Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

portal.drewdevault.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 358 posts

Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

#271

Post by smt88 »

mhh__ wrote: post #255
ropable wrote: post #254

I'm as much of a technophile as any other HN reader, but I am continuously flummoxed that anyone makes use of the sort of electronic voting machines described in this article. This is mainly from the perspective that a lot of the redundancy and auditability of the system seemed to rely on a bunch of printers working perfectly. Paper ballots and a pencil/pen are still hugely more reliable and trustworthy, IMO.

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. In the UK, everything is done on paper - even if there was potential for fraud, scaling it across the whole nation would take years and huge amounts of money (and even more hush money)

We had a presidential election in 2000 that was stolen in public by the GOP, despite being on paper. They did it with a technicality.

They're doing the same with signature matching (your signature on your ballot has to match a different signature that could be many years older).

Paper is safe from people outside the system, but not from politicized courts that are able to ignore paper ballots for minor mistakes.

Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

#273

Post by specialist »

scollet wrote: post #260
ropable wrote: post #254

I'm as much of a technophile as any other HN reader, but I am continuously flummoxed that anyone makes use of the sort of electronic voting machines described in this article. This is mainly from the perspective that a lot of the redundancy and auditability of the system seemed to rely on a bunch of printers working perfectly. Paper ballots and a pencil/pen are still hugely more reliable and trustworthy, IMO.

IME the physical issues I've seen are entirely operator/technician error. I've really not seen any issues inside my wheelhouse. I feel for the devs having to codify abberant voting procedures.

I'm not entirely certain that you're defending the gear. Or blaming the users. In case you are, I'll share two of my personal experiences.

I hot fixed the VVPAT for my poll site's touchscreen. The cheap bent metal got warped, preventing correct operation. Imagine you had to change the thermal paper for a cash register made by lowest bid contractor designed by grifters who've never seen a cash register. These units were worse.

I attended a handful of the "logic and accuracy" tests. One time, both the printer and memory card reader failed, of the the unit randomly chosen for testing. So they swamped parts and cards until they got it to work. Deemed a success. In truth, the only thing proven was that one of their printers could make marks on paper, given enough fiddling.

Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

#274

Post by specialist »

smt88 wrote: post #271
mhh__ wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. In the UK, everything is done on paper - even if there was potential for fraud, scaling it across the whole nation would take years and huge amounts of money (and even more hush money)

We had a presidential election in 2000 that was stolen in public by the GOP, despite being on paper. They did it with a technicality. They're doing the same with signature matching (your signature on your ballot has to match a different signature that could be many years older). Paper is safe from people outside the system, but not from politicized courts that are able to ignore paper ballots for minor mistakes.

I liked how an election advocate buddy said it one time:

"GWB doesn't lose his right to speech when he makes another gaff. Under no circumstances should a voter lose their right to vote for a mistake."

It just slays me that we're still arguing about this.

Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

#275

Post by Fellshard »

BrandonMarc wrote: post #247
AGSYS wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's probably what the "oath of enlistment" represents though.

Probably, eh? Well then sure, let's have election workers make judgment calls based on "probably".

Worked great for Pregnant Chad.

Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

#277

Post by bzbarsky »

est31 wrote: post #51
mrguyorama wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A reminder here that it varies MASSIVELY state by state. Some states definitely are NOT for increasing participation and enfranchising as many people as possible and plenty of states have way more in regards to hiding your vote from the poll workers

But if you want to participate more in the elections than just R vs D, say, decide which candidate R or D should elect, then you land in a public registry, no?

It depends on the state. For example, Massachussetts has semi-open primaries. If you're registered R and show up at the primary, you get an R ballot. If you're registered D, you get a D ballot. If you're registered "Unaffiliated", they ask you which ballot you'd like. That would be something like 55% of MA voters, last I checked.

Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_primaries_in_the_United_S... it looks like 17 states have completely open primaries. 4 more are like Massachusetts. 3 more have open or semi-open primaries on the Democratic side only.

Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

#278

Post by scollet »

specialist wrote: post #273
scollet wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IME the physical issues I've seen are entirely operator/technician error. I've really not seen any issues inside my wheelhouse. I feel for the devs having to codify abberant voting procedures.

I'm not entirely certain that you're defending the gear. Or blaming the users. In case you are, I'll share two of my personal experiences. I hot fixed the VVPAT for my poll site's touchscreen. The cheap bent metal got warped, preventing correct operation. Imagine you had to change the thermal paper for a cash register made by lowest bid contractor designed by grifters who've never seen a cash register. These units we…

I will defer to your knowledge because it appears you have a deeper understanding of the internals.

At a user level for me in this last general, the only issues I've observed have been independent of the machine(s).

We are perhaps looking at different machines on different timelines and locale, but I don't doubt that there is a long way to go in terms of reliability and efficacy.

Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

#279

Post by TrackerFF »

BrandonMarc wrote: post #248
DeRock wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not "lucky" at all, this was an orchestrated outcome. Theres 2 components to this: 1. Mail in ballots were heavily partisan. The president made a point to instruct Republican voters to vote in person, and not by mail. And many other correlated factors (eg. COVID and social distancing has also been heavily politicized, influencing whether a voter would vote in person vs mail in). 2. Mail in ballots were delayed. T…

# 1 would fit, if there were a proportionate number of mail-in ballots for Jo Jorgensen and Kanye West. If you have 10,000 ballots, some of those will be expected. Tens of thousands of Biden-only? Repeatedly? Doesn't pass the sniff test.

For PA

Joe Biden: 3,376,367 Donald Trump: 3,326,687 Jo Jorgensen: 77,922

So, for every Jorgensen voter, there are approx. 43 Biden voters.

I mean, if mail-ins were proportional, you'd expect Jorgensen to get what, between 100 and 200 mail-in ballots? But we know that Biden has a much higher ratio of mail-in ballots than Trump, and maybe Jorgensen voters are closer to Trump than Biden, in their voting habits?

Just speculation. Same goes for Kanye West. Who knows how many of those votes were serious and planned, and how many were just for the "lols" at the polling station.

Points is - both Jorgensen and West are so few compared to the rest, that seeing just tens to a couple of hundred votes per TEN thousand doesn't really seem out of place.

Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

#280

Post by eat_veggies »

visarga wrote: post #266
estebank wrote: post #13

As a non-citizen who had a chance to observe how the process works in California, I was struck by how little emphasis is put in the secrecy of the vote. The whole system looks reasonable except for how easy it can be for poll workers to know what you voted for. Beyond that, the system is clearly geared towards increasing participation and enfranchising as many people as possible (a good thing in a democratic system).

> The whole system looks reasonable except for how easy it can be for poll workers to know what you voted for. I was struck when the article said they were asking party affiliation before voting. >> The voter approaches their table, and gives their name and party affiliation. The party affiliation is used as a signal that something fishy might be going on if the ratio of R to D is very different from the votes record…

Typically you are already registered with a specific party affiliation (so you can participate in primaries) and this information is often available online. It's not a big deal.
Post reply on HN