What part of “walk to the neighborhood polling station and mark your ballot with a pencil” demanded improvement?
Now would be a good time to stock up on torches, pitchforks, and rope as insurance for the day that voting machines are ever contemplated in Canada.
Good question.
I’m always surprised it isn’t a bigger issue in the states, given the obvious potential for fraud. Paper may slow things down a bit, but there is something to preserve for a recount and something for scrutineers to check. I agree, we should avoid the machines at all costs.
and…
those machines that seem to default to voting for Democrats are serviced by… SEIU members. I know, you’re shocked, Shocked !!
http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/2010/10/breaking-suspect-voting-machines-in-nevada-are-serviced-by-seiu/
*I cannot image an honest answer to why shouldn’t people vote in person, with pencils. Having seen first hand the idiocy that’s taken hold in Venezuela with electronic voting machines and sanctioned by the likes of Jimmy Carter ohhhhh ect… you know where I’m going with this.
The fact that it was so difficult, Kate. You’re not thinking of all those illiterate and handicapped voters who would otherwise have been disenfranchised by such an archaic voting system.
Oh, won’t somebody *please* think of the poor voters?
This one’s still my favourite. Why even bother with the voting, period?
http://www.breitbart.tv/okeefe-top-union-official-caught-on-tape-discussing-voter-fraud/
Regarding the voters who repeatedly pushed the button for the Republicans but kept getting a ballot that selected all Democrats, here’s Mark Hemingway in the Washington Examiner:
“It is worth noting that the voting machine technicians in Clark County are members of the Service Employees International Union.”
It seems to me that if there’s two choices, and the default “mistake” always results in an all-Democrat and never an all-Republican ballot being selected, it’s not a technical problem.
The only reason there are “poor voters” is that there are too many progressives voting in socialist governments, robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Speaking of voting, for those paying attention to the CAGW debate/choir practice, there’s a poll at Scientific American that could use some help. Please don’t go if you don’t know who Judith Curry is.
wattsupwiththat provided the original link, and seems to be providing most of the votes. Either that, or sci-am has a lot more sensible readers than I would have thought.\
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=taking-the-temperature-climate-chan-2010-10-25
And lets not forget the recounts in Washington state that had 2000 or so more votes in the final tally than were signed for and registered in King County. My wife and I were traveling through the east of the state 2 years later, and the most popular sign seemed to be “Don’t let those urban b@astards steal the election again”
So the cheating begins – I recall some posters here stating it would happen.
Blatant, so blatant in fact I’m thinking it’s an on purpose. Anyone know what happens if an election is held and the winner can not be accurately established due to faulty voting machines? Could this prove to be a strategic move to find a way around the expected Republican landslide in Noveember? I do not know enough about US voting laws or regulations to make anything other than an assertion. What if the “glitches” occur Nationwide?
There’s more:
http://www.lasvegassun.com/blogs/ralstons-flash/2010/oct/26/angle-campaign-attorney-reid/
And just a couple of months back (story first reported on August 27th):
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/11/us/politics/11voting.html
What a coincidence – the voting machines destroyed AFTER accusations of voter registration fraud – arson suspected.
Of course corrupt politicians will find ways of corrupt ways of tilting elections to their favor. I reside in Edmonton Centre famous for magical ballot boxes showing up just in time for a ‘landslide’ and then there were privileged people voting once at their place of employment and once at their house. No one I know of ever did explain how there could be more ballots cast than people who voted…. All that being said I do favor the paper ballot marked with a pen and properly accounted for and counted. I know I wouldn’t trust a voting machine anymore than I would trust a one armed bandit in a seedy casino.
The more desperate the democrats are, the more voter fraud there will be.
There is no level too low for liberal to stoop down to.
Escpect record breaking levels of voting fraud next week.
And tens times more in 2012
Democrats are DESPERATE.
Sorry for the back to backer Kate – but this on topic video link below is to infromative not to share.
Tuck this thread away, and the links you posted, just in case the idea of electronic voting is ever proposed for Canada – we will need all the ammunition (proof from down south) we can muster if that day should ever come upon us.
http://www.breitbart.tv/okeefe-top-union-official-caught-on-tape-discussing-voter-fraud/
I told you the election would be stolen. Again.
All of this stuff is giving the Libs and the NDP plenty of ideas….this is all a bit more sophisticated than votingday TV raffles, LOL
Yup. I’ve been a scrutineer. Paper is not that slow. In fact, most of the time it’s lightning fast.
There are the good ballots, the reject/ user ruined ballots, and the questionable.
Once you have those piles you count & tabulate the good ones, then some else (preferable from another party, but anybody not obviously associated with the first counter) counts ’em again, if you don’t get the same answer yah count ’em a third time ’til you agree.
Then the questionable ballots get tallied with 3 people looking at them, any two scrutinners can decide either obvious intent, but not ruined, or ruined.
Then you bag’em, seal ’em for posterity/recount and bring the agreed numbers to the local tabulator who writes them on the board in public.
