you'd have a Democracy.
But I bet you wouldn't want to spend as much of your life arguing and voting as your representatives do. B-)
Re:Blame Canada (Score:5, Interesting)
US cost $3.27
One of the main reasons it's cheaper is because all elections are run by a single body, Elections Canada [elections.ca], but in the U.S. elections are generally run by individual counties, each having to make their own ballots and having their own procedures. This also adds to the problem where poorer counties would have to make do with older equipment.
It would be cheaper and more efficient if each state had a single body that administered elections, buying equipment in bulk, but most states "pass the buck" onto counties for budget reasons, even though it ends up costing taxpayers more in the end.
man versus machine (Score:2)
Although the older machines left no paper trail the one thing they did leave is physical paper, we all remember the moronic media following chad ballots on the highway. With e-voting there are far too many variables to whol
Re:man versus machine (Score:2)
But it would be a mistake to think that with touch screen voting we are necessarily giving up an auditing capability that we traditionally have had. The old lever voting machines that were used in the U.S. for most of the last century produced no paper trail, just lists of total votes.
Although the older machines left no paper trail the one thing they did leave is physical paper, we all remember the moronic media following chad ballots on the highway. With e-voting there are far too many variables to whole
EULA, UN, Blog maddness (Score:2)
This is a idea sure to fail (Score:2)
With a system like Canada's, the SC would have to step in and re-select W before the voting even "takes place" to ensure his continued reign. With e-voting, the "results" can be uploaded days beforehand. That's so less controversial, after all.
I think Mr. Cringely will be visiting Guantanamo Bay fairly soon.
I don't believe (Score:2, Informative)
Also, I don't think that paper-based voting models can be quicker than that. Here we usually have the results at the end of the night of the voting day.
the Canadian model (Score:4, Funny)
I elect:
[ ] The Liberal guy, for ever and ever amen
[ ] The Alliance, who want to send the Chinese back to Russia where they belong
[ ] The Bloc, running for Canadian parliament on the platform of breaking up Canada
[ ] The PC guy, even though the PCs haven't been a real party in years
[ ] The NDP, bringing together union rednecks and the transgendered since 1935
Re:the Canadian model (Score:2)
As a former scruitineer.... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:As a former scruitineer.... (Score:3, Informative)
Most members of the public realize that there's no point to staying to watch the ballot count. It's quite uneventful--I've worked an election before.
It should be noted that the local
Toronto Mayoral election was a really good system (Score:5, Interesting)
I was most impressed by the mayoral elections. In Toronto (don't know about the rest of them), the voting was electronically tallied but had a built-in audit trail.
The ballot was pretty simple: you connected two parts of an arrow together that pointed at your choice of candidate. None of this Florida confusion, you literally pointed at who you were voting for! Then, the ballot was read by a scanner that was placed over a large box. The scanner confirmed that your vote had been counted correctly, and the box kept the ballot.
At the end of the day, the election TV coverage was almost farcical because almost all the results were in within an hour. If any candidate wanted to contest the vote, all the original ballots had been retained as part of the system.
Maybe that would be a good system for the U.S.
You mean like in MA, among other states? (Score:2)
Maybe that would be a good system for the U.S.
You mean, like, say, the Massachusetts ballot? The technical term is a "marksense" ballot, and I think about a quarter of the US uses it to vote.
Re:Toronto Mayoral election was a really good syst (Score:2, Informative)
I went to vote sometime last year (we vote a few times a year in SF) and I waited behind a guy who was having the ballot explained to him.
The poll agent asked him if he knew how to mark the ballot and he said, "Yes, you just circle the arrow." She politely told him that he needed to connect the two lines of the arrow, to which he added, "And then circle it!" She said, "No, no need to
Re:Toronto Mayoral election was a really good syst (Score:3, Insightful)
Simply being eligible to vote does not mean that someone actually can vote. In order to vote, one must be physically and mentally capable of voting. My grandfather in his final days might have been eligible, and perhaps even physically capable of voting if someone wheeled him into the room, but he was nowhere near mentally capable of voting.
You can make the voting process only so simple, but it is impossible to make it so
Re:Toronto Mayoral election was a really good syst (Score:3, Informative)
That would be the Optech Eagle [sequoiavote.com], made by Sequoia Voting Systems, and popular in Northern California as well. They also make touch-screen systems,
He didn't answer his question! (Score:2)
But nowhere in his new column does he answer the question. I am disapointed.
A little off topic, but... (Score:2)
"If voting could change anything, it would be illegal." -- unknown
Re:A little off topic, but... (Score:2)
Always room for abuse (Score:2)
Recent Canadian elections, particularly in the province of Quebec, have been subject to all kinds of abuse. While there is a balance of scrutineers, they're not necessarily balanced, so to speak. In the 1995 Quebec referendum on separation, there were serious irregularities related to rejected ballots. Vote tallys tend to be skewed in favour of the party with the most obnoxious scrutineer.
