General Zod wrote:
Maybe, though pen & paper leaves a bit too much room for mistakes, imo.
How? I´ve never had problems with filling out a ballot and can´t see how someone could have. It´s not really that much harder to make a cross than it is to push a button.
It's easier to miss something or forget to check a box on paper than having a machine tell you you skipped something with an error message.
It seems to me that the advantages of pen and paper (no computer errors) outweight this. At least it´s your own fault if you fuck something up when making an X and not something you can not influence at all.
However, since it´s rather hard or impossible to find out how many people make mistakes when filling out a ballot it´s really hard to say if computers are the better option or not.
Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:Why not create a custom keyboard for this? All you need is to have three buttons; one for each candidate, and then an enter key. Make the buttons large and no one can do a stupid mistake. If a mistake does indeed occur, then the people who made the device are definitely trying to commit fraud.
Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:Why not create a custom keyboard for this? All you need is to have three buttons; one for each candidate, and then an enter key. Make the buttons large and no one can do a stupid mistake. If a mistake does indeed occur, then the people who made the device are definitely trying to commit fraud.
How do you handle write-in ballots?
I think that's another issue altogether. Give them.. big pieces of paper?
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General Zod wrote:It's easier to miss something or forget to check a box on paper than having a machine tell you you skipped something with an error message.
Someone asks what "too much room for mistakes" means and the best you can come up with is "grandma might forget to fill in a bubble"? Seriously?
"There is no "taboo" on using nuclear weapons." -Julhelm
What is Project Zohar? "On a serious note (well not really) I did sometimes jump in and rate nBSG episodes a '5' before the episode even aired or I saw it."- RogueIce explaining that episode ratings on SDN tv show threads are bunk
General Zod wrote:It's easier to miss something or forget to check a box on paper than having a machine tell you you skipped something with an error message.
Someone asks what "too much room for mistakes" means and the best you can come up with is "grandma might forget to fill in a bubble"? Seriously?
There's also the fact that it's far easier to "accidentally" not count a paper ballot, or that they're easier to forge but I would have though those would be the more obvious problems.
"It's you Americans. There's something about nipples you hate. If this were Germany, we'd be romping around naked on the stage here."
General Zod wrote:It's easier to miss something or forget to check a box on paper than having a machine tell you you skipped something with an error message.
Someone asks what "too much room for mistakes" means and the best you can come up with is "grandma might forget to fill in a bubble"? Seriously?
There's also the fact that it's far easier to "accidentally" not count a paper ballot, or that they're easier to forge but I would have thought those would be the more obvious problems.
Ghetto edit: should be thought, not though.
"It's you Americans. There's something about nipples you hate. If this were Germany, we'd be romping around naked on the stage here."
"Accidentally" not counting a paper ballot can be resolved by having observers present, from whichever political parties and news organizations want to send observers.
As for it being "easier to forge", I'd like to see some examples of forged ballots, given that we've already seen examples of voting machines being hacked and miscounting votes.
"There is no "taboo" on using nuclear weapons." -Julhelm
What is Project Zohar? "On a serious note (well not really) I did sometimes jump in and rate nBSG episodes a '5' before the episode even aired or I saw it."- RogueIce explaining that episode ratings on SDN tv show threads are bunk
Here is a video of one of those machines in action, that cannot be people clicking on the wrong place as the machine switches an alternative that is halfway across the screen (McCain) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Q9NSVUu8nk
cosmicalstorm wrote:Here is a video of one of those machines in action, that cannot be people clicking on the wrong place as the machine switches an alternative that is halfway across the screen (McCain) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Q9NSVUu8nk
How the fuck does is get that far out of calibration before someone notices ?
I've worked quite a bit with touchscreens, developing information kiosks and such and I can say that there definitely is calibration issues with them, particularly with CRT screens as there is quite a bit of distance between the touch surface and the phosphor layer of the screen. Basically, when the machines are calibrated, they are calibrated for a particular height and viewing angle (usually the height and view of the person doing the calibration).
However, a properly designed system takes this into account and puts plenty of space between buttons to account for calibration issues. It would be quite easy to take advantage of calibration issues and build into the system a natural bias towards one candidate or the other. It wouldn't have to be glaring or obvious and would appear to be quite innocent. For instance, generalizing that older people tend to be shorter on average, they will tend to touch a little bit underneath the actual button on screen. So, I can place the buttons close together and put my preferred candidate on the bottom. All very innocent, but it will have the effect of shunting a few votes towards my guy.
