P!ss-up in a brewery?

[Rolfe]

OK, having three time zones does complicate the issue, I agree. But leaving that aside, what a way to run a railroad!

Voter rolls seem to be a pretty fluid affair, and even the checks that applicants have a right to be on the roll don't seem to be terribly rigorous. Various sorts of electronic and mechanical voting, virtually all of which seem to be criticised as hackable, insecure, unverifiable and/or unreliable. Despite the involvement of "technology", queues round the block for several hours to vote. Polling stations having to stay open well after they should have closed. Rumours about days or even weeks delay in counting those oh-so-technologial votes.

You'd criticise a poverty-stricken African ex-colony if this was the best it could manage. Not impressed.

I've been an observer at several UK elections. Sometimes voter turnout is in the high 70%s. Still no queues longer than a few minutes. (And that in the busy evening period - during the day, just saunter in and vote.) Voter rolls fairly tightly regulated, and open for public scrutiny all year round. I estimate illegal voting must be an insignificant percentage.

Postal ballots received and tallied in advance. Paper ballots low-tech, but fairly idiot-proof, and the evidence is always there to be verified. Counting begun when polls close (promptly), by an army of moonlighting bank tellers. Paper ballots sorted and retained sorted, so that recounting is very quick. None of this administered by anyone with party political affiliations, though the parties all have observers at the count. In spite of absence of high-tech, it's all done and dusted by the morning, with a high degree of confidence in the results.

It's not a matter of scale, because it's a cellular thing. It's not so hard. What's wrong with these guys?

Rolfe.

[The Don]

To be fair:

The issues in Florida last time round has meant that the process of checking electors has to be absolutely airtight. I'm sure that this has added considerably to the amount of time required to do checking and so forth. Frankly in the UK it's a joke, I turn up with a card, they tick a box, I vote. I could easily turn up with another card (plucked from the mail, prised from the hands of a vulnerable neighbour) and vote again so long as it's in another polling station or at a different time. If we had any kind of proper checking, I'm sure the queues would lengthen.

The counting of physical ballot papers would take a long time "out west" where there are huge physical distances to tranfer the things.

[Nikk]

Quote:

Originally posted by The Don
To be fair:

The issues in Florida last time round has meant that the process of checking electors has to be absolutely airtight. I'm sure that this has added considerably to the amount of time required to do checking and so forth. Frankly in the UK it's a joke, I turn up with a card, they tick a box, I vote. I could easily turn up with another card (plucked from the mail, prised from the hands of a vulnerable neighbour) and vote again so long as it's in another polling station or at a different time. If we had any kind of proper checking, I'm sure the queues would lengthen.

The counting of physical ballot papers would take a long time "out west" where there are huge physical distances to tranfer the things.

Well in the UK it is just about possible to vote instead of someone else if you can get hold of their card but it is not possible to prevent someone getting the right to vote unless without the complicity of the local council.

If a card is stolen there is every chance that the voter will realise this before election day and request a new card which is likely to lead to the discovery that a fraud has occurred if there is an attempt to use the stolen card. So organised large scale impersonation is damn near impossible.

As regards the counting of ballot papers. This is only a problem where there are large distances, numerous polling stations and few people. Hard to see why staff can't be drafted in to local centres to count the votes. After all if there are votes to be counted there must be somebody living there!

I think the real problem in the US is that local communities down to county level jealously gaurd the right to do things any way they damn well please, regardless of whether that way actually works.

[Reginald]

There are some fairly understandable reasons for some of the things I saw as I watched last night. The thing I think that I find totally baffling is that the press "call" the result on some of these places while people are still standing in the line waiting to vote. I'm just bloody minded enough to know that if I had been standing in a queue for 5 hours and some TV station decided to announce that the place I was voting already had an albeit theoretical result then I would vote the opposite to their prediction.

I will stand firmly against the current moves in the UK to move away from the big black cross in the big black box on the ballot paper which I stick in the big black ballot box through the small black slot.

[Rolfe]

Quote:

Originally posted by Nikk
So organised large scale impersonation is damn near impossible.

I think that's the point. It's not impossible on a penny-numbers scale, which is probably a function of a degree of civil liberty, but it is damn near impossible at a scale that could possibly influence the outcome.

Actually, using someone's polling card against their will is damn near impossible, as you don't need the card to vote. If you went along and complained that your card had been stolen then that vote could be traced and declared void, and you'd be given a new voting paper.

What is possible is fraudulent use of a card issued to an apathetic non-voter or an elderly person. It would be very hard to do this to any significant degree though. I do worry about all-postal votes though, I think that introduces massive possibilities for intimidation and fraud.

