[TETENAL]

�in a pre-election test:

http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65342,00.html

A computer crash that forced a pre-election test of electronic voting machines to be postponed was [...] proof of the balloting technology's unreliability.

[...]

The incident raised questions in the minds of computer hardware and software engineers about the reliability of other computers on which Floridians will depend for an accurate vote count on Nov. 2 � especially touch-screen machines.

[...]

"Conceptually, the whole electronic voting thing is now so far from what I think is acceptable that I would never vote for it, if I had the choice," [firmware design engineer] Lipsio said. "These standards aren't any more mission critical than your average video game."

[djohnson]

Bah... Why does it have to be Florida?

[TETENAL]

[OT] When you register for voting in the USA, do you have to specify which party you are going to vote?

[cpt kangarooski]

IIRC some states require you to for the primary, others don't. Voting is entirely a state-based thing so it differs depending on where you're at, especially as the states farm a lot out to the counties or municipalities as well.

But party affiliation only affects which party's primary you vote in; you can do whatever you want for the general election.

[TETENAL]

Originally posted by cpt kangarooski:
But party affiliation only affects which party's primary you vote in; you can do whatever you want for the general election.

I asked because they just said in the news that registrations marked with democratic party have been thrown away be someone. But I couldn't make full sense out of this news.

[cpt kangarooski]

TETENAL--

I asked because they just said in the news that registrations marked with democratic party have been thrown away be someone. But I couldn't make full sense out of this news.

Yeah, they're marked so that the state knows which primary those people are supposed to vote in. It doesn't matter for this election coming up, but of course, if someone is registered for a democratic primary, there is some reason to believe that they may vote for the democratic candidate in the general election. (even though they aren't obligated to)

[BlackGriffen]

Originally posted by TETENAL:
I asked because they just said in the news that registrations marked with democratic party have been thrown away be someone. But I couldn't make full sense out of this news.

That was a an RNC funded voter registration group. In NV, where it happened, state law requires any such group to accept all registrations regardless of party affiliation. Well, apparently the people in this group didn't cotton too well to that law.

BG

[Anders]

So you have to tell who you are most likely to vote for to be registered voter? Hurray for anonymous voting

[cpt kangarooski]

Anders--

So you have to tell who you are most likely to vote for to be registered voter? Hurray for anonymous voting

Not quite.

There are two kinds of elections: primaries and general elections. For each primary, multiple candidates from a single party run in order to determine which one will be that party's candidate in the later, general election. Basically it's a winnowing out process.

Parties can and do restrict who can vote in their primaries. Party members can vote in a party's primary, but the party cannot be forced to open it to non-party members (e.g. independents or members of other parties), though the party can allow others to vote if they want to.

Once the parties have held their primaries, they know which candidate they'll back for the general election.

For example, the two major contenders in the 2000 Republican primary were Bush and McCain. Had McCain gotten more votes, he would've been the Republican nominee for President in the 2000 general election, against Al Gore (who won the Democratic primary).

Of course, while anyone eligible to vote can vote for anyone on the ballot, and possibly write in other names besides, people do tend to vote for candidates of their party. But this is only a tendancy; there's a lot of crossover (e.g. Democrats for Reagan, back in 1980).

[MindFad]

Ahhhh, FLorida. Just another reason I'm voting absentee.

[CollinG3G4]

Originally posted by TETENAL:
[OT] When you register for voting in the USA, do you have to specify which party you are going to vote?

No.

[MATTRESS]

Originally posted by Anders:
So you have to tell who you are most likely to vote for to be registered voter? Hurray for anonymous voting

No.

[TETENAL]

[Back on topic]

Do you still trust electronic voting machines?

[mitchell_pgh]

Originally posted by Anders:
So you have to tell who you are most likely to vote for to be registered voter? Hurray for anonymous voting

When you register, you can choose Republican, Democratic or other.

The reason you must put something down is so that ONLY Democrats can vote for who they want to run for office and not Republicans.

If they didn't do that, republicans could vote overwhelmingly for the Democratic candidate so they basically wouldn't have a chance of winning.

People that are obsessed can simply say independent (but are locked out of selecting who will run for the presidency.

Before you start criticizing, perhaps you should do a little research. I don't criticize how things run in your country.

[mitchell_pgh]

Originally posted by TETENAL:
[Back on topic]

Do you still trust electronic voting machines?

I trust them more then slips of paper with chads.

[Luca Rescigno]

I don't think the "butterfly ballots" are good, but at least when someone pokes at one of the punch-out holes, there is a record of what they did. With electronic ballots, that record can be changed by a malicious party without leaving any trace.

[Earth Mk. II]

I think that electronic voting machines could be useful if and only if there is a solid paper trail produced along with them that could be inspected by humans. I am far too uncomfortable with them if there is no way to independently verify the results after the polls have closed. A paper trail is the best way to do that.

People really have to stop looking at computers as magical boxes that do all the work for them.

[Anders]

Originally posted by mitchell_pgh:
When you register, you can choose Republican, Democratic or other.

The reason you must put something down is so that ONLY Democrats can vote for who they want to run for office and not Republicans.

If they didn't do that, republicans could vote overwhelmingly for the Democratic candidate so they basically wouldn't have a chance of winning.

People that are obsessed can simply say independent (but are locked out of selecting who will run for the presidency.

Before you start criticizing, perhaps you should do a little research. I don't criticize how things run in your country.

Please note I formed my post as an question.

So if you want to have a bit more than a binary choice for president somewhere its registered what way your political position is leaning?

Feel free to criticize our system. At least it gives you more than a binary choice, doesn�t require you to register anywhere to vote and ensures a voting percent of @ 90%

[mitchell_pgh]

I don't see why they can't simply do the following.

You enter the booth. It's all electronic. You receive two paper "receipts" that don't contain your info. You walk out and hand one of the receipt to the voter people.

You can then go home, and the next day type in a code (from your receipt) and it tells how that code voted.

ONLY load the code data along with the voting data and keep the name of the voter and when they voted (all personal info) 100% offline.

[Anders]

I saw a congressional hearing regarding e-voting and one of the experts came with the best way of using voting machines. One that gives you the best of both worlds.

First you go to a touch screen voting machine. When you have selected your candidate it prints a ballot with a clear mark of your vote. Then you put this in the box.

With this the voter can check his choice on the print, there is a paper trail, no duplicates (only one thing that can be counted, the printed ballot) and a clear indication of the voters intend.

[TETENAL]

Anders, sounds reasonable. But can the company that makes your proposed system make a lot of money with it?

[Geezus_Aach]

why can't Floridians use the same voting machines from sayyyyyyy, Virginia? Or use the same methods from Georgia? Why is it they've got issues, where as no other states have problems? Or even better...let's leave Florida out of this years' elections...HA!

[Millennium]

Originally posted by TETENAL:
[OT] When you register for voting in the USA, do you have to specify which party you are going to vote?

No. You can register yourself with a party if you wish, but this is not a binding thing; it's fairly common for somebody registered in one party to vote for another party's candidates. This said, if you register with a party, your name is given to that party and put on a mailing list.

You can also register yourself as independent (as I did) in which case you are not considered to "belong" to any political party. I do not know if there is a list of independents as there is for actual parties, but I would not be terribly surprised if there were.

[Millennium]

Originally posted by Anders:
I saw a congressional hearing regarding e-voting and one of the experts came with the best way of using voting machines. One that gives you the best of both worlds.

First you go to a touch screen voting machine. When you have selected your candidate it prints a ballot with a clear mark of your vote. Then you put this in the box.

With this the voter can check his choice on the print, there is a paper trail, no duplicates (only one thing that can be counted, the printed ballot) and a clear indication of the voters intend.

This is exactly the sort of system I want to see. The machines don't need to be networked (so a hacker could affect at most one machine at a time, severely limiting the damage one person can do), many important electoral traditions such as the ballot box can be maintained (these things have important psychological effects), and if the printed ballots are human-readable then they could be filled out by hand if some kind of emergency caused the machines to fail. At the same time, the machine-filling makes the ballots much closer to idiot-proof, while the speed and inherent impartiality of machine counting can be maintained.

[cpt kangarooski]

Originally posted by Anders:
I saw a congressional hearing regarding e-voting and one of the experts came with the best way of using voting machines. One that gives you the best of both worlds.

First you go to a touch screen voting machine. When you have selected your candidate it prints a ballot with a clear mark of your vote. Then you put this in the box.

With this the voter can check his choice on the print, there is a paper trail, no duplicates (only one thing that can be counted, the printed ballot) and a clear indication of the voters intend.

Personally, I'm not a fan of that. I don't think that people will actually verify that the hardcopy corresponds to what they did onscreen.

I prefer paper ballots completed by hand, where they're verified by a machine to make sure that they're sufficiently readable before being submitted. A preliminary count could be by machine if it were really important, but the actual count should be by teams of people.

[SimeyTheLimey]

Originally posted by Anders:
Feel free to criticize our system. At least it gives you more than a binary choice, doesn�t require you to register anywhere to vote and ensures a voting percent of @ 90%

TETENAL made the same point in another thread about not having to register to vote in his country. I asked a question about that, but he never answered. Maybe I can ask you?

Originally posted by SimeyTheLimey:
How does this "you just vote" system work? Presumably the government must keep some kind of register of eligible voters.

How is that list created and updated? How do they identify people who turn 18 between elections? How do they keep underage and non-citizens from voting? What happens when you move from one state to the next? How do they stop you from voting in multiple jurisdictions? If they do any of those things, then there must be a voter registration list somewhere.

Does this make sense? I don't see how you can vote and there not be some kind of registration system somewhere. So are you aware of it? And where does the government get that information on you?

[TETENAL]

The "registration system" is called registration of address office (Einwohnermeldeamt in Germany). Everybody is registered with his name, birth date and address. This general address registration is used for voting. There is no additional registration for elections.
When it's time to vote every citizen above 18 gets a postcard that invites to vote. Then you just vote. Step three? There's no step three. Muahahahaha!

You must have a registration of address office in the USA as well. Or where do you get your identity card from?

[SimeyTheLimey]

Originally posted by TETENAL:
Or where do you get your identity card from?

Our what?

[Logic]

I'll try to answer this question Simey posted:

Originally posted by Simey:
Originally posted by SimeyTheLimey:
How does this "you just vote" system work? Presumably the government must keep some kind of register of eligible voters.

How is that list created and updated? How do they identify people who turn 18 between elections? How do they keep underage and non-citizens from voting? What happens when you move from one state to the next? How do they stop you from voting in multiple jurisdictions? If they do any of those things, then there must be a voter registration list somewhere.

The keeps a list of all inhabitants in Iceland/Sweden. Where they live etc because everyone pays taxes, gets various benefits, etc etc. That way they know who lives on Iceland. They also have a separate list of Icelandic citizens(everyone is registered when born and taken off the list when you die). That way they can cross reference the two lists and see who lives where(you have to have a registered address).

When we go to the polling stations the country and cities are divided into districts and they ask you for your name and you provide them with an id-card(drivers licence, debit cards, passport. just any legal id-card). They check if you are really who you claim you are and ask for your address. There they see if you are on the list of eligible voters and hand you the things required for voting and you vote.

You have to be 18 to vote so that way they are able to see who's eligible for each vote. The list of Icelanders is kept here and Sweden has something similar. When you move from one "state"(or district in my case) I have to report my new address to the Statistics Bureau I linked to above. Since you have to vote in your district and can't vote anywhere else you prevent people from voting in several districts.

So there isn't a voter registration list anywhere just an Icelandic/Swedish citizen list that they can then easily get the list of eligible voters from.

If you want any more details feel free to ask

[TETENAL]

Originally posted by SimeyTheLimey:
Our what?

The other way around:

How do you call the office where you get your identity card from?
How do you call the office where you get your passport from?
When you move from one city to another, how do you call the office where you tell that your address changed?

Since that office knows the identity and address of every citizen, don't you think it is trivial to compile a list of those who are eligible to vote? We have computers. And somehow we managed to do it even before.

[SimeyTheLimey]

OK so the point is that all your countries do have voter registration just like the US does. The difference is that you have to register your address by law with your government and that's the list that your government uses to generate your registration information.

In the US for historical reasons, there is a great deal of resistance to the idea of the government having one big database on its citizens. That's why we don't have a national ID card.

Instead, there are various discreet databases for certain purposes -- taxpaying, voter registration, driver's licenses, selective service, passports, etc. The databases are kept separate in order to control which government officials can gain access to what information, and not all of them have to be updated when you move from place to place.

Also some of them are kept by state officials, and some by federal. OUr state governments are considered separate governments from the federal government. Each state has its own tax rolls, and issues its own drivers licenses. Voting rolls are generally kept at the county level.

Many of these databases would require some kind of warrant or showing of just cause for law enforcement officials to access them. For example, when I went for a security clearance, the government required my permission to access and compile all the information it had on me.

With modern information technology, this separation of databases is probably not as much of a protection for individual privacy as it once was. But still the idea is there that the government should only have as much information on you as it strictly needs for a given purpose. That's why you have to register to vote separately.

[TETENAL]

Originally posted by SimeyTheLimey:
OK so the point is that all your countries do have voter registration just like the US does.

No, our countries have address registration (which is also used for voting). We don't have to register for each and every election.

Many databases are separated as well (address, tax, criminal record, etc.) so we're not the big-brother police states you might think.

In particular there is no national database with party affiliation. Each party of course keeps a list of its members but that is entirely a private matter of the party. I find it slightly troublesome that you are supposed to tell party affiliation when registering to vote in the USA.

(Simey, I'm not saying one system is better than the other. Just talking and asking so we can compare and maybe learn and pick what's better about the other and ignore what's worse.)

[SimeyTheLimey]

Originally posted by TETENAL:
No, our countries have address registration (which is also used for voting). We don't have to register for each and every election.

I'm not saying your system is worse. I am just saying yours is different, but parallel. You have address registration and therefore you have as part of it voting registration. We don't have address registration, but you will have to give an address to do certain transactional things with the government, but each time you do that, it goes into a specific database. One of those things we do is give the government the information it needs to administer elections. If you want to vote, you give up that information to that database. If you don't want to give that necessary information to the database, you always have the option of not registering.

The same goes for party information in states that have closed primaries. Why are you repeating this thing about telling the government which party you support. How many times do we have to explain that to you? You don't have to give party information if you don't want to.

Incidentally, you don't have to register for each election. If you stay in one place, your registration is good indefinitely. It's only if you move around that you have to re-register.

[Logic]

Simey:

Doesn't having all these separate lists(or whatever we can call them) you mentioned lead to a much bigger "government" than needed? Wouldn't it be better to keep one centralised DB with just the basic information?

I checked the site I linked to and it seems like all that is stored in the Statistics Bureau regarding an Icelander is 1) Birth, 2) Death, 3) Address, 4) babtism(or change in religion because of taxes/funding for different religions) and 5) marital status(for taxes).

This doesn't seem to be so much information that it could hurt anyone.

And no, we don't have a voter registration list. Like I explained above.

[Logic]

Originally posted by SimeyTheLimey:
Also: why are you repeating this thing about telling the government which party you support. How many times do we have to explain that to you?

It's probably because in our opinion no one should be able to check what party you "belong" to. It's a bit scary that you have to register for a certain party(or as an independent) in our opinion. In most of Europe that would be a violation of personal information laws.

That's probably why he's concerned about it

[SimeyTheLimey]

Originally posted by Logic:
Simey:

Doesn't having all these separate lists(or whatever we can call them) you mentioned lead to a much bigger "government" than needed?

Maybe. But America has 51 separate governments plus the federal government. That might create duplication, but it also keeps government closer to the people, and a little weaker. That's deliberate.

Constitutionally, also, the federal government is a government of limited jurisdiction. It can only do what it is authorized to do under the constitution. Again, that was deliberately designed to hobble it.

It is interesting to me in having these conversations how Europeans begin with the absolute opposite set of assumptions from Americans. Europeans seem to begin with a centralized mindset, Americans decentralized. The reasons are historic, but it creates a great deal of misunderstanding.

[SimeyTheLimey]

Originally posted by Logic:
It's probably because in our opinion no one should be able to check what party you "belong" to. It's a bit scary that you have to register for a certain party(or as an independent) in our opinion. In most of Europe that would be a violation of personal information laws.

That's probably why he's concerned about it

First of all the caveats we keep telling you over and over. Not every state has party registration -- mine doesn't, for example. Second, the disclosure is voluntary. You won't be stopped from voting in the general elections if you don't disclose a party.

Party registration is only used for primary elections. Primary elections are party elections that are open to the public and administered by the state. They do not directly elect anyone to public office.

It would be a violation in the US as well for party registration to be disclosed for an improper purpose. It is only used in very limited ways. First, to ensure the integrity of the primary election. Second, I believe the names of people who voluntarily declare a party is passed on to that party (so it can contact its supporters). But the government generally doesn't have access to that personal information.

[TETENAL]

Well, Germany is a federation of 16 states with 16 different governments as well. Plus a federal government.

[TETENAL]

Originally posted by SimeyTheLimey:
Primary elections are party elections that are open to the public and administered by the state.

I understood this; I just believe these should be organized by the parties themselves, not by the government. No big deal, just a difference of opinion (historic reasons � too much amalgamation of parties and state were not healthy for Germany: NSDAP, SED)

[badidea]

I hope this wasn't posted before but I haven't seen/found it:

the voting machine error

[SimeyTheLimey]

Originally posted by TETENAL:
I understood this; I just believe these should be organized by the parties themselves, not by the government. No big deal, just a difference of opinion (historic reasons � too much amalgamation of parties and state were not healthy for Germany: NSDAP, SED)

Some states do it that way. They are called party caucuses. Where it exists, it tends to be in smaller states. A lot of what drives the American political system is simply trying to find a practical way to deal with the size of the country.

Primaries were also designed to be a reform. The old "smoke filled rooms" method was deemed to be undemocratic and open to corruption.

While I think there are problems with primaries, I don't think amalgamation with the state is one of them. The information kept is only used very narrowly. And anyway, weren't you the one complaining that the US doesn't have enough public financing of elections? Why isn't that just as much amalgamation as a state administering a party's primary election?

[cpt kangarooski]

And of course, primaries were subject to abuse as well (e.g. the White Primaries down in the south), so they tend to be overseen by the government more than they used to be.

[Spliffdaddy]

To be fair - all northern primaries were all white, as well.

It ain't a southern thing, as much as you'd like it to be.