It's 2014, why are people counting votes?

UniMastermindBOSS

Why isn't it all electronic yet? Computers don't make mistakes, and the results would be available within seconds.

Scroll to see replies

Reply 1

joey11223

Original post by UniMastermindBOSS

Why isn't it all electronic yet? Computers don't make mistakes, and the results would be available within seconds.

Never really understood that, I mean okay you have the initial investment of the computers (well likely tablets these days) but you save a lot with efficiency and man-hours. Much quicker for people to vote, removes the possibility of spoiled ballots, probably some technophobes scared about hackers but tbh you have more chance of vote rigging using the old paper ballots/hand counting method.

Reply 2

Ndella

I was thinking the same thing, but then again, there's always that risk that technology will **** up at the most crucial point of the ballot count. I don't think anyone could bear to spend another day counting the whole country's votes again.

Reply 3

UniMastermindBOSS

Original post by Ndella

They could have a system where when you mark the ballot, you shade in a little square then put it in a machine.

The machine scans it, determines which box was filled in and adds a vote to a local database, then stores the paper in a yes/no/unreadable column in the machine. All of the unreadable ballots are counted by people after.

Then all the databases can be copied to a national database, and everything is sorted/counted/analysed.

If an error was to happen, they would still have the original ballot papers to be counted manually as backup.

But if each area had a local database, then they would only need to count the ballots manually for that area if the system failed.

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 4

username33685

Which demographic are most likely to turn out and vote? Old people. Which demographic are most resistant to change? There's your answer.

Reply 5

nimrodstower

Original post by rich2606

Which demographic are most likely to turn out and vote? Old people. Which demographic are most resistant to change? There's your answer.

What absolute tripe, age has nothing to do with resistance to change, some people are, some people aint. I doubt if I could change Your view though.

Reply 6

lerjj

Original post by nimrodstower

What absolute tripe, age has nothing to do with resistance to change, some people are, some people aint. I doubt if I could change Your view though.

They didn't say all old people are more resistance to change.

They said the demographic was more resistant to change- that clearly implies an average.

New theory: they don't want lots of young people to vote, as it would introduce an unknown quality and possibly be disatrous for a party. Hence, the politicians resist moves towards an electronic system that would appeal to young people.

Reply 7

nimrodstower

Original post by lerjj

They? Who are, They? I responded to a lone poster, who made the unsubstantiated claim that older people have a resistance to change. I don't think this is true.

Reply 8

SerLorasTyrell

They done that last time in Scotland and something went wrong leading to like 180,000 spoiled votes or something along those lines - look it up, people are more reliable in terms of randomly not working

Posted from TSR Mobile

Reply 9

a10

Original post by UniMastermindBOSS

Why isn't it all electronic yet? Computers don't make mistakes, and the results would be available within seconds.

there's a fear of votes being hacked, having people do this gets rid of some of the doubt?

Reply 10

lerjj

Original post by nimrodstower

They? Who are, They? I responded to a lone poster, who made the unsubstantiated claim that older people have a resistance to change. I don't think this is true.

I presume the current government are 'they'. Whoever has the power to change the voting system, anyway.

The suggestion is that
a)older people vote more
b)older people therefore have more voting power
c)older people are resistant to change
d)therefore, change is prevented out of "fear" that you will lose the grey vote.

An alternative would be:
a) the current system encourages older people to vote more and younger people to vote less
b) in the past, the older people who voted more voted in the current government
c) it is therefore favourable to the current government to encourage older people to vote more (they voted for them last time) and younger people to vote less (unknown quality)
d) from (a) and (c), politicians decide to not make voting electronic.

Both might be flawed chains of reasoning (you might disagree with some of my premises, especially (c) in argument 1), but people in government can make these flawed arguments, and then make a the resulting policy decision. Which is quite easy, as the conclusion is just to go with the status quo.

Reply 11

nimrodstower

Original post by lerjj

Do you have any evidence for this New Theory, or is it something you have thought up, but not tested?

Reply 12

Eva.Gregoria

Original post by nimrodstower

They? Who are, They? I responded to a lone poster, who made the unsubstantiated claim that older people have a resistance to change. I don't think this is true.

I wouldn't say resistant to change, just that they tend to be technophobes in general.

Posted from TSR Mobile

Reply 13

WelshBluebird

Have you not seen the simpsons episode where they have an electronic voting system? (Jokes)

Reply 14

Clip

The ATM was originally invented as an electronic voting machine.

Reply 15

lerjj

Original post by nimrodstower

Do you have any evidence for this New Theory, or is it something you have thought up, but not tested?

No evidence. I somewhat doubt that policy makes can be bothered to gather evidence on this though, what I'm trying to suggest is that there are plausible lines of thought that tell you to not introduce electronic voting (cost, unknown voting influence, hackers, system failure) that simply convince the people in charge that it is not worth disturbing the status quo.

I did mean to say "new theory!" in a kind of sarcastic "Look at the government conspiracy!Illuminati much?" tone. Forgot about Poe's law...

Reply 16

queensboy

Keep's people employed.

You make decent money being a poll clerk or counting assistant.

Reply 17

nimrodstower

Original post by lerjj

I understand the logic of what the poster was saying, but just making assumptions without providing evidence for them, is not a very good way of making an argument. It could be that an acceptable method of electronic voting cannot be agreed on. The most likely reason is it has not been on the debating table long enough, change takes a long time, especially political and constitutional changes.

A better change than E-voting, would be to bring the voting age down to 16, especially now it has been used in the Scottish independence election.

Reply 18

UniMastermindBOSS

Original post by a10

there's a fear of votes being hacked, having people do this gets rid of some of the doubt?

For online voting sure, but they could use at least a computer to count votes as they're posted, that way they have the ballots as backup if a manual count is required, but it saves having to find volunteers to spend hours counting.

Reply 19

queensboy

Original post by UniMastermindBOSS

They are all paid and trust me, there are more "vounteers" to places. I've worked in several elections before both as a poll clerk and counting assistant.