That guy calls them in on a open conference line, and forwards a signed ink on paper record
This is so simple and obvious and FAST that it amazes me anybody would use another system. Hell, if if your voting unit if 90% one party, just a couple of observers can make sure the process is fair and the tabulations are honest. A dozen high school students can run a polling count in 20min with 5min instruction.
I tend to believe any other system is prima facie evidence of fraudulent intent.
Paper ballots are not without problems. A former
Liberal enthusiast here, former in the sense that
he is deceased, told me that every ballot box he
took to a polling station had a majority of ballots
for Joey Smallwood already in it.
Tampering with ballots destroys an elected government’s legitimacy, its perceived right to govern.
These reports will all disappear tomorrow.
So they hope.
And I don’t.
Democrats stop investigations because they’re the ones, overwhelmingly, committing the fraud. Dem attorneys-general refusing to investigate clear fraud like more votes being cast than there were registered voters etc. is the usual practice.
At my Toronto polling station the ballots were of the ‘complete the line with the arrow pointing at the name of your candidate choice’ type using a black magic marker. Then the completed ballot was fed into a machine that tabulated the vote and stored the original paper ballot in it. The worker fed it into the machine and said, “Yeah, it accepted it; you filled out the ballot properly.” I think that’s why they knew the tallies so quickly with Ford being declared the winner about 10 minutes after the polling stations closed. So that seems efficient and leaves a proper paper trail if a recount is demanded.
Oh, and you fellow US citizens, ask for a paper ballot, so as to vote, or a paper receipt after electronically voting.
They have to give you a record of your vote.
It always amazes me that America is moving toward voting machines.
As someone who knows quite a bit about technology, voting machines are truly dumb idea.
Managing elections is one area where Canada does a much better job than our friends to the south.
Apparently, Gen. Lee Wright, we are on the same page.
pencil, paper, PROOF OF CITIZENSHIP, indelible purple ink pad to mark your finger as having voted.
Ballots sent out & received by the Illinois Democratic Coordinated Campaign?!? Didn’t anyone suspect even the slightest potential conflict of interest here? Have Republicans lost their tongues?
Let’s also not forget about the states of New York and Illinois (known so far) not having sent out ballots to service men and women serving overseas. These amount to literally tens of thousands of voters who have effectively been disenfranchised.
Oh, they may get their ballot eventually, but by the time it’s returned and tabulated, the election results will most likely be certified. It’s a morally bankrupt situation that no one seems to be addressing.
TJ; Curious is right. I have very little faith in our Canadian voting system without ensuring that each voter casts only one vote. The purple ink pad helps. As well it is not too difficult for voters from a riding that votes overwhelmingly for the other Party to move their addresses to a more favorable closer contest. No physical proof of address is necessary except that which can be obtained with a little skulduggery. A utility bill can be rigged by a fake move that can be organized by a voting bloc.
We have to get the political hacks out of Elections Canada.
It’s time to start turning suspect fraudulent voters away from the polling station.
The voting machines aren’t new. I remember my mom voting using a machine at least 30 years ago. We went behind a curtain and she pushed down the levers to indicate her votes. The votes were registered when she pulled a handle to open the curtain.
I’ve voted with paper ballots where I had to push a pin through to indicate my vote and thereby push out the infamous “chads”. After voting, I made sure to remove all of the “hanging chads”. Very easy. The ballots were then read by a machine. I also remember voting by filling in bubbles with a #2 pencil and putting my ballot into the machine myself.
I think that each county decides which method to use.
Paper ballots read by humans would also be subject to fraud and they would take much longer to read. Remember, in the States we vote for many offices at the same time so each ballot in a general election covers at least ten offices and can include referendums.
Welcome to the slide on a broken board,off the cliff into third World Status.
THanfully in Alberta we still use a pencil.
This has to be a joke? lol
A “Craven County” voter says he had a near miss at the polls on Thursday when an electronic voting machine completed his straight-party ticket for the opposite of what he intended.
Sam “Laughinghouse” of “New Bern”
Out here, on the Sunshine Coast, they have a hybrid system that seems almost foolproof:
-paper and pencil ballot, signed for, and your name is crossed off the voters list.
-feed the completed ballot into a scanner, under the supervision of a polling official.
-place the scanned ballot into a ballot box, after having its serial identifier removed by the polling person.
-the scanned ballot has now been counted and the tally is secured and transmitted to the central counting location (from all polling stations). Results are available almost immediately after official poll closing.
The actual paper ballots are saved until the uncertainty of a challenge is past.
No…you don’t say?! Corrupt politicians?
Nothing new here…the American people have been getting jerked around at the polls for at least the last 3 elections..probably many more.
Too late, Kate.
http://ottawa.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20101026/OTT_E_Vote_101026/20101026/?hub=OttawaHome
The Ontario Municipal election was extended by 24 hours for the town of Arnprior because of problems with the system. If they run into issues with medium sized towns, there’s going to be chaos when it moves to cities.
