[peterarmstrong]

Dear America,

This all sounds complicated and insecure.

Why can you not just do paper voting with simple ballots, like in Canada?

Yes, you have 10x the people, but just get 10x the human counters and scrutineers. Counting is parallelizable.

We run elections and get accurate, verifiable results in the same day.

Ours aren't as nasty as yours are, and we still have better anti-fraud than you do, since every paper ballot can be counted, as many times as needed. And since the thing which is counted is the same physical thing which can be audited, we can always verify the results if anything goes wrong.

You've had some problems with your ballots 16 years ago, and we're not sure why you haven't fixed this by now. After all, you've gotten people to the moon and robots to Mars--surely you'd want a fair, verifiable presidential election? (Especially when one of the two candidates is, frankly, terrifying to all your friends around the world.)

Love, Canada

[cperciva]

Why can you not just do paper voting with simple ballots, like in Canada?

As much as I like Canada's easily audited voting system, there's a good reason for the US to not use a simple way of counting votes: They don't have simple ballots. Rather than just voting for one MP, as we do, a typical American might be asked to vote for a President, a Senator, a Representative, yes/no on 17 state propositions, a State Senator, a State Representative, the BART Director, the City College of San Francisco Board of Trustees, the San Francisco Public Schools Board of Education, a Superior Court Judge, and yes/no on 25 city measures.

In order for those to be counted the same way as we do in Canada, you'd need to hand the voter a book of 51 ballots and have them dropped into 51 separate boxes...

[hubert123]

How do you even come up with these weird convoluted non-arguments, we have many choices on a single ballot here too. It's called a list. You can put lists on paper.

[cperciva]

In Canadian federal elections, the vote counting process is:

1. Open the box. 2. Dump the ballots onto the table. 3. Make sure the box is empty. 4. Pick up ballots one by one, say "this looks like a vote for "Mr. X", and place into the appropriate pile. 5. Count how many ballots are in each pile.

This particular process doesn't work if you have multiple choices on one ballot. I'm not saying that you can't use paper ballots for more complex elections -- you absolutely should, for the well-known verifiability reasons -- just that the counting process is never going to be as simple as the Canadian (or UK) process.

[lolc]

Where I live, the ballots we use are cut into one piece per question. Then the pieces are counted separately.

There was a court argument over the use of scales by some municipalities. The scales are used to weigh piles of votes to determine vote count. So ballots with multiple question are cut, sorted, then weighed. I'm looking into lead pens to give my vote more weight :-)

[tajen]

Ask Switzerland how they manage paper ballots for 25 different votes every 4 months.

[kilotaras]

"Do you know one state in USA is as big as Switzerland." That's the kind of an answer a big part of population tend to give when you point other countries as examples.

[galtwho]

The largest democracy India has e-voting.

Works fine for them. Why are other countries not going the same way.

There is a move in India to get all voting machines to print out your choice which the voter can drop into a ballot box.

Not sure if that is implemented yet. Surely something like that will work fine.

[chipperyman573]

>There is a move in India to get all voting machines to print out your choice which the voter can drop into a ballot box

Sounds like an expensive printer

[sangnoir]

I doubt it's going to be an inkjet, the "printer" could be simplified to punching holes on the ballot, which should be cheap.

[blazespin]

Exactly, more people counting is not a problem. It's actually a good thing. Why not get more people involved in the electoral process? It's beyond me why anyone would want to undermine this.

Plus, I don't get the mail in states. What's up with that? Why mess with a process that works?

[chipperyman573]

I live in a mail-in state (WA) and in my opinion it's a pretty great system. I got my ballot almost two weeks ago and just sent it in last week. I was able to fill it out when I had free time and drop it in a ballot box (there's one about 5 minutes from where I live by foot, and I could always just mail it in if I wanted to). Lining up to vote at the polls would've been a lot more time-consuming because I would have to line up and I would've had to write down all my votes anyway, then move them onto an official ballot.

[cperciva]

I live in a mail-in state (WA) and in my opinion it's a pretty great system.

What mechanism, if any, is in place to prevent voters from being coerced or bribed to cast their vote a particular way? This is the traditional reason for using in-person voting rather than mailed ballots; if you can't show someone how you voted, they can't bribe or coerce you.

(Maybe the answer is "there is no mechanism", but increasing the ease of voting is considered more important than protecting the system from coercion and bribery. Not a tradeoff I would make, but I can see that some people would support that.)

[djrogers]

> What mechanism, if any, is in place to prevent voters from being coerced or bribed to cast their vote a particular way?

If imcoerced into voting a particular way on my mail-in ballot, I can go to the polling place in Election Day and fill out a provisional ballot hat will be counted in place of my coerced ballot. Not perfect, but this year it allows me to vote even though I'm out of the state next week.

[pseudalopex]

How many people know that? The Washington Secretary of State's FAQs don't mention coercion or bribery as reasons to receive a provisional or replacement ballot.[1][2] King County, with over 1/4 of the state's population, only mentions voting centers as an accessibility option.[3] And does the ballot tracker[4] show if a ballot is invalidated?

Every state has provisions for absentee voting, and 3/4 allow early voting in person.

[1] https://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/general-election-faqs.aspx

[2] https://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/faq_vote_by_mail.aspx

[3] http://www.kingcounty.gov/depts/elections/how-to-vote/ballot...

[4] https://info.kingcounty.gov/elections/ballottracker.aspx

[mark_edward]

I think you're guarding against different things. If you live in a society where there are (following historical patterns here) patriarchs coercing the votes of spouses and dependents you probably have a whole slew of other problems that make this particular one just part of a larger social reform that should happen anyway.

[jacalata]

I'd say anywhere that people can literally have to choose between their job and their vote is not "working", which is why it needed messing with. Its hard for a lot of people to get to a specific location on any given day - there's no good reason today that a week in bed with the flu should prevent you from voting. Or that it should be harder to vote if you have three kids and no babysitter, or are on crutches, or work an irregular schedule at a minimum wage job.

[colejohnson66]

> or work an irregular schedule at a minimum wage job

The law in California[0] guarantees you the right to vote even if you are scheduled that day. You can take up to two hours off the beginning or end of your shift to vote if necessary. For other states...[1]

[0]: CEC§14000 http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=elec&g...

[1]: http://www.findlaw.com/voting-rights-law.html

[jacalata]

There have been polling stations reported with multi hour queues. I'm pretty sure California does not guarantee you the right to vote in person, because it doesn't say you must be given as many hours as you need. But it's ok, because california allows vote by mail.

[emodendroket]

> Why can you not just do paper voting with simple ballots, like in Canada?

Many districts use paper ballots with optical scanners but this is totally up to the discretion of the county/state.

[nashashmi]

In Florida in 2000, we had these old voting machines where the voter would go into the booth, hit a bunch of buttons, and submit the vote. The voting card in the back would fall. There were often errors on them via ineffective button pushes, incorrect push, last minute mind change, and it would result in dubious votes. Some votes were discarded. There is no doubt that sometimes the vote went to the wrong candidate.

During the very close presidential election of 2000, these voting machine issues clearly showed the need for electronic voting machine booths with the added feature of instant vote count.

The current problems that are appearing are temporary and fleeting. With enough time and research these problems will become obsolete and resolved.

But your point of paper ballots requiring greater participation of people is interesting. Indeed, when more people participate even in mundane and simple tasks, there is a healthy feeling that spreads among the community.

[specialist]

"... these voting machine issues clearly showed the need for electronic voting machine booths..."

The hanging chad fiasco showed the need for following established procedures. Those particular machines had not been cleaned for multiple years. So the holes filled up. Preventing new votes from being cast.

The problem electronic voting machines solved was the vendors were envious of dot com valuations. The HAVA pork triggered a gold rush by the vendors, juicing their revenue and stock prices and exec payouts. The gear didn't actually solve any technical problems. They weren't even "accessible", which was their primary stated purpose.

[MichaelGG]

How does this show the need for e-voting? It just shows the need for decent engineering. It's silly to pretend a computer is the only solution here. You can add on instant counting, too, with a camera and slot to drop the ballot in.

[djrogers]

> Why can you not just do paper voting with simple ballots, like in Canada?

Some places do - voting is handled at the state and county level, not federal. For example. I vote on paper in the county where I live.

> You've had some problems with your ballots 16 years ago, and we're not sure why you haven't fixed this by now.

Those were paper ballots, what you see now is largely an attempt to avoid similar multi-day challenges and recounts due to hanging chads and ambiguous markings on paper ballots.

[omginternets]

But how are we going to disrupt voting?