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Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes

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Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes

#541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

perhaps the best thing to do is to flip a coin Or have a runoff election, or have instant-runoff voting. Having elections determined by real or statistical coin-flips undermines the (important) story of self-rule.

You can't get rid of edge cases by moving the edge.

Yes you can. If there is a tie in the UK the result is chosen on a cut of the cards.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/england...

The candidates agree, and the winner and loser both accept the outcome, works for me.

Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes

#542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, and in scenarios like that, perhaps the best thing to do is to flip a coin. Instead of going to all the expense of flipping a coin, though, you could just take the person who seemed to get the most votes (after you've counted them all really hard to make sure you're within the margin of error). Just an arbitrary rule, no biggie.

perhaps the best thing to do is to flip a coin Or have a runoff election, or have instant-runoff voting. Having elections determined by real or statistical coin-flips undermines the (important) story of self-rule.

And if that is too close as well?

Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes

#543
post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have anything more than that? I can't accept an unsourced story from that site at face value given its past editorial failures.

it's from krdo. and there is also a video. http://www.krdo.com/news/Pueblo-GOP-Machines-switched-Romney...

There is a video, but it doesn't demonstrate anything. Did you even watch it??

Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes

#544
post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has less to do with population density and more to do with population clusters. The people in Sweden aren't even distributed across the entire country.

Ehh, maybe. Philadelphia's roads are legendarily bad though. One summer when I was living in Philadelphia they removed the surface of the road in front of my apartment. Two months later they put it back. And if it's not that, it's crews filling in holes from road-work with about half as much asphalt as the hole needed, or the random patches of cobblestone street still left in the city, seemingly with little rhyme or…

A great example is Canada. 35 million people, but 80% of them live within 200 miles of the US border. The population density stat would be very misleading in that case.

Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes

#545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are still missing the point. Voters can't be given a receipt for how they voted, because then they can sell their vote.

Voters can sell their vote with or without a receipt. Furthermore, they can sell with a reasonable degree of certainty (if the buyer demanded it) already by submitting to a lie detector test. There is no valid reason, moral or technical, for preventing voters from verifying their votes were accurately counted, and verification does not enable any new crimes – but it does prevent the current crime where someone's vote…

If voters are given a receipt, buyers of votes can demand to see said receipt to verify they voted the correct way. boss/abusive family member/mafia can demand to see the vote receipt on threat of your job/safety/family returning safely tonight. The potential for a vote receipt means that these 3rd parties can reward/punish you based on the way you voted. Without it, they have no way of knowing if their coercion/blackmail worked or not.

Personally, I would like to have a receipt because I think the danger of my vote not having been recorded is greater than the danger of someone demanding my vote receipt off me.

Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes

#546
post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I missed the discussions in the thread; how is verifiability (is that a word?) a design flaw?

Consider some scenarios: Jim is not a nice man and is very demanding and abusive and goes to vote. He wants his wife to vote for X, but he suspects that she will vote for Y. Today, she can vote for X or Y and tell her husband that she voted for Y. He has no way to prove her wrong. With receipts, he can tell her, on no uncertain terms, that she is to show him her receipt afterwards. If she doesn't produce a receipt sh…

Cell phone video of the whole process would probably be enough to placate the husband and buy a vote though.

Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes

#547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He says a lot of things, but amazingly only shows us the one thing that can be easily debunked as a glitch/error.

Thank you for being the voice of reason. It's a fucking calibration error. I hate sensationalism like this.

He says he tested that it wasn't a calibration error. How is it sensationalism? Think first.

Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes

#549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read the link in tokenadult's post about Minnesota. Paper is hardly easy to count when you get to the dolts who don't know how to mark a ballot. What does it mean when the guy marks a vote for every question but also writes "LIZARD PEOPLE" in every write-in ballot spot? Lots of people really don't like the fact that the senator is chosen based on how 3 people sit down and decide what that means, or whether this chad…

>Computer touch-screen voting systems, like all other voting, have flaws, but one thing they don't have is any ambiguity how you count each ballot. As someone who has designed questionnaires and computer interfaces, I think you miss a huge point here – electronic systems make vote counting easy because they constrain choice... but there's a lot less ability to verify that an electronic system actually captured the in…

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Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes

#550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I missed the discussions in the thread; how is verifiability (is that a word?) a design flaw?

Because if you can prove to a third-party how you voted, you can sell your vote, or coerce someone else to vote a certain way. It's one of the biggest challenges in crypto-voting systems. And there are some solutions. But we need to hammer down on the "silly people, why not just print a receipt" idea really hard.

If the receipts are anonymous, they can't prove how you voted, only that you were able to obtain a receipt. So what if we increase the supply of receipts enough to destroy the value of an individual receipt? For example, voting machines could drop duplicate receipts in a bucket that voters have access to.
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