In the meantime, in Ottawa, we voted with marker on a large piece of paper which was put into a protective sleeve, the paper was then fed, without the RTO being able to see the contents in to a machine that counted the votes but was not online. At the close of polls, the machine uploaded its data and results were finalized very quickly but the machine contains all the paper ballots so a check against the accuracy could be done if necessary (or if the machine failed.)
Seems like a better compromise to me, let the machine do the counting but have the paper system as backup.
Michele makes an excellent point. In Canada, we go to the polls every few years and receive a ballot with three or four names of people running for a single office. We make one “X”, fold the ballot, watch it dropped into the box, and go home for another few years.
In many US States, the ballot can run to pages, with candidates for a couple dozen offices (including county engineer, recorder of deeds, family court judges, etc.), bond issues, votes to renew local school tax, and a variety of referenda.
This all dates from the “Progressive” era, whose mantra was “The only cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.”
Ooops! Too late for the pitchforks, those “voting machines” are ALREADY HERE!
We voted Monday in Barrie, Ontario, using a ‘touch screen’ voting machine. It seemed to be producing some sort of running ‘cash register tape’ of votes, which was visible inside the machine behind a glass ‘window’. There were many elderly voters there who were confused by this machine and called for help. This was the first time I’ve voted by machine in Canada.
Yes, it’s already here.
CTV headline reads “Electronic voting creates problems across eastern Ont”
http://ottawa.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20101026/OTT_E_Vote_101026/20101026/?hub=OttawaHome
One comment comparing the Canadian and American voting systems (we’re dual citizens, living and voting in Barrie, ON, and Raleigh, NC).
When we vote in Canada there are few positions and few names on each ballot. When we vote in the U.S., each ballot has many positions (including several state and local judges, county commissioners, city officials, county sheriff, etc. etc. etc. and each each elected position has sveral candidates running … so counting paper ballots would likely be a MUCH BIGGER challenge in an American election than a Canadian election.
Both systems (paper ballots or machines) are open to fraud by cheaters, and there are numerous examples of such in the U.S.
Anybody in Canada who thinks there’s no voter fraud here is too naive for words! On Monday I watched several “immigrants in funny costumes” who seemed unable to speak English vote … were the Cdn citizens eligible to vote? Who knows; nobody ever asks! … we’re so damn “nice” (and naive) it hurts.
mischievous voting machines?
must have learned it from the republicans in 2004:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0828-08.htm
“COLUMBUS – The head of a company vying to sell voting machines in Ohio told Republicans in a recent fund-raising letter that he is “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.”
Davers6: “were the Cdn citizens eligible to vote?”
Why is it so hard to ensure that everyone who votes shows documentation proving they are citizens? All it takes is a birth certificate, a passport or citizenship papers and everyone should have at least one of those.
A utility bill might prove residency but it doesn’t prove eligibility.
“THanfully in Alberta we still use a pencil.”
That reminds me of an old joke about the billion dollar Super-pen invented by NASA so astronauts can write in zero gravity; whereas, the Russians didn’t bother, or couldn’t afford to invent the Super-pen so they instead use pencils in space.
Don’t forget the ballot tallying fraud in the last Quebecois referendum, Pro Canada ballots where rejected as”spoiled” regularly on false grounds (wrong Tribe)
Here in Tennessee, each county makes its own decision. 93 of the 95 counties have gone to the electronic machines. The two exceptions are the fourth-largest (where I live), which uses scannable ballots like andycanuck describes (except we fill in an oval instead of connecting an arrow), and the smallest, which still uses by-hand ballots.
Personal opinion, the scannable ballots are the best variety currently available–they provide both digital speed and a paper trail. The main flaw is disabled accessibility, and my county keeps a fully-electronic machine at HQ for voters who can’t fill out the scan cards.
All very well, but the problem I have witnessed is the failure to ensure that the person presenting himself/herself to vote is not doing so fraudulently. After the vote is cast, no-matter how, it is too late. For example; how else can you have a situation where 900+ people show up to vote in one Poll? This was reported by a Vancouver newspaper in the last Federal Election.
They can recount till the sun don’t shine.
“How do your explain the a single person being registered six times in a single day?”
Delightful. Watch the director of ‘Houston Votes’ – a Democrat election machine – as he tries to explain the “mistakes” his organization and his workers are accused of implementing.
“How many people have been terminated?” His response “probably 20 – 30” – but it’s no indication of fraud.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Houston+Votes+Project+Director&aq=f
I moved south in 92. I really miss my paper ballots with the big square for marking my X. Here we have scantrons with the little ovals and only vote by mail.
Yes, the libs cheat here. The main way they do it is by false registration (nobody gets asked for ID as that would be considered rude) and flase filing of “prvisional” ballots (a ballot for those who suddenly finnd that after the last day for registration that they are not registered, or who don’t get their ballot mailed to them).
Alas, I long for the good old days up in the GWN with their short campaigns (6 weeks vs 2 years) and paper ballots at real polling places with human scrutineers.
Beagle