-Bastille
Bastille´s last blog ..Second Batch

Now you have one (more?) subscriber. :-)

No one told me i needed to hang onto that card, so when i saw the lady in front of me lay it on the table where the guy was asking paper or electronic, i assumed it was like the sticker you get when you are done.

whoops. apparently that is what allows you to vote.

i told the man electronic and slyly laid that little piece of paper on his table as he was not looking. much like you would a flyier handed to you on the street, you appreciate that it was given to you but dont want it.

i then went to wait in the e line. one machine. 15 minutes. no one told me that paper was faster. as i was in line i was told they will no longer use the e machines to cast votes after this election.

finally got up to the machine and the lady asked for my card. i told her i put it on the table over there and she said i cant vote without it. long story short everyone in there thinks that i was trying to cast 2 votes. had to argue, but got my vote counted.

i dont like electronic voting, i felt like i had no validation in my voting.

That said, at my polling place half the people were not only using paper ballots, they were _asking_ for them.

I voted electronically, but not touch screen…there was a sheet of paper overlaying some LED lights and buttons. I lit up who I was voting for, and then hit the big green vote button.

In 2003 Walden O’Dell was the CEO of Diebold (now Premier Election Systems) wrote in a fund raising letter that he was “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President.” (http://money.cnn.com/2004/08/30/technology/election_diebold/). That sounds like a poor choice of words at best and a guarantee of fraud at worst. Either way I’d like some kind of verification of my vote.

I think electronic voting machines need to have a printout that could look like the scantron ballot. After electronically voting the voter could verify everything on the printout (if they wanted to) and turn that paper ballot in. The paper ballot could be used if there were any questions about legitimacy or if a recount were desired. (However if an open, trusted electronic system is created, I imagine a need and demand for recounts would be diminished)

The difference between electronic banking and most current electronic voting systems is transparency. At any time I can log in and see my accounts, what is in them, transactions, interest earned, etc – not to mention the in-person services at the bank. When voting however, with the current systems, once you click vote, the entire process is secret and there is verification. The big companies refuse to allow anyone to see their code so there is no way to verify proper vote recording.

So yeah, I’d be on board if you wanted to start a vote machine company.