Paper Trails For Voting

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»Paper Trails For Voting

Finally, something good happens. <a href="http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-6182590.html">A bill going through Congress will mandate paper trails for voting systems</a>. Screw you Diebold.

Quote

By a 6-3 vote along party lines, the House Administration Committee on Tuesday afternoon approved an amended version of the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act, chiefly sponsored by Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) and backed by 212 other members of Congress. Aside from the paper trail requirement, the bill also imposes a number of new security obligations, such as a general ban on any wireless technology in the machines and on connecting devices used to record or tabulate ballots to the Internet. In addition, only equipment preapproved by accredited test laboratories would be eligible for use in federal elections--a move aimed at keeping potentially flawed software from being slipped in at the last minute.

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This is SUCH an important and positive development!

Here in Australia, we value our democracy so much that all votes are counted manually ... and "scrutineers" from each interested party witness and verify that the votes have been counted properly. Nevertheless, there are sometimes recounts, but generally there's never been any lasting controversy over any vote-counting result.

Voting's also compulsory in Australia, which many of you will disagree with. Personally, I agree with compulsory voting - because I feel it is the responsibility of the citizen who enjoys living in a democratic society to participate in it ... but I would gladly make a partial concession to those who endorse the right not to vote. I believe everyone should have to attend a polling station and for those who wish not to vote, there should be an "I do not wish to vote" box to tick. Otherwise, there could easily be intimidation or incarceration of folks on election day and it may alter the result.

We also have a preferential system of voting where you order *all* the candidates in the order you prefer them. This way, if there are more than 2 candidates, the eventual winner will *always* have been *preferred* by over 50 percent of voters. First all the 1's are tallied and the last candidate is eliminated. All the 2's from those ballot papers are then re-distributed to the rest of the candidates. And so on... in the end there are always just 2 candidates left and one will have a clear majority. It saves having first and second round elections.

Disadvantages are: that you can't change your mind between first and second rounds as you can in other countries (this is a minor issue, I think), that the system is confusing for less educated folks (although it's comprehensively taught at ninth grade), and that you have to preference *all* the candidates - some people don't want to give any number to their unfavoured candidates, but you have to, or else your vote is cancelled as invalid ... (if you didn't have to, then the final winner may not actually have a majority) ... so do they then win with forced votes? Not really likely, as the first few preferences usually give a clear result. Due to the complexity - most political parties hand out "how to vote" cards for each electorate, where they've calculated which allocation of preferences would give them the best chance of winning. Parties also do deals with each other to "swap preferences" (as recommended on their how-to-vote cards - only voters choose the actual preferences when they fill in their ballot papers) It's a shame people can't ignore this and really make the effort to vote and preference candidates in a way that best follows their own beliefs/aspirations.

Oh, just for reference - we don't have preferential voting in all elections. Just in federal lower house (house of representatives) elections, and in lower house elections in most states. Most upper houses (Senate) have proportional voting, which I can't be bothered explaining and some of those also have optional system where you can just choose one box to tick.

I'm glad that someone gets it, even if it is on the other side of the world.