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Originally posted by: Warbler
I see all kinds of problems that could occur with electronic machines. Hackers for one. Power outages for another. Also computer systems crash and have other tech problems from time to time. But I don't see it as problem for African Americans or the elderly to use. As long as the interface is made easy enough to use for those among us that are not tech savy.
Our eletronic voting system:
Hackers: not really a problem, since the whole data goes through a highly protected encryption package, I really don't know how it works, techinically speaking, but it's pretty safe. Our tax declaration is sent over the internet with the same system, and so far there has been no problems at all.
Power outage: the eletronic voting machines, about twice the size of a telephone, can be operated by using batteries if needed. It's not a big machine, and the screen is a liquid crystal b&w one. There is one small loudspeaker that goes "beep" only. It's power consume is very, ver low.
Computers crashes: well it's not run on Microsoft, so it dosen't happen after the election is over. What happens sometimes, and it's decreasