Re: [OT] Vote!
Re: [OT] Vote!
- Subject: Re: [OT] Vote!
- From: Martin Orpen <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 18 Aug 2005 17:51:18 +0100
On 18 Aug 2005, at 13:55, deivy petrescu wrote:
I have to agree with you guys, an honest penciled vote is much
better than a rigged electronic one!
There, we all agree!
Why is this list in existence in first place? It is not because
computers are sexier, but because as someone posted couple of days
ago "I can do a week's worth of work in few hours". This is a
compelling reason to use computers.
If we are talking about a Scandinavian country with 6 million
people, may be computers are not so important. But the US has about
300.000.000 people, India has around 600.000.000 voters and in the
last election in Brazil there were about 100.000.000 voters. This
is more than the whole population of GB (more than 1.6 times).
Computers are necessary.
You've been suckered by technology.
The democratic process is one in which you can participate in more
ways that just voting. It's also a process which costs very little to
ordinary people - people are willing to count the votes for free if
you want them too.
The process is open, transparent and *not* prone to fraud (as is
evident from the effort put into gerrymandering). One only needs to
look at the amount of column inches devoted to US election screw ups
to realise that the UK process of using real people to do the work is
about a million times more efficient and unquestionably more honest.
However, this is not the American way. The simple process of casting
and counting ballots must be made to generate a profit for somebody
and therefore be made more susceptible to *business interests*.
There is no correlation between number of people involved and the
necessity to use machines. Your example of the US is meaningless as
there is no *single system* in use across the US and all individual
states could work successfully with the UK manual system if they had
any inclination to do so.
India and Brazil are third world countries where literacy presents
serious problems - Indian peasants used to make a thumb impression to
cast their votes. Although they aren't really comparable with the US
and UK it is worth looking at India to illustrate the financial
interests that are at work.
The biggest criticism of the manual Indian system was that it took
24-48 hours to count the ballots. That doesn't sound to bad to me
when you've got 600,000 of them to count - and hardly a good reason
to spend a huge amount of money on a mechanised solution. But, just
like the US, this is *good business* - diverting public money to
businesses to develop high technology solutions to non-existent
problems in order to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.
In the US the money would be given to *private* institutions, but in
India they're honest enough to appreciate that Boeing and Lockheed
aren't actually viable without massive public subsidy and therefore
they've got no problem with the concept of *state owned* industry.
They simply commissioned two of their high-tech, state-owned defence
contractors to come up with the machinery and have also made a point
of marketing the devices across the rest of the third world. I can't
find the figures, but I'm guessing that the cost to the Indian tax
payer to instigate this system was massive - and certainly pointless
given that every time I've visited India myself there are at least
six people doing a single person's work pretty much everywhere you go :(
The public pay for them, the defence contractors and the government
make a load of money out of it.
All made possible because ordinary people are *demanding* that they
get the result of something they have to wait five years to do in
less than 24 hours...
Computers patently aren't necessary. They are just being sold to you
as being necessary by people who have an interest in making a buck or
two or gaining power from it. Or are you seriously suggesting that
the UK electoral system is *more corrupt* than the US because we
don't have computers?
[snip]
Any candidate can call for a recount - and in most closely fought
elections it is not uncommon for the ballots to be counted three
or four times. If a candidate is still dissatisfied they can
challenge the decision of the returning officer via an election
petition. In 1997 this happened in the UK when the Lib Dems beat
the Tories in Winchester by 2 votes. The Tory candidate insisted
that 55 spoiled ballot papers be counted in his favour and was
declared the winner. The result was challenged and the court ruled
in favour of the Tory but called a by-election so that the voters
could reconsider the issue. They did - the Lib Dem candidate won
by 21,556 votes second time around...
This is a good illustration on the reason computers could be
better. I do not believe an election could be won by 2 votes, or 53
votes for that matter. There should be some statistical
significance taken into account. And when you put computers and
statistics together, cheating becomes harder and harder.
Again, provided the statistics is not done by a "blackbox".
Why shouldn't an election be won by one vote? And where does
statistical significance enter into it?
The only significant issue is who got most votes. And this can be
worked out very simply, cheaply and honestly using people, paper and
indelible pencils. Why put yourself at the mercy of technical screw-
ups when there are absolutely no benefits to you as a voter?
The only reason to pursue computerised/mechanised solutions is to
make money or compel people to vote. The risks are too great - as the
US proves with every screwed up election and "hanging chad" debacle.
One should also keep in mind that many of the proposed e-voting
solutions cannot guarantee the secrecy which is important to the
actual act of voting.
--
Martin Orpen
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| References: | |
| | >Re: Vote! (From: Martin Orpen <email@hidden>) |
| | >Re: Vote! (From: deivy petrescu <email@hidden>) |
| | >Re: Vote! (From: Martin Orpen <email@hidden>) |
| | >Re:[OT] Vote! (From: deivy petrescu <email@hidden>) |