Comment by tgb | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tgb | Hacker News Reader

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I just worked the polls in Pennsylvania - the new voting machines are pretty great. You get a paper ballot, you insert it, you use a touchscreen to make choices, the machine prints the ballot with your choices on it, shows it to you behind plexiglass, you check over it for correctness. If it's all good, you hit done and the ballot is pulled in to a hopper. If not, you can redo. You get a machine count instantly at the end of the night, and a paper ballot trail for recounts that are voter-checked.

Apparently other locations had some problems with paper jams from the ballots, but at least my operation had 3 machines and could have easily handled our voters with just 2 active without resorting to hand-filled ballots.

The only real difficulty is the absentee ballots which were obviously a new effort (at this scale) lacking infrastructure. And they were prevented from processing any ahead of time. I think calling this "dangerous" or a "disgrace" is, in fact, blatantly disgraceful and dangerous.

Even third world countries like Mexico are able to give reliable preliminary statistics the same night, and definitive statistics in a couple of days.

I'd call it a disgrace that the self-proclaimed bastion of democracy could legally delay results for most of this month. It can be poor organization or regulation, but even if it's done for a good reason, it erodes the credibility of your elections.

There's nothing more degrading to the credibility of the elections than the people running around pretending that suddenly counting votes quickly (rather than accurately) is the important thing.

The thing is, you can have both, there's no sensible reason to delay results, and it might give the appearance of wiggle room. If the count was more efficient, Trump wouldn't have time to try tactics like suing Michigan to stop counting.

Let me repeat that: you can have quick and accurate elections, and your current process gives others the impression that it has margin for under-the-table negotiation.

Or we can educate people accurately about the elections so that there is no concern over a normal and above-board process proceeding as expected instead of spreading FUD. That's the real "we can have it both ways."

Your solution is to educate every single citizen on the flaws of the process, instead of optimizing the process? That’s like Steve Jobs telling people they were holding their phone wrong.

My immediate solution is to stop actively miseducating the populace.

Your immediate solution has been waiting decades for a better, permanent solution. As Trump has sued and contested Nevada, Wisconsin, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan, this election might become even more protracted than usual.

I know right now it's all you have, and it sucks. It has somehow worked because the candidates have been polite, but it was only a matter of time before you got a shameless candidate trying to exploit every possible loophole to stay in power. Telling people your electoral system is flawed and it must be dragged screaming into the 21st century is not miseducation. Your electoral college doesn't reflect the will of your citizens.

Electoral College is completely unrelated. Court battles happen even after votes are counted, so are unrelated too. Results aren't certified until December anyway.

CA had a similar system where it spat out the paper and you had to reinsert it into machine after checking. I thought the machine really provided the best of both worlds; fast and easy controls with user verifiable correctness and audit trails.

That's not as secure (or at least not as obviously secure) as when we mark the paper ourselves. People make mistakes, and people miss errors. This creates room for the software to introduce rare (but, in some races, common enough to matter) errors in a particular direction and rely on them 1) often being missed, and 2) accounted to user error when noticed.

Very well said. Thank you. Let’s appreciate what we have.

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