One can only begin to imagine the outc
Quebec referendum (Score:2)
Everyone Calm Down (Score:2, Interesting)
Federal vs. State responsibility (Score:5, Interesting)
The one problem with his suggestion, as I understand it, is that the states are responsible for the design of the ballot in the USA. In Canada, the ballot design is dictated by Elections Canada (a non-partisan government agency) Every poll must have the same design for the ballot. The design is all candidates on a single piece of paper that folds 3 times. The candidates names are alphabetical and in white on a solid black background. The vote is marked in a white circle next to the name.
I guess to have a Canadian style ballot would probably require a constitutional change in the USA, with the states giving up some control over the elections.
Voting (Score:2)
While the push toward electronic voting seems driven by the notion that cutting costs is a good thing, it seems to me that elections are pretty damn fundamental to any democratic process and that we can certainly find other places to save a buck here and there.
Any election process is subject to potential fraud - whole cemeteries have been known to vote on paper ballots. But smallish precinc
Damn these Canucks! (Score:2)
Easy, with only one contest (Score:2)
Re:Easy, with only one contest (Score:2)
Dave Barry said the same thing last year (Score:5, Interesting)
No, no, the article is wrong. (Score:2, Insightful)
Solution: Voting machines manufactured by a pro-GOP company that do not leave a paper trail.
Simple, no?
Over-electoralism (Score:3, Interesting)
So why wouldnt our system work in the US? I've seen american ballots where people are are to answer dozens of questions.. To vote at the same time for the president, senator, congressman, governor, mayor, a few judges, prosecutors, etc, etc.. And not counting referendums... No one can keep up with so many races and carefully look at the candidates to pick the best one. America needs less votes for more democracy. Ohh and the ballots in there.. Its pretty easy to count when there is only one question to be counted for the whole evening... even the whole year.... When so many questions have to be counted, its a whole different matter...
So let me recapitulate.. the solution is to less elected officials and separate various levels of elections.. One question at a time!
Another advantage... (Score:2, Interesting)
My Opinion (Score:5, Insightful)
Number of Elections (Score:2)
Or maybe it is, and they should cut down on the elections for city dog catcher.
Cheers, Paul
Sexy tech and Sexy news (Score:2)
Then there is the drive of the US media - witness the 2000 elections - "With 0% of the vote in, we predict a landslide for Gore".
There is no meaningful reason we MUST have the election results within hours of the vote - that is why the vote is in November and the transfer of office in January.
Personally, I wis
They're not "in search of a problem." (Score:5, Insightful)
An idea (Score:4, Interesting)
1) Mail every registered voter a barcode and it's cleartext alphanumeric number, before the election.
2) They can either go to a website or vote in person somewhere, they put in the number (or scan in the barcode), choose their votes, and affirm that they placed the vote.
3) All results are posted in plaintext to a website. People can check the list to verify that their vote was correct and counted, and they can run their own stats to make sure the counts are correct.
Voting is anonymous because only the voting registration people know which unique ID's go to which people, people get new ID's for each election.
Solution to the WRONG problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Why the Canadian system works well (Score:4, Interesting)
Voting machines are really hopelessly obscure and not open in any way and fraud is so easy that it is laughable and ridiculous to even consider them. The criminals will love it. It's a perfect way to make voting meaningless and to ensure that the US eventually becomes a dictatorship. Good luck to the sheep who are willing to let this happen -- soon you will be roast mutton.
two things (Score:3, Insightful)
Second, if this HAVA thing is all based on a creative reading of the act, "Well, they said auditable but they don't really MEAN it", why can't someone just sue? This is just the sort of the thing that Supreme Court is made for, to smack down Congress when they write a stupid law.
E-voting inevitable (Score:3, Interesting)
given a working valid system...
Results are instant.
ballots cannot be incomplete or improperly filled out.
Certification can be more in depth.. cross checking with other databases to make sure dead people to vote for instance.
absentee voting can be made possible without mail in votes, and they can vote when everyone else does at electronic voting stations. Though I grant for that to work you need a national standard voting system that is always available ( permanent voting stations as opposed to temp ). Colleges, embasies, military bases and similar places would have permanent voting facilities to allow for people away from home to vote when needed.
All of those are problems that can be addressed and all but eliminated by an electonic voting system that are almost impossible to irradicate from a physcial paper voting system.
There is the possibility for fraud obviously... but so is there in the current system. In fact its rampant in the current system, especially in the mess of systems used across the nation due to no standard voting system in the US.
I think most people seem to focus on the possibility of remote fraud, and the possibility of a far more easily manipulated system. HOWEVER remote manipulation also means remote verification. People tend to evaluate the certification process based on the older system without thinking of the new implications for verification possible. This whole argument reminds me of the begining of E-commerce and the fear of credit fraud so bad no body would buy online.... yet how many people shop on amazon and e-bay now ?
