Voting

[klwilliams]

I voted this morning, using one of the new electronic voting machines. It was very easy to use, and voting went very quickly. There's just one thing that bothered me. When I left, they handed me an "I Voted" sticker. That's it. No paper receipt, with an ID number on it. There's no physical proof I even voted (besides my signature in the names book), much less who I voted for. I know how to program computers. I know how many bugs are in software these days. You don't even need hackers to mess with things (which gets easier and easier for them to do), you just need a stupid programming mistake (again, easier and easier to have happen). And I won't even go into the paranoia of "what if the company who wrote the software got paid off to fix the vote?"

Comments

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

Yup, I'm thinking absentee ballot this fall, too.

Absentee ballot

[metageek.livejournal.com]

Go for it. If enough people use absentee ballots in protest, then that may get the state's attention. Absentee ballots cost money, after all; if you can give them an economic reason to switch voting systems, maybe they'll go for it. Here in MA, we use optical sense systems, like SAT tests: you mark in your ovals, you see exactly who you've voted for, and you hand in your ballot to be scanned. In case of a recount, the ballots have been saved, and can be counted by hand. In CA, and in many other places, the only way to get a recount is to ask the software to print out its report again.