I am glad that the author didn't force election authority to use plan9 from outer space.
Wow, imagine creating an account just to troll a guy who you have disagreements with.
Get a life.
My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania
21–30 of 358 posts
Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania
#22While 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.
Beyond hacking, there is a reason to do polls in person. It is also a protection against people being coerced or selling their vote. When they are at the polling station, no outside force can exert any influence as the vote is fully confidential.
Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania
#23As 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).
They have an optional secret ballot in all the votes. So does oregon who was doing vote by mail before it was cool...
Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania
#24As 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).
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
Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania
#25Seems to have been hugged to death. Anyone have an alternative link?
Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania
#26This may be accurate for Philadelphia County -- I don't know -- but it is definitely not how voting worked in at least one other area of Pennsylvania.
I'm not saying the person is lying, but they may be misinformed about the procedures applying across the entire state.
(I'm also not saying anything is wrong with how it was done anywhere in PA.)
Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania
#27This part seems incorrect: > There are strict laws regulating police and poll workers while the polls are open. Police are not allowed within 100 feet of the polling location, unless they're actively voting or there on official business at the request of the election board. Additionally, anyone working at the polls in an official capacity is not allowed to wear any clothing with political messaging. One of the office…
"The American flag with the military oath of enlistment" is not "the American flag", but rather an attempt to make some kind of statement. At best it's political support of the military, at worst it's a possible dog whistle.
Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania
#28This part seems incorrect: > There are strict laws regulating police and poll workers while the polls are open. Police are not allowed within 100 feet of the polling location, unless they're actively voting or there on official business at the request of the election board. Additionally, anyone working at the polls in an official capacity is not allowed to wear any clothing with political messaging. One of the office…
It doesn't seem much different than a "thin blue line" flag. I'd feel the same way as Drew in this situation. If you want to wear a flag, wear a flag.
Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania
#29Cannot connect to the site! Source of post is here though.
https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/drewdevault.com/tree/master/cont...
Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used to be in your camp, but ultimately I think the decentralization and heterogeneity of the election processes provides a non-trivial layer of "security by obfuscation". In other words, if we streamline the process too well, we'll find ourselves with a system with a handful of highly vulnerable points of failure. I would much prefer a seemingly archaic system that, at the cost of annoyances and delays, at least p…
Computers make it very easy to centrally modify/control information. Sometimes that's a good thing, sometimes it's a terrible thing.
It's also unique in its specifics. Voting is an unusual data-management challenge as we want a paper-trail (we want to be able to verify the correctness of the count), and voter anonymity (it must be impossible to prove that a specific person voted a specific way). We can do this robustly and easily with paper-based voting. Electronic systems are often deeply flawed.
Bruce Schneier's article on this: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/04/securing_elec...