OT: This Week In Voting Machine Security 3433

Tim Streater

For the mechanical voting machines used in some states (each of which may be subject to individual physical inspection) the numbers are read off of counters in a normally concealed part of the machine. Both the polling officials and the party representatives read and record those numbers.

As for electronic voting, I don't really remember what I've read on the matter. But what I read was somewhere on Black Box Voting

I don't know why we have the difference. It may just be a difference in litigiousness in the two countries. Or maybe its the history of the US that required the Voting Rights Act. For a long time, even when blacks had the legal right to vote there were legal barriers to their voting in many locations. So the US has a history of deliberately discriminatory procedures and hurdles for voting. Whether the current accusations are because the process has continued or because people are acutely aware of the possibility is not something I know.

I don't know, but I do know that these cases end up in front of judges fairly quickly.

As the world well knows, this can end up in our Supreme Court.

Thanks for that. If I recall correctly from Lord Jenkins' report on electoral reform indicated that on the whole, the Tories lost out due to differences in consbreastuency size, but I have no clue as to which book case that report is in after multiple moves.

There have been repeated and failed efforts to set up independent boundary commissions. In California, I can recall twice when I voted for a referendum on that. But they always fail. The current system of drawing district boundaries has been repeatedly called an "incumbent protection plan". Neither the parties (which can punish and reward individual elected representatives using the system) nor the elected individuals themselves would want to change it. On record, everyone supports such independent commissions in principle, but any time a particular plan is up for a vote both parties find reasons to oppose it.

This is a tricky question. I don't think that asking voters to rank their preferences (as long as the don't have to rank each option) is asking too much of voters. The tallying can get complicated, but as long as there are enough experts in each party, then I think that voters would accept a procedure even if they don't know all of the details. In the US, I think that that is already the case with the Electoral College.

Yes. As does any kind of proportional representation or any voting for party "lists". I am in favor of neither.

What is awful about PR is that it greatly exacerbates partisanship. What I mean by partisanship is where elected (and appointed) individuals show more loyalty to their parties than to the public when those interests conflict.

What I happen to support for preference voting is Condorcet voting. It's conceptually simple, yet hard to explain. I also think that Approval Voting would be a good choice. I dislike abominations like "Single Transferable Vote" or its American cousins in the Instant Run-off family of voting systems.

I wrote a rant about this many years ago. It's at

Also a little after that I participated in some discussion in the group uk.politics.electoral where these issues are always discussed and even on topic.

-j

-- I rarely read top-posted, over-quoted or HTML posts My Reply-To address is valid.