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ACLU of Ohio Sues To Block Paper Ballots
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Jan 29, 2008 05:28 PM
from the something-you-don't-see-every-day dept.
from the something-you-don't-see-every-day dept.
Apu writes in to inform us that the ACLU is trying to block an Ohio county from moving from touchscreen voting machines back to paper ballots. While it may seem like Cuyahoga County — which includes Cleveland — is moving in a good direction from the perspective of ballot security, the system chosen tabulates all votes at a central location. This means that voters don't get notified if their ballot contains errors, and thus they have no chance to correct it. The ACLU of Ohio is asking a federal judge for an injunction against any election in Cuyahoga County it they move to the new system.
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Voting is a serious activity (Score:5, Insightful)
A frivolous lawsuit.
Disenfranchising the minuscule number of people who cannot fill out a paper ballot pails in comparison with the threat posed by computerized voting systems. The ACLU has their priorities all wrong.
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Why American voters put up with a system that does not give them the chance of a recount (or even confirming that the terminal cast your vote correctly), is beyond me...
Re:Voting is a serious activity (Score:5, Insightful)
We just don't have the correct amount of oppression or corruption from our government yet. We're actually quite a long way from that point at the moment. But one sign of that tipping point approaching is when hundreds are made to suffer when a few act. That is to point out that when the Revolutionary war happened, there really weren't that many people acting in revolt. But when they did, the oppressive and corrupt government was to come down on everyone which ACTUALLY made the war start. There were plenty of people loyal to England and the British Empire. There were lots more who were indifferent and only cared about their daily lives. But that all changed when these indifferent people became victims of war, then they had to fight or die.
So you see, we're rather far away from that point. To make revolution even more unlikely, our educational system churns out products good enough to be workers, but not quite good enough to think for themselves, and there is certainly no real emphasis on history because if there were any, even the 'workers' would be able to realize there are some pretty big problems going on.
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Re:Voting is a serious activity (Score:5, Interesting)
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I think you need to practice some (self-)education yourself.
Go back and investigate literacy rates in the New England colonies circa 1750. You'll very likely be surprised. Hint - it was very likely the highest anywhere in the world at that time.
Next, go and grab a handful of the essays and debates of the time. It shouldn't be difficult. People were debating the merits of rebellion in person and in print all over the place back then. Once you have a good number of these treatises, essays and debat
Re:Voting is a serious activity (Score:4, Insightful)
No, they should be notified of their error immediately and be allowed to correct it. You are wholly wrong here.
A bad system vs. a bad system. Except the paper ballot system is likely easily corrected by pulling the scanner machines out of the centralized location and placing them in the polling venues. In stark contrast the systemic flaws seemingly designed into most electronic voting systems.
Parent
Re:Voting is a serious activity (Score:5, Insightful)
Getting back to the error getting corrected at the polling place... I saw this on several occasions having grown up in a neighborhood with a lot of seniors. When you have trembling hands, mistakes can be made. I don't see why having trembling hands should mean their vote gets disqualified as if that means they're stupid or something. There's a lot of valid physical ailments people can have that might lead to a mistake, and I personally have seen optical scanners onsite at polling stations catch them and allow the person to correct them.
Voting is indeed a serious activity, serious enough to warrant a system that concerns itself with making sure that everyone's vote gets counted accurately whether they make a mistake or not.
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Re:Voting is a serious activity (Score:4, Insightful)
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I worked as a poll clerk a few years (decades....) ago. Any elderly people who had a problem marking their ballot could ask for help. They would be allowed to take someone into the booth to help them, a friend, family, or even a the poll clerks might help, though thay were not striclty supposed to. In
Re:Voting is a serious activity (Score:5, Interesting)
In oregon, all votes are mailed back to each respective county clerk. The mailing envelope is opened, (it has your name and signature on it) and saved separately. Then the "secrecy envelope" is opened, with your ballot in it. Then you can know that your vote was counted, but they don't know what you voted for. Then, a team of people go over the ballots to count them (along with machines as well). Every vote that is handled has to have 3 people present while it is handled, to ensure fairness. (I believe that they can't all be of the same party). Paper ballots are never destroyed, so recounts are easy, and votes are verifiable. The whole process is really stinking easy, no driving to locations to vote on a day you have a bunch of meetings, school, etc. HUGE voter turnout. Basically, the whole state does voting the way that most states do "absentee" voting.
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Re:Voting is a serious activity (Score:4, Insightful)
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With old-fashioned paper votes, you never got feedback if you fucked up. I worked as a poll clerk in a few elections in Australia. The "spoiled votes", invalid for whatever reason, were 1 or 2%. Many of these were obviously deliberate -- no numbers or ticks at all. Only a very small number looked like real errors. And these were on quite complex senate voting forms with 50 or more candidates.
