Thursday, November 09, 2006
Voting machines: how do the alternatives work?
There's a good Fortune article about the history and status of voting machines with a really good (not perfect, but good) comparison chart of what you need to worry about with different kinds of technology.
They understate the problems with all-electronic systems. There are lots of ways to cheat besides what they mention, including simply editing the results at the central machine that adds up the precinct results. Yes, the operator can change the totals, a feature which pushes the limits of what you can explain as simple designer incompetence.
They overstate the problems with paper. "Difficult and time-consuming to count in large quantities"? Have each precinct report its own results, all of them counting at the same time. The big problems with paper are ambiguous and "spoiled" ballots.
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They understate the problems with all-electronic systems. There are lots of ways to cheat besides what they mention, including simply editing the results at the central machine that adds up the precinct results. Yes, the operator can change the totals, a feature which pushes the limits of what you can explain as simple designer incompetence.
They overstate the problems with paper. "Difficult and time-consuming to count in large quantities"? Have each precinct report its own results, all of them counting at the same time. The big problems with paper are ambiguous and "spoiled" ballots.
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