Missing election boxes found in the home of officialFollow

an electronic voting machine I felt was more secure because it used paper ballots and left a physical trail.

You know, since you have problems following a point and all

I never once argued that electronic voting machines + paper trail are better still. My entire point was that even without a paper trail, they are no less secure (and arguably much more secure) then a traditional "drop the ballot in the cardboard box" style system.

True, but who cares? People fear technology. What's the larger risk, buying something online with a credit card, or handing it to a waiter? Now what's the larger perceived risk? Is a kid more likely to be abused by a close family friend or a stranger prowling the internet? Which one is perceived as the greater risk?

The reality doesn't matter. Confidence in voting accuracy is, in almost all ways, more important than the actual accuracy.

How do your last two posts in this thread have different avatars?

No. Your argument was that an electronic voting machine without a paper trail was less secure then a traditional paper ballot in a cardboard box system. Or did you fail to read what I just quoted?


Also, what part of this quote by me was confusing?




You also failed completely to show that most off the security concerns involved the lack of a paper trail. I could list off a hundred articles on the subject, and while some will occasionally mention that having a paper trail is nice and should be featured, the overwhelming "fear" in the public over e-voting is always that it's more easy to tamper with the results.


I guess I just don't understand your approach to the issue. I agreed with your statements about paper trails being better. I disagreed with your statement that a paperless e-voting box was less secure then a traditional ballot system. So you choose to debate the first point instead of the second?

/em scratches head...



Joph. I advocate voting machines that leave a paper trail. I've said so in every single thread we've ever had on this subject. My point is, and has always been, that even without a paper trail, they're more secure and overall "better" then other non-electronic methods. I don't think that lack of a paper trail is a legitimate reason to scrap voting machines in favor of the old cardboard box. And I've stated my reasons for this on many occasions.

If you agree with that, then why are you arguing with me? If you don't, then by all means continue, but then restrict your arguments to comparisons of the two things being debated.

Gbaji said


I think my point is that 'democracy' as a process that leads to representation of the people, by the people, for the people, is pretty moribund in the US. (and not just the US for sure. But you are the guys who treat 'free and fair elections' as the answer to all the worlds ills)

At the beggining of the one e-mail the chap says...



I cant help but look at the presidential campaign atm as this giant sporting event. All that 'whoo-hooing' flag waving and rabid support of this candidate or that candidate, and the frantic trashing of each other. Nobody really gives too much thought as to who might actually do a good job of running the country for the benefit of the people who live in it. Its all about 'my team must win 'cos....'cos....well the other team is crap!'.

Like a sporting event, 'your team' may have no personal connection to its fans. Not even have any players from the town from wich it takes its name, yet the fanatical support is whats important, what gets people worked into a frenzy.


Does anyone really believe that Obama or Clinton or Huckabee or Mccain have a real 'connection' to the people who they swear to represent? Maybe i'm just too cynical, but when an election can be won or lost depending on the way that the votes are collected and collated, then i think that perhaps its time to look at this so-called democracy that you are so keen to export to the rest of the world.


Its all a bit too 'tribal' for me to consider it anything other than a uncivilised grasping at power by the people who are the least qualified to exercise restraint in the exercise of that power.

I know thats all off at a bit of a tangent, but honestly, seeing thousands of flag wavers hooting and going off like they just won the World Cup, when in fact they are at a political event makes my skin crawl.

As far as the machines go....its a machine. It can be tampered with. As can paper ballots.

Its the perception that matters tho.....

Are you saying that democracy is dying because people pick sides based on surface level criteria? Ok. I can buy this, but I think that this is the way democracy has always been.

The unfortunate truth is the the vast majority of any population is simply never going to be smart enough, educated enough, or informed enough to make truly intelligent decisions regarding their votes. So they fall back on political parties with broad platforms that they agree with and that have some sort of track record of results that they view as positive (using whatever criteria that may involve of course!). I really don't think this is anything new, and it certainly doesn't spell the death of democracy.

It's just the way it is...




Yup. And the few who do actually spend time and thought about those sorts of things are usually the first to be attacked by the majority who don't. They don't want to hear an explanation as to why X candidate is better, or Y policy is a bad idea. They want to hear support for their side and attacks against the other side.

You've seen this in action here on this forum, right? It's not exactly a surprise. Most people reject logic and reason in favor of flag-waving. Most people pick a position on something, not based on an assessment of the thing itself, but by picking the person or group first and then adopting the position based on what they believe.


This is not limited to politics either. It's a reality of human social behavior.

When I was a Senior in High School, I took a physics class. This was the top science taught at the school, which was itself a college-prep private school. In this class were the top kids in the top track in the school. Valedictorian, etc. All in this one class (smallish school). The very first homework assignment was handed in. As the teacher went over the answers (pretty simple first chapter stuff), I thought he'd given the wrong answer for one of the problems. I called him on it. This resulted in the entire rest of the class session devolving into an argument over the correct answer.

At one point, the teacher took a show of hands. How many believed that he was right and how many believed that I was right. All but one of the students raised their hands for him. The one holdout, a girl named Suzy, when asked why she thought I was right responded "I know that he's really smart, so I think he must know the right answer".


Here's the deal. They were all wrong. As it happened, I was correct on the answer and to his credit, at the start of the next class he clarified that. But that's not really important. What's important is that out of a class of 25 or so top rated students in a science class, not a single one of them based their opinion on the actual correct answer to the question. Not one (except me). Not even Suzy.

More importantly, this was a science class. Unlike in politics, there really is only one right answer. It's not subject to opinion. Also, presumably most of the class did the homework assignment. Equally presumably, since this was an easy question in an easy intro chapter, most of them got the right answer when they did their own homework (it was an obvious one, but the teacher just brain farted and once he got it wrong in his head, couldn't see the problem correctly).

Assuming that most of them did get the answer correct (reasonable, considering these are all A students), then this means that even when they themselves arrived at a different answer, they changed it and agreed with the teacher when asked who was right. Why? Not because they thought he was right. Couldn't be. They changed their answer because they all believed that he must be right since he was the teacher. Period.

If people do this in such overwhelming numbers in a situation where there really is just one right answer, imagine how much stronger this is when applied to areas where opinion and belief play a strong role (like politics). Of course people form their opinion based on who they like and not what actually makes sense. It's natural for them to do that. Very few people are able to actually make decisions by looking at the facts around them without regard to who they are disagreeing with. Very few will believe that they are right and their instructor is wrong. Fewer still will do anything about it. Most will simply accept the answers they are given and not question them.


You're correct. It is a bit scary. But that's how people work. They always have...

We actually had a touchscreen as well for anyone who wanted to use it. In our case, you inserted your ballot, voted (multiple languages, don't know what they all were), and it printed out your ballot for you to drop into the scanner like any other.

Hell, the machine even had a sip/puff attachment in case Christopher Reeve came back from the dead and wanted to vote. Or in case you're just really, really lazy.


No, I never got to try it.