And as for the distances? I don't see that as a huge problem. If communities are extremely scattered, either the residents will take advantage of postal ballots in advance, in which case no problem, or the residents themselves will have to make the effort to travel some distance to the polling station. Once the polls close, it's just a question of getting the boxes to the count, and if that's a long way then just use planes like they do for the outlying islands in Scotland.

Quote:

Originally posted by Nikk
I think the real problem in the US is that local communities down to county level jealously gaurd the right to do things any way they damn well please, regardless of whether that way actually works.

Sounds like a viable theory to me.

Rolfe.

[The Don]

Quote:

Originally posted by Nikk
If a card is stolen there is every chance that the voter will realise this before election day and request a new card which is likely to lead to the discovery that a fraud has occurred if there is an attempt to use the stolen card. So organised large scale impersonation is damn near impossible.

I thought that there were stories in the UK relating to the European elections where employers were allegedly influencing their employees' voting intentions and that "elders" were holding on to people's cards.

Never mind, my mistake, the allegations related to postal votes

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...portaltop.html

Quote:

Originally posted by Nikk
As regards the counting of ballot papers. This is only a problem where there are large distances, numerous polling stations and few people. Hard to see why staff can't be drafted in to local centres to count the votes. After all if there are votes to be counted there must be somebody living there!

I guess the problem is still distance and number of volunteers

[Zep]

Australia uses a very similar system to the UK, paper ballots and all, over vast areas the size of the USA. And we usually manage to get all national votes counted withing a few hours of the close of the polls too - sometimes a few problem areas might take overnight or even a day or two, but hey. So the argument that "vast distances makes it difficult" doesn't actually wash.

The US sure seems to try hard to cock-up a simple process, but as to gross voter fraud, hard to say.

[Rolfe]

Quote:

Originally posted by The Don
Never mind, my mistake, the allegations related to postal votes

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...portaltop.html

That's why I don't like this idea of all-postal votes.

If you have to apply specifically for a postal vote, then the chances are that the vast majority of the applicants are people who really want to use that vote. And so will be active in ensuring that what gets done with it is what they want done with it. But if you send them out to everyone willy-nilly, what then?

I saw a woman on TV who, in front of the camera, just dropped her postal voting documentation in a street litter bin, with a contemptuous sneer. If there's much of that attitude around, then who knows what a trawl of domestic rubbish bins might yield? Then you've got the bullying and the intimidation always possible in small communities and dysfunctional households.

The one way to ensure fairness is to allow everyone who wants it the right to go to a polling station and vote in private.

(And on the last point, if you have trouble getting volunteers, you pay them. The community that provides the voters will, demographically, also provide the presiding officers. And for the count, bank tellers here are always willing, it's good money and they work at night, and there's a sort of party atmosphere. But don't try to do a complicated financial transaction the next day!)

Rolfe.

[asthmatic camel]

Quote:

Originally posted by Rolfe
And for the count, bank tellers here are always willing, it's good money and they work at night, and there's a sort of party atmosphere. But don't try to do a complicated financial transaction the next day!
Rolfe.

Rolfe, it sounds like you have some experience of the vote counting procedure in Britain. When I worked as a bank cashier, my colleagues and I looked forward to election nights as a very welcome way to earn some extra cash; it was fun until a recount was demanded...

[geni]

Quote:

Originally posted by Rolfe
Actually, using someone's polling card against their will is damn near impossible, as you don't need the card to vote. If you went along and complained that your card had been stolen then that vote could be traced and declared void, and you'd be given a new voting paper.

However it if far from imposible to be registered in two different places at once.

Quote:

What is possible is fraudulent use of a card issued to an apathetic non-voter or an elderly person. It would be very hard to do this to any significant degree though. I do worry about all-postal votes though, I think that introduces massive possibilities for intimidation and fraud.
[/b]

Local coincel elections can have a problem with this one.

[Rolfe]

Quote:

Originally posted by geni
However it if far from imposible to be registered in two different places at once.

Extremely common. Very difficult to do any systematic fraud with that one though. Unless you just assume that they're all students and will therefore automatically all vote Labour. Oh that doesn't sound terribly likely these days anyway.

When I was a student and they had the infamous devolution referendum (the one we lost because of that damn 40% rule), a friend was registered in two places, and was livid that her "yes" vote in one was automatically cancelled out by the presumed "no" vote clocked up to her persona who didn't vote in the other. Personally, I'd have made the effort to vote yes in both places just as a protest against that stupid rule.

Quote:

Originally posted by geni
Local coincel elections can have a problem with this one.

True, tiny electorate, low turnout. But then it's not exactly the leader of the free world they're electing is it?

I'm tempted to go off at a tangent as to how the vote of an abstainer should be assumed to be counted, when they're spinning the result, but I got to go work.

Rolfe.