@mattblaze@mike This is literally how we vote in Canada: a cardboard box and a paper ballot. Granted we're only 40 million people, but no one ever feels the need to question the results.
@mike@mike Wow, I never thought of that! Amazing! Problem solved!
Just one question. Here's a US ballot (San Francisco 2016). Please explain how you can tabulate ballots like this without the use of technology. Thanks, from an ignorant American.
@mattblaze@mike@mike We just need to go back to voting in person on plain ballots! Everything was secure back then!
I like the way Oregon does it. I know when the ballot is sent to me, I know when they've received it and I know when it's been successfully processed or rejected. If they need to recount, it's easy because it's all Scantron based. On top of that, they do manual recounts, at random, to ensure consistency. It's the only way I've ever voted (since 98).
@JohnLAlford I'm sure election fraud has been a thing since elections. At least with the mail in ballots we have in Oregon, there's some kind of paper trail, and there's automated alerting for voters. Back in the Box 13 days, not so much. I'm personally glad I've never had to stand in line to vote.
The basic issue is that voters are asked too many questions. I understand why, and the legal, historical and cultural reasons for that. But it induces a complexity that prevents transparency, an important feature of a voting system if everyone is to be convinced of its fairness.
(Though at the expense of missing the point of your statement - you could try stratifying your elections so that they don't all end up on the same day. There are 12 months in a year - you can have 4 states for each month do their election separately from the presidential/representative/senate elections, and still call it "Election Year.".)
Using a ballot like Ontario does would allow as many positions as you wanted on the ballot. It is marked by blacking in squares (like those tests) and counted by machine for immediate results. But paper ballots are available for recounts in case of disputes.
@mattblaze@mike Maybe don't let your politicians defer every single tough legislative decision to a plebiscite and you wouldn't need a super computer to tabulate results. Just an idea from this backwoods Canadian.
@mike@oclsc@mike since you seem to be completely unaware of how US elections actually work, or in learning how they do, please remove me from this discussion. There is nothing either of us can learn from the other.
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