I really think they need to reorganize the entire voting process, and it needs to be more closely monitored by the government.

I just came back from voting, and I have to say my first voting experience was not a pleasant one. First off, althought I've moved twice since I was 18, I have changed my address AND my voting registration to match my current location. This being said, I recently did it for this election again, on time and in order. Sure enough, I get to the table and my name isnt in the books. So, the next logical thing to do is fill out an absentee ballot, all fine and dandy.

Then I ran into my next issue. My table was run by a husband and wife who were old and senile. The husband was almost totally deaf, and the wife was completely oblivious to anything and everything you said to her. Not only am I convinced they didn't have a clue, but it is now painfully obivous to me of how easy it can be to rig the voting system when given a situation like mine today.


To top it off, what the hell is with the 1950's voting machines? Were still using those? Granted Florida screwed up with their punchcards, but you'd think we would have come up with something a little more.. modern?

:rant::rant:



Also, could someone please explain to me simply what that veterans amendment was all about? I sort of had a clue but their wording was awful, so some clarification would be nice.

They have bigger issues with electronic voting machines, believe it or not.

Yeah I've heard that.


We can build devices that can transmit thousands of miles away, design supercomputers to run at credit card companies, create navigation systems using gps satellites, but we can't build a solid voting machine. Typical.

You should be glad you get to vote at all! The more involved the federal government is in the voting process, the more opportunities there are for the current administration to influence the selection of the next administration.

We can, Diebold can't.

Onimusha, we in Australia dont even use mechanical voting machines, we still fill out paper forms when we vote.

Also, an interesting thing was found when they asked people here why they wouldnt want to use electronic voting, the most common answers were that they either did not understand it enough to want to use it, or that they perfectly understood how electronic voting works and dont trust it.

IS THAT SO HARD, DIEBOLD

(no this isn't actually real program code; I can't even figure out what language I was using)

but it gets the general idea across

even though it's still more complex than that because of write-ins and the 3rd option which is almost always like the "i'm jepman" option in a massassi poll only it gets a lower percentage of the votes

Hm upon closer inspection it does have a slight flaw that it will record a single vote after the polls close. Pretend it's a do..while loop I guess. Or that I put in another polls.Open() check after the button press.

Interestingly enough, I just had the exact opposite experience >_< Despite my complicated and slightly confusing voting situation, the process was very efficient and painlesss... the very pleasant polling booth worker brought the ballot over to my car, we got through all the paperwork, I voted, she left, came back with receipt and sticker, and that was that. Maybe it's just my good fortune after all of this registration and otherwise nonsense hahah.

[Edit: What kind of voting machines did they have at your place? They had these little punch card things at mine except instead of punching them through you just used an ink puncher and it made a little circle on the Scantron.]

i went in, showed my id, signed in, waited in line for a moment, poked at a touch screen for a minute, left

took about 5 minutes...

I walked in. I registered. I walked into the next room. I said my name. They verified. I received my ballots. I walked into a booth. I filled out the ballots. I left. 15 minutes.

And I live in an area overpopulated with bluehairs.

In overly simplistic terms, it proposes selling bonds to fund mortgages for veterans.

"If the ballot proposition passes in November, it authorizes issuance of $900 million in bonds to create a fund that assist veterans who are purchasing farms, homes and mobile home properties."

I filled out a little form, mailed it, had a packet with my ballot in it mailed to me, filled it out and mailed it back

no id, just that my address was on it so they got the right precinct

Are these bonds funded by the government or private buisnesses?


As for the machines they were big all metal stand up boxes with push down levers and cheeseball curtains, painted in various colors you might see in a 1950's kitchen. You push down the levers you want for each canidate, and then you flip a lever over and your vote is locked. I don't know the proper name for these machines.

You people and your high-tech computers...we used paper ballots and a markers.

What? The government is selling bonds. If you're asking how the interest will be paid back, they'll work like most bonds of this nature ... the veterans' payments will go towards it and if that doesn't cover it all, the rest will be covered with taxpayer money.

That sucks, man. If it's of any consolation, you're not the first person I've come into contact with that filled out the appropriate paperwork on time and still got screwed. I was lucky enough to have a relatively painful voting process--registration combined with my voting time today totaled about 4 to 5 minutes.



I got to vote with the use of pretty touch screens--I guess they aren't quite standard yet.

I don't trust electronic voting machines. I would much rather fill out a paper ballot.

..which then get scanned by an electronic machine.

Yeah, but at least they are more tangible.

Uh... not exactly true.

The problem with electronic voting machines is that they're built by private companies. I posted a thread last night I think with a video about how corrupt that can be, but I don't think anyone watched it.

In Arizona, we hardly have any voting problems. The attached image is the only pic of the AZ ballot that I can find, but you can see the No arrow in it. Basically you complete the arrow with the marker in the booth, and when you're done picking everything you take your ballot to the guy standing next to the machine, and he tells you how to put it in. The machine counts it and keeps it, so in case there's a discrepancy or suspected fraud, it can be verified by hand.

With electronic voting machines, there's no record. Sure, some claim to have a "paper trail," but there's no proof that the record will actually match how people voted. In the video I posted in the other thread, a election official shows a printout that actually has Kerry completely MISSING from the results in certain precincts.

I don't think that's a real ballot

There's stuff stacked on top of it, you can only see a part of it...

We're still receiving signals from the voyager probes. May not be "millions" but you get the picture.

I don't think any man-made object from earth has gotten close to even one light year away...

Wasn't aware of this....

I voted absentee about a week and a half ago.

oi, I'll have to edit it since everyone likes to pick apart and deviate from the initial point.

Not even 1...

Some of the Diebold machines' problems are caused by the fact that they used JET for the database. JET is not thread safe, it's not designed for this kind of work and it's not even supported by Microsoft anymore. This happened and will continue to happen until the government figures out that corruption and nepotism will only lead to more situations like this one.



Voyager 1 is about 102 AU away from the sun, which means it's about 0.1% of a light year away from Earth. If you assume Voyager 1 will continue at the same average velocity it will reach 1 light year in 18,754 years. It's slowing down as it passes into the sun's bow shock, though, so it'll probably never get that far away.

Why not let them be counted by people in a process where you can walk right in and watch them do the counting?
My beef with voting machines is that you need to know a lot about them to even begin to understand how they are counting the votes. Paper is easy to understand and easy to verify. Even by Joe the Plumber.