Re: E-voting in Japan

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: David Ian Hopper <imhopper () gmail com>
Date: May 27, 2007 8:42:14 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] Re: E-voting in Japan

Let's not forget that paper balloting still should be done reasonably.

In the Philippines, the entire ballot is blank -- no names at all. You
have to remember all the candidates you want to vote for, and there
are 50-odd national seats up each election, much less than local ones.
Since you have to remember them, it's up to everyone in the process to
"remind" voters. Apart from this process promoting celebrity
candidates, the methods of promoting corruption is limitless. I saw
everything from 'sample ballots' with candidates pre-written, usually
with a 20 peso note attached, to voting precinct officials writing
candidates names on a blackboard, and 'forgetting' to add a few.
That's even before they get counted... and counting is a whole other
joke.

In Canada, a country with high education and low corruption, it may
work fine. In other countries, Diebold doesn't look so bad.

On 5/27/07, David Farber <dave () farber net> wrote:
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: John Levine <johnl () iecc com>
> Date: May 26, 2007 11:25:29 PM EDT
> To: dave () farber net
> Cc: Rodney Van Meter <rdv () sfc wide ad jp>
> Subject: Re: [IP] E-voting in Japan
>
> > But it does appear to have the advantage of being efficient.  If
> > paper ballot results can be returned in so little time, what is the
> > incentive for electronic balloting?
>
> I wish that more people asked this question.  Canada uses paper
> ballots, counts them by hand, and it works fine.  Each polling place
> counts its ballots when the polls close, then they get the informal
> election eve numbers the same way everyone else does, by phoning them
> in to regional offices where they're added up on a spreadsheet.
>
> The plausible arguments in favor of electronic voting are pretty weak.
> On complex ballots, e.g., vote for 2 of N candidates, they can prevent
> overvotes, although I've never heard that as a major problem to solve.
> They can be friendlier to the blind, although I'd think that problem
> would be more effectively addressed by standardizing the layout of the
> paper ballots and providing a few generic machines that can read the
> ballots over headphones and direct the user to the right place to make
> the mark.
>
> The one situation in which electronic voting does speed up the vote
> count is in STV "instant runoff" preference ballots.  When I lived in
> Cambridge Mass, the only place in the country that uses them, 20 years
> ago, the ballots were marked and counted by hand which took a week.
> (It wasn't a problem, since there was more than a month between the
> election and the start of the terms.)  I gather that they hired some
> MIT guys to automate it so the ballots are now mark sense paper, fed
> into a scoring machine.  But even they are still paper.
>
> Regards,
> John Levine, johnl () iecc com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for
> Dummies",
> Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, ex-
> Mayor
> "More Wiener schnitzel, please", said Tom, revealingly.
>
>
>
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