Skerry... Euhhh, scary.
By glazou on Tuesday 9 November 2004, 11:14 - Bushisms - Permalink
Slashdot has an incredible story about the reliability of voting machines and the... uuuh... I can't even find a word for it... the quality of the voting process in the US.
Comments
The articles show that the strangest things happened in fact not with the electronic machines, but where the optic readers were used. The charts are a bit hard to read, but here is a graphic that sums it all visually :
www.rubberbug.com/temp/Fl...
Well, that is something usual here in Latin America, perhaps it is true that the US is getting more "hispanic" influence after all
Anyway, this is not new, after all the election of Kennedy was marred by this kind of "errors", the point is to what extent? Would be interesting to see what Carter says now after he found no irregularities in Venezuela (where the situation was more or less the same, exit polls not matching the results or the amount of signatures on the referendum petition or more people voting than the actual population of the town)
I hope they do a clear investigation on this.
One of the big problem was that the federal government told the states they could have money to update their voting, but that to claim the money they had to act fast. This caused a bunch of states to basically run out and grab the best system they could out of a very few limited choices.
In the rush they couldn't wait for a decent voting system, or even necessarily fully investigate them. But then, the states wanted that money so they ran ahead anyway.
And because of this, new voting systems in general are getting a bad rap.
Thanks, anti-federalist socialists of Congress...
Small question from a non-American, just to be sure I understand: Where do this "voter registration" figures comes from? I mean, do you have to say "I'm republican" or "I'm democrat" when you register as a voter? Or is it more like a survey? How reliable are this figures usually compared to the actual elections results?
Thanks for your answers.
Tgl, when you register to vote, you check a box for pary affiliation (Democrat, Republican, or None). The majority chose None, and almost evenly split between Democrat and Republican (one is actually a bit higher, but I forget which--Republican perhaps).
Oops, I kinda messed up my last sentence there. I meant to say "and *the rest are* almost evenly split...".
Actually, Robert Morris, I believe the registration varies from state to state. iirc, in california, you get the choice of all parties that cleared 5% threshold in the last governor election + independent. I could be wrong.
Daniel and others here,
abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?...
Please read this story (3 pages) from ABC News. It is much more credible than a /. article submitted by someone. It explains away all the conspiracy theories.
Case Closed. Now please stop spreading these rumors.
Right, explanations are coming for the "democrat" counties voting for Bush. The larger number of vote than voters problems are now explained by bad reporting, and unclear procedure of counting, but why did they report such senseless numbers first ? But nothing is a true explanation of why exit polls were off the mark by a larger margin than the poll of a few day earlier, and systematically in favor of Kerry.