Black box voting

[ciphergoth]

SoCalDem has done a statistical analysis...on several swing states, and EVERY STATE that has Electronic Voting but no paper trails has an unexplained advantage for Bush of around +5% when comparing exit polls to actual results. In EVERY STATE that has paper audit trails on their E-Voting, the exit poll results match the actual results reported within the margin of error.

Comments

[juliet]

I still fail to understand why they can't just use paper & pen. The US population is about 5 times greater than ours, so even counting at the same rate they could have a result within about 30 hours (& there is, of course, no reason why they shouldn't just get in more people to count).

Actually, I do know why it is: because it would require more people & thus be more expensive, & apparently electoral officials are paid v little in the US. [sigh]

Mind you, I *really* don't know how the fuck states have managed to get away with unaudited black-box voting machines.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

Surreal, isn't it?

[wechsler.livejournal.com]

You'd think a country that values democracy that highly would be willing to pay for it, wouldn't you?

[jhg.livejournal.com]

(snigger).

As Sir Humphrey once said, 'Ah, one of those democracies'.


J

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

I don't see a problem with machine-counted paper votes, so long as many randomly-selected bundles of the votes are re-counted by hand to ensure that the machine counts correspond to the correct counts. If those counts show substantial differences, you have to hand count the lot - so best ensure your system doesn't create the possibility of "hanging chad" ballots that your machines will miscount if you want to use them...