Kaelesh wrote:
soulshaver wrote:
WHY DO WE HAND OUR PUBLIC ELECTIONS OVER TO PRIVATE CORPORATIONS WHO ARE PROTECTED FROM TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY?
And who do you suggest we "hand it over" to that wouldn't be susceptible to shady dealings? The government?
In Australia the Electoral Office is funded from general revenue, but operates entirely independently from the government, and has a world-wide reputation for openness, accountability, and tamper-tight procedures. Our full-time Electoral Officers are often sent overseas to help with UN overseen elections in new democracies.
Electoral Office proceedings are made open to any citizen of Australia at all who wants to watch at any time as a public "Scrutineer". You are handed a badge, and you are watched by Electoral Officials so that you don't lay hands physically on anything, but you are welcome to hover over the shoulders all you like of any Electoral official that you like, and stick your nose into any paper-work that you want to. Electoral officers are required to open books and splay out piles of votes for you at your request so you can nose through them.
Dozens of Scrutineers hover over the count at every booth on every election day, and come in for the mail vote count and the more mathmatically complex Senate Multi-Member Preferential count that lasts for a fortnight. At a minimum every party (or independent candidate for that Division) sends a Scrutineer to watch all three types of count.
Openness and accountability are valued over speed and efficiency, but in practise the Scrutineers don't seem to slow anything down, at least in the three elections I participated in as a part-time Electoral Officer. Scrutineers can demand a recount, and they pretty much do demand a recount every single time an electoral division win comes down to less than 200-400 votes, and usually never demand a recount if the winning margin is over 400 votes.
Pretty much every time the recount comes out exactly the same, but I think everyone kind of feels that it's fair enough to double-check every time a count is tight.