I am dead set against electronic voting machines. I think that they make it too easy to steal an election. At least with paper ballots you make it harder to stuff the ballot box. On a computer, you just change a few bits and you're done! I understand that there are measures in place to try to prevent that. But a sufficiently motivated person can get past them. Someone demonstrated recently that two 54 year old women could access the card holding the vote results in a voting machine in under 4 minutes. Granted, the results are encoded using an encryption key. But it's not impossible to get past encryption, and it's typically the same key for the entire region using the same ballot. All I'm saying is, it makes cheating much, much easier. BTW, I understand the point of view of the voting machine companies. I briefly worked for one.
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If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom, go from us in peace. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen! - Samuel Adams
"The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything."
Source - Boris Bazhanov's 'The Memoirs of former Stalin's secretary'. Saint Petersburg, 1992 (in Russian).
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Ye hear of wars in far countries, and you say that there will soon be great wars in far countries, but ye know not the hearts of men in your own land.
- D&C 38:29
bokbadok wrote: I am set against electronic voting machines. I think that they make it too easy to steal an election.
I agree. Now my vote may not count simply because someone changed it.
Well, actually, your vote would technically still count... just not the way it had been intended to.
I do not like the idea of electronic voting machines as the sole method for recording the vote. I think that there should be a combination of paper and electronic. Paper so that there can be a clear thing to physically audit, and electronic that acts as a tally / backup verification of the paper vote device. The electronic could be a scanned image of the paper created when the paper is feed into the tally machine. Paper ballot would be numbered and thus correspond to the scanned image. On an audit or recount, the two would have to match or else the ballot would be tossed out.
Of course, a fool proof way for making sure a vote is not ignored would be that the voting booth is turned into an automatic tattoo parlor. The voter presses the button of the candidate they want, the machine confirms audibly that "You selected John Doe. If this is correct, press 1. If this is incorrect, press 2." The voter then presses 1 if correct, and the machine automatically tattoos a large red or blue design on the forehead using laser technology and inks that will visually fade in 6 months, but can still be read years from now by using a flourescent light source.
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It seems to me the only thing you've learned is that Caesar is a "salad dressing dude."
bokbadok wrote: I am set against electronic voting machines. I think that they make it too easy to steal an election.
I agree. Now my vote may not count simply because someone changed it.
Well, actually, your vote would technically still count... just not the way it had been intended to.
This has my vote for best comment
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Ye hear of wars in far countries, and you say that there will soon be great wars in far countries, but ye know not the hearts of men in your own land.
- D&C 38:29
This has my vote for best comment