A
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Yes! (Score:2)
So like good programmers, we're going to leave the current version in place (no matter how buggy it is) rather than upgrade to something else with different bugs until we've got every last possible bug worked out.
My answer is ... (Score:2)
We're against everything that has errors, so we're against anything distinctly human, which is why we like technolog(&#$#$OOO@ no carrier
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I don't know if
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I don't think "central location" is a good way to tabulate the votes though. It would be easier to manipulate votes at a single location by a few people than it would if the tally is distributed across many people and locations, plus it distributes the work load in parallel so that sub-totals are quick. At least it would be much harder to hide with so many different perso
Give 'Em Bingo Blotters (Score:4, Funny)
2 cents,
QueenB.
Parent
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If someone cannot take the time to devote a minimum amount of effort to fill out a ballot properly, perhaps they should not vote at all.
A frivolous lawsuit.
Disenfranchising the minuscule number of people who cannot fill out a paper ballot pails in comparison with the threat posed by computerized voting systems. The ACLU has their priorities all wrong.
That's not the point. The point is pulling all these in a central database makes it absolutely trivial to rig an election. There's a reason people are asking
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Secret motto (Score:5, Funny)
Ohio! Committed to throwing elections since 1803!
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* Voters drop their ballot in the box themselves, instead a poll worker has to 'reset' the voting booth after the voter leaves by taking the vote and dropping it in the box before the next voter uses it.
* Some voters get special "not" votes, where they select all the candidate they DON"T want to vote for rather than the on they DO want to vote for. Which ballot they get can be at the discretion
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I've told people here that I see no problem with the Secretary of State having a campaign reminding Ohioans to vote by saying things like: "Your vote counts! It's worth at least four California votes and six Texas votes!"
Oh Bother (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
They aren't. It's an incorrect heading (surprise). The ACLU is objecting to voters not knowing that the paper ballot they filled out will not scan correctly. They want the scantrons (or similar devices) at the polls, so you can verify that the ballot can be read. As is, no record will by made of the ballots until they are at a central location.
And yet a new five-year study... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:And yet a new five-year study... (Score:5, Insightful)
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I want a unique timestamped paper receipt which I can look up later to verify my actual votes! NOTE: This *IS ALREADY IN PLACE* with retail credit/debit card sales.
I want the NSA (yes, them. http://www.nsa.gov/home_html.cfm [nsa.gov] ) to certify ANY electronic voting apparatus used in the US and to further guarantee its accuracy.
This means they would be one the ones doing the recounts
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Allowing a voter to verify their vote "after the fact" from any location (or by direct examination of a receipt that leaves the polling place with them) makes vote-buying (or coercion) much too easy. Albeit, this is already a problem with absentee ballots, but we should not make it worse. However, there are schemes that
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According to the study, all of the voting methods tested were susceptible to various types of voter error, including missed votes and voting for the wrong candidate.
Mod that dude down, he is not informative at all.
huh? (Score:2)
At least paper can't lie. (Score:4, Insightful)
With a compromised e-voting machine, you could walk in and have the machine say "Thanks for voting for candidate A" while it adds a vote for candidate B.
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Keep it decentralized and get over this "instantaneous statistics" bullshit that everyone is so fucking hyped up about. Who cares if you have to wait till the next day to find out who won? You have t
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It is simplistic to think that PAPER = SECURE, just because it's paper.
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Your focus is too narrow. Nobody says "paper ballots are secure". We say "it's far more difficult to swing an election with paper ballots without it being detected and corrected than with electronic systems."
For an individual precinct, it can be argued that paper is subject to (within an order of magnitude) similar levels of manipulation for particular insiders as electronic system
They aren't against paper but Central Count Paper. (Score:5, Informative)
The crux of their argument is that central counts unlike precinct count and even mediocre touchscreens offer the user a warning when they overvote or undervote for a race thus warning them that they ballot may not be counted and thus giving them a chance to fix it. Their argument is that this lack of a warning (however poor) is likely to cause many errors that the voters are never aware of.
So strictly speaking they are not against the use of paper ballots (it is my understanding that they favor them) just against this particular type of scanning system.
Re:They aren't against paper but Central Count Pap (Score:2)
Mod parent up, and also tag the story "badtitle". Because, well, it's completely wrong.
In Arizona (Score:4, Funny)
Of course, by the ACLU rules, voting Republican is a source of voter error, and reason for the ballot to be rejected.
My City Was Gone (Score:2)
The paper ballots aren't the problem (Score:2)
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Time to write the ACLU (Score:2)
whatever happened to hand counting? (Score:3, Insightful)
Obviously, if you want to vote anonymously, you can't get feedback about whether you filled it in correctly. But, then, you aren't in elementary school anymore.
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They do, in California. You can get up to two replacements if needed.
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Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote.