There is a new story circulating today that a former assistant—Paul
Re: Armstrong doping question
Thu, 7 Apr 2005 19:12:01 -0500
"Mike Kruger" <mik...@mousepotato.com>

Actually, that’s not quite right. Punch card ballots are also used in Cook County, Illinois, and the number of spoiled ballots was rather startingly high. This wasn’t a 2000 election phenomenon, but did come to light in 2000 because of the Florida issue. There were no close races in 2000 in Illinois so it didn’t matter to the election outcome. The mess in Florida did get the government to act to prevent a future fiasco, though.

Cook County has since installed equipment that you run your ballot through that informs you if you have under- or over-voted. (Only over-voting results in a spoiled ballot.)—Mike

I believe punch ballots were used again during the 2004 election in some states, and I think in some FL counties as well. They have not yet disappeared from the political scene. They work "well enough" and just about every voting technique can have its problems.

In a close election, we get voting "problems" turned into "stolen elections". It’s bogus. Punch ballots don’t only go awry for Democrats!—Stephen

We have vote scanners here. Connect two sides of a bar next to your chosen candidate with a black pen. The scanner counts it.

However, if you vote for more than one candidate for a single candidate position, or if you connect the bar diagonally across two candidates (yes, it happens!) the vote is discounted. In a politically charged vote count climate, you have been "disenfranchised".—Stephen

I don’t know about in the US, but here in Canada, they have printed instructions, both in the ballot box, and on large wall posters, that tell you the method for casting a ballot, typically it, put an X in the circle beside the name of the candidate you are voting for. The posters are printed typically in English and French, but in other areas with large populations that speak another language, they can be printed in those languages as well. For example my area has a large Jewish population, so posters can be seen in Hebrew as well as English and French.

Has the voter, who voted incorrectly been disenfranchised, I mean, that could be intentional, it could be that the person voting is an idiot, or it could be because the voting process is too complex... Considering that most people can operate an ATM these days, perhaps it’s time for all electronic voting...... Then again, for all electronic voting, you need some ability to make sure that the process is correctly counting votes. It would be easy to rig the results.

W

If you still do it wrong, then your ballot gets tossed. Considering that ALL parties that offer a candidate in a particular voting area, have the right to have a representative present at the counting, and that all ballots have serial numbers, and all ballots cast have those numbers recorded, it works pretty well.—The

I think it works pretty well too.

Always room for improvement, and different voting methods do have their capacities for error.

I just get very annoyed with people that use these common errors in voting or counting votes, to trash the entire electoral system as "Third World" or "stolen" purely for political gain.

It’s disgraceful, but an awful lot of people have bought into it, largely from political orientation rather than objective analysis. The disputed FL/2000 results have been studied to the whazoo and nothing beyond confirming it was a very close election (in fact, a statistical tie) has been derived from it.—Stephen