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My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

portal.drewdevault.com

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Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

#341

Post by thedream »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #339
thedream wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> your entire argument hinges on inferring someone’s motive Where did that happen? Or do your psychic abilities allow you to bend time and space as well?

Yes, they allow me to mentally travel back and recall past events. Behold: > So when a poll worker deviates from the stated rules, it necessitates investigating why that happened (and deciding if such a deviation was proper). > What an amazing coincidence it is that this poll worker just so happened to deviate from the guidelines in a way that aligns with their admitted personal opinions and biases!

Congrats on your victory against OP in the Mental Gymnastics contest!

Please never sign up to be a poll worker.

Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

#342

Post by souprock »

markn951 wrote: post #197
tgb wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also worked polls in Philadelphia and we were also visited by non-uniform cops at the end of the day to do the (critical!) step of picking up the paper ballots. We got their badge numbers and names of course, but it was a little sketchy. The one who came by midday was uniformed, though.

Here in Boston our officers were in uniform all day but they told us they drop off all the ballots out of uniform in their own personal vehicles, he surmised to be less obvious a target. I thought it was an interesting approach, perhaps not super effective but interesting.

Uh... you should report that.

Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

#343

Post by thatguy0900 »

maxerickson wrote: post #225
nostromo wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was still wrong though. The ban isn't on anything that might seem vaguely political... gay pride flag, blue line flag, trans flag, UAW hat, etc. They just can't support a candidate or political party.

I'm fine drawing a line for an officer carrying out election duties that goes further than for other people. They just shouldn't wear anything that puts the election workers in a position where they have to evaluate the political message. I guess that can be tricky if a uniform somehow became partisan though.

Being a policeman is becoming a partisan issue in itself, I guess

Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

#344

Post by Thervicarl »

ebalit wrote: post #323
nomercy400 wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my country we have a simple rule to prevent electioneering on election day: electioneering on election day is forbidden. Not 100ft, not 100m, simply nowhere.

Same in my country. Elections are always on Sundays and the campaign stops from Friday night to the results reveal at 8 pm the day of the election. Spreading polls results or estimates is also forbidden during this period, even though in recent years it has been hard to enforce especially from foreign sources.

Not sure if that is what you are referring to but this is what happens in France with Swiss and Belgian websites being overloaded on French election days.

Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

#345

Post by MaxBarraclough »

tehlike wrote: post #193
juanbyrge wrote: post #4

While reading this I got a sense that all of these anachronistic processes would not exist if voting would be moved online. So many of the contentious issues we see here (mail-in ballots arriving late, machines not printing receipts, etc..) would simply not exist. Online voting seems like such a simpler approach.

Mandatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2030/

It's true that the software field is bad at what it does. When someone makes a truly secure piece of software, they get a PhD and repeatedly make the HN front-page. [0]

It's not just a matter of writing code with no bugs, though. As I mentioned this another comment, [1] voting is unusual as we must be confident in the correctness of the count, and confident that it's not possible to prove whether a particular person voted a particular way. There's also a trust issue: with a digital system, a single corrupt official will likely be able to do far more damage to the vote than with a paper-based system. Even if the system is somehow structured to resist this, public trust might still be less than in a paper-based system.

[0] https://ts.data61.csiro.au/projects/seL4/

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25048971

Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

#346

Post by MaxBarraclough »

jpttsn wrote: post #115
g00gler wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Pennsylvania there was a web tool via the department of state to check if your mail in ballot was counted. I can picture several ways to do a hybrid (mail + online) election like getting a code in the mail, voting online, then being able to ensure your ballot was counted correctly by using your code. It seems to make a lot more sense than having states count for a week.

Randomizing would be even faster and easier, if you just want incorrect answers in record time. Voting has a short list of maybe four easily stated requirements. Online voting “solutions” tend to solve one or two, forget about the others, and try to compensate on user experience.

> Voting has a short list of maybe four easily stated requirements. Online voting “solutions” tend to solve one or two, forget about the others, and try to compensate on user experience.

Right. In this case:

> then being able to ensure your ballot was counted correctly by using your code

This fails the voter anonymity requirement. There must not be a database associating each voter with which way they voted.

Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

#347

Post by tehlike »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #345
tehlike wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mandatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2030/

It's true that the software field is bad at what it does. When someone makes a truly secure piece of software, they get a PhD and repeatedly make the HN front-page. [0] It's not just a matter of writing code with no bugs, though. As I mentioned this another comment, [1] voting is unusual as we must be confident in the correctness of the count, and confident that it's not possible to prove whether a particular person…

You are correct. It needs to be anonymous, untamperable, auditable.

I recently had a discussion with a friend who asked me how to implement a write only audit log that will comply with some finra regulation. I asked him how tamper proof it needs to be, and mentioned his system admin could practically stop the log writer, do shady stuff, and start the log writer and there is nothing you can do about it.

As long as someone has access to the system, things can go wrong.

I am hoping zero knowledge proof systems will provide some guarantees here some day.

Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

#348

Post by maxerickson »

thatguy0900 wrote: post #343
maxerickson wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm fine drawing a line for an officer carrying out election duties that goes further than for other people. They just shouldn't wear anything that puts the election workers in a position where they have to evaluate the political message. I guess that can be tricky if a uniform somehow became partisan though.

Being a policeman is becoming a partisan issue in itself, I guess

That framing is very generous to the status quo.

There likely is a moderately sized group of people who are opposed to having police, but the real partisan divide is over what sort of policing is acceptable, not over policing itself.

And even that is not really a sufficient explanation of the differences in opinion, it's too simplistic. People disagree about whether police are biased and things like that.

Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

#349

Post by [deleted] »

stouset wrote: post #64
tych0 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a poll worker in Denver, and the way it was explained to me was: you can't wear anything referencing stuff on the ballot. So for example you can wear a shirt that says "{Black|Blue} Lives Matter" because there's nothing about whose lives matter on the ballot. Same with a MAGA hat. But you can't wear a shirt that says "Vote no on 2A", or "Trump 2020", because those people/issues are on the ballot. Denver != Penn…

MAGA hats wouldn’t be allowed (in California) since they’re official campaign merchandise and part of that campaign’s branding. Source: am an SF election inspector. That said, it’s all up to the specifics of state law.

[deleted]

Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

#350

Post by moveawayfromx86 »

stouset wrote: post #64
tych0 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a poll worker in Denver, and the way it was explained to me was: you can't wear anything referencing stuff on the ballot. So for example you can wear a shirt that says "{Black|Blue} Lives Matter" because there's nothing about whose lives matter on the ballot. Same with a MAGA hat. But you can't wear a shirt that says "Vote no on 2A", or "Trump 2020", because those people/issues are on the ballot. Denver != Penn…

MAGA hats wouldn’t be allowed (in California) since they’re official campaign merchandise and part of that campaign’s branding. Source: am an SF election inspector. That said, it’s all up to the specifics of state law.

MAGA hats were allowed in the general election in California: https://elections.cdn.sos.ca.gov/ccrov/pdf/2020/september/20...

They were considered "campaign slogans or political movement slogans".

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