Should have a standard voting system within the United States

[UCmeNdc]

The approximate costs of a recount in Pennsylvania weren't immediately available, but the vote-rich state is being targeted even with its wider Trump victory margin because two-thirds of the state's counties, including its most populous, use electronic voting machines that don't leave a paper trail, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported. Experts have demonstrated that such machines can be hacked even without being hooked up to the Internet.

Similar machines are scattered in some of the smaller counties in Wisconsin. About 1 in 10 votes in the state's April presidential primary came from such machines.

All of Michigan's voting machines have paper ballots that can be recounted, election officials there said.




Why the ad lib voting system?

[TreasonousBastard]

1. I agree that all voting methods should have a proper audit trail...

Ferchrissakes, would anyone use a cash register without a tape or audit trail?

Years ago I popped a micro-PC board into an obsolete, but mechanically OK, electronic cash register and with 5 or so pages of QuickBasic code had it print receipts and reports and reorder merchandise.

How hard can it be to build a decent voting machine?

In NY we have a couple of choices and my county went with a scanning machine that is almost foolproof. Recounts are easy because the scanned ballots are locked away and every election we randomly test machines for errors. The software and result are on secured chips and the software fairly simple and NOT windows 8 based. (Why a voting machine should be Windows based is beyond me. )

It really ain't that hard.

[Wounded Bear]

7. A less personal, but far more common example to me...

How many ATMs are there around the world? They seem to operate to 99.9...% accuracy to 4 or 5 digits, and each and every one can provide a paper receipt when the transaction is logged. They are not immune to hacking, but they are reasonably secure in the aggregate.

When the 2000 election was "reconciled" and voting systems first came into question in the modern era, what I saw was pretty much what you describe. It looked very much like some guys had some 1980's tabulating machines gathering dust in warehouses until someone said, "Hey, let's sell these to the gov't and convert them to count ballots." At least that was what it looked like in So Cal, where I was at the time. It had evil forebodings then, and it seemingly continues. We haven't improved anything in many, many counties around the country.

Unfortunately, the Party that benefits most from voter suppression and questionable voting equipment and practices now rules the roost. It may get worse before it gets better, if it ever does.

Oh, and of course the problems we're seeing are not happening in blue states, but in red and 'swing' states.

[TheFrenchRazor]

9. random testing of machines is not sufficient. we need all hand-counted paper ballots. it has been d

done for centuries. there is no reason that computers or machines need to be involved at all.

[no_hypocrisy]

2. I'm was a poll worker in NJ.

As soon as the polls close, the machines print out a paper total of votes, three to be exact. Each poll worker signs each strip. The totals are matched to the tickets collected for each vote. In other words, if a machine tabulates 250 votes, then there are 250 tickets. I wish there was a way to make sure that votes are inviolate, that is, that if a voter chooses Candidate A, the vote is tabulated on the machine as "A" and not switched to "B" and the paper trail reflects that vote accurately and the ticket shows the recorded vote.

[Grey Lemercier]

3. "Why the ad lib voting system?"... because per the Constitution, the voting process is delegated to

the states.

[BSdetect]

4. There is no sane reason for that

None.

[Grey Lemercier]

5. Only way to fix it is a constitutional amendment. Read the Federalist papers to see why

Last edited Sun Nov 27, 2016, 06:22 AM - Edit history (1)

the Framers of the Constitution walked such a tight line of balance between centralised federal power and decentralised state power.

The National Popular Vote Compact is unconstitutional as well.

The EC will never be done away with, see below

I have said so often on this board,

There is a solution

Abolition will never occur, as even if the constitutional amendment were passed in the Congress, all it takes is 13 states (the smaller ones, of course) to block it. They have way more than 13 who oppose it.

BUT there is a fix, and it just doesn't fix the electoral college. If fixes the House too.

Expand the House to 1001. That would also Expand the EC to 1106 (100 for senators, 1001 for House, plus 5 for DC). It doesnt take a Constitutional Amendment either, just an Act of Congress (overturning a 1929 Act).

Its been stuck at 435 (with 2 temp added for AK and HI for a couple years, removed in 1962) SINCE 1913!