In short the problem is solveable/manageable, and the potential gains in instant returns and far smaller inherent margian of error matched with the ability to make voting far more available far outweigh the potential problems in my opinion.
Re:All this trouble... (Score:2)
Re:All this trouble... (Score:5, Informative)
You enter your votes; the machine says "thanks." And off you go.
You can hope it stored your votes correctly.
You can hope it will copy the votes into the data transmission devive they use to collect those votes.
You can hope the central system that reads that device correctly collects and reports all the votes.
But you cannot *know*.
And not a blind, ignorant, tottering ex-NYC Floridian in sight to blame it on.
Hell, I would LOVE paper ballots over this system!
Zamboni chicken (Score:2)
Re:northern exposure (Score:2)
Re:YUO = TEH FP JEDI MASTA ON TEH SPOKE (Score:2)
Re:They always say. . . (Score:5, Funny)
So you're the dumb F&*% that wants to put a web browser in my refridgerator?
Over-use of technology when there's no need for it is a bigger mistake than not implementing the "latest and greatest" when you have a system that already works.
(not to say that the US voting system works)
MadCow.
I say we write a manifesto!! (Score:2)
Engineers, Programmers, Designers, LEND ME YOUR EARS!
Too long have we toiled under the idiotic yoke of marketing, always trying to squeeze just one more useless checkbox feature to differentiate our product from the competition! Too long have we been forced by pointy-haired management to build overly-complex systems and ship them before they a
Re:They always say. . . (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do people keep bringing this up as a reason paper ballots won't work? The USA has 10 times the population of Canada; that means we have 10 times as many people to help count ballots, and 10 times the tax base to pay them.
Here's another way of looking at it: Let's say each precinct has 1000 voters, and requires 10 people to count ballots. It doesn't matter how many precincts there ar
Re:Canadian Voting FY (Score:3, Interesting)
Not True (Score:5, Informative)
Jean Chretien retired, and the Liberal Party of Canada *elected* a successor.
Canadians voted for our present ruling Party fair and square it was pretty clear who the people of Canada chose.
This is the way politics work in Canada: we vote for people in our riding to represent us, who represent a political Party, the members of the Party elect their leader. In this case the leader of the Party with the most seats in the House was Jean Chretien, he then retired, and the party elected a new leader. When the Parties term is up, or whenever the Party chooses chose prior to the term, the Party calls an election, and the voters of Canada elect new people who represent a Party.
If you don't like what you see then *join a party and vote for your leader*.
Sounds pretty far from a Monarchy to me.
Now - back to the article - I think that the Canadian voting system is pretty good. But what Cringely fails to note is that in Canada, for our elections, we are *typically* only voting for one thing: who will represent us in our riding. Whereas in the US voters are voting for people to represent them, and NUMEROUS referendum items. Canadian votes can be tallied quickly because we have so little to add up. Even using the Canadian system US votes would still take a MUCH longer time to tally.
Re:Canadian voting model (Score:3, Informative)
Please don't confuse the Canadian system with American system. We don't hold "Presidential" elections per se; the point of an election in Canada is to elect Members of Parliament. The Prime Minister is the leader of the party that wins the most seats, and is appointed by the party. The PM is never directly elected by the general electorate.
Thus, in the last election, Jean Ch
Please understand your own system before you vote. (Score:4, Interesting)
Would Canadians please realize that you're not voting for a Prime Minister, you're voting for a representative to Parliament, and that person in turn has a vote for the Prime Minister.
If you have a problem with this, maybe you'd think twice before you vote for a party.
This is the problem too many people voting for the party, not enough people voting for the person. I happily voted in the Burnaby Mountain riding for Svend Robinson because he was the person in my riding who best represented my political opinions and had the best track record amongst the candidates. And to think the Canadian Alliance representative almost beat him out. Does anybody even actually go to the debates anymore? The two people who clearly understood what they were talking about were the Conservative candidate and Svend. The Canadian Alliance guy consistently showed that all he was was someone reading off a piece of paper that Stockwell Day handed to him and really didn't understand a thing of politics. If I wanted someone like that in Parliament, I would have voted for the Rhinoceros party.
Fact of the matter is the Conservative candidate was a clear concise talker who understood the issues and showed himself to be a good representer of his constituents in parliament. But alas he got the least votes. Why? Because nobody likes Joe Clark! And it doesn't matter anyway anymore because now the Tories and the Alliance are looking to join up. So everybody that voted for a party leader basically threw their vote away.
Canadian system works, but only if people stop voting for the party and start voting for the representative.
Paul Martin was elected in the same respect that Chretien was elected: In his own riding. In no official terms did anybody outside of his riding put an X on "Jean Chretien, Liberal". So if you cast your vote for the Alliance or the Liberals based on the leader, then maybe you should go understand your voting system before you cast your next vote.
Re:solution (Score:2)