The population then was 97 million. Now is 325 million. The average rep has almost 750,000 people in his/her district.

Because the EC is based (in the constitution) off number of congress people, increasing the House also increases the EC.

THEN you can more fairly split up those 1106 EV's and those 1001 House seats. Right now, a Wyoming electoral vote is worth 3.7 times MORE than a California vote.


Expanding the House also, of course allow for a more representational distribution for the states as well, at HOUSE government levels. California, and the other large states get FUCKED right now in very way.

The main barrier to this will be getting House members to dilute their power, PLUS Rethugs to go along, as they KNOW they have all the benefits to the current system


Read this for more info. http://www.thirty-thousand.org/

The 1001 is just my own number, you could do it so many different ways (such as the much less impactful (but still better than nothing) Wyoming Rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming_Rule , or double it, plus one (has to be odd number to avoid ties)

[UCmeNdc]

6. I agree with your assessment except

The United States does need a standard voting machine that everybody uses. Voting Machines that they can be set up and checked for tampering and malfunctions. Right now just a standard form with paper and pen would be better than the erratic electronic mess we have now.

[Grey Lemercier]

8. that will take a constitutional amendment

perhaps it could be done

[Hekate]

11. That's fascinating. I'll have to come back to read up on it later.

[SickOfTheOnePct]

13. I agree that changing the size of the House would be a better way

To me, it's pretty simple - since each state is guaranteed one House member, take the state with the smallest population and give them one House member. Then take that population and use it to assign the number of House members to the other states.

So, using population numbers from Wikipedia (I know, but this is just an exercise in possibilities):

Smallest state: Wyoming, 586,107
Largest state: California, 39,144,818

Wyoming would get one House member
California would get 67 (39,144,818/586,107 rounded up) as opposed to 55 now
Texas would get 43 vice 38 now, Florida would get 32 vice 29 now, etc.

The law could be written such that it would be re-baselined every other census (20 year gap)

[Grey Lemercier]

15. yep, thats the Wyoming Rule I listed. I think its better than nothing

but far too many people per Rep still.

[Hekate]

10. 50 states. States' Rights. Each state "a laboratory for democracy." I think it should be federalized

....but apparently this goes back to the beginning, like the EC.

We need a lot of reforms, but they aren't coming with the GOP holding all 3 branches.

[BSdetect]

12. K&R

[PatSeg]

14. I agree

The idea that voting is so different in all 50 states is ridiculous. Everyone should have the opportunity to vote by mail if they choose or vote early and election day should be on a Saturday or should be a national holiday. All votes should be verifiable ideally with paper receipts or a barcode. Personally, I like Oregon's mail-in voting system. People can track their ballots the same way we track our packages.

We keep having the same problems every election and it doesn't appear that anything is being done about it.

[Danmel]

16. The farce of Bush v. Gore

When the court handed the election to Shrub, and said that it was essential a one off, the writing was on the wall. especially because the ostensible excuse was equal protection.
Federal elections should be standardized, across all state lines. HAVA, the Help America Vote Act, should have required standardized voting nationwide. Our system is a joke.

[TheFrenchRazor]

18. right; we've had a repub loser "win" twice in 16 years, on untrustworthy voting machines. nt

[DFW]

20. Three times, probably

Ohio decided 2004. ESS and Diebold are both Republican-run Ohio companies who make electronic voting machines. The then-head of Diebold said he "would deliver Ohio for Bush." The Ohio Secretary of State was also the head of the Ohio Bush re-election committee. The voting machine companies went to court to get a judgement that their machines were "private property," and therefore they didn't have to let their machines' results be verified if they didn't want to. They didn't want to. ONE--count 'em--ONE of the Ohio voting machines got forensically examined. In a precinct with 600 registered voters, it gave Bush 3000 votes. Ohio reduced Bush margin of victory by 2400 votes, called the one machine a "glitch," and then STILL refused to let the rest of the machines be examined.

[tandem5]

17. I'm afraid somebody is going to have to white hat hack and obliterate an election.

People don't believe until they are shown explicitly. Let's see an SOS confidently assert that election fraud is impossible as he certifies Goofy the winner with 6,666,666 votes.

[TheFrenchRazor]

19. it may take something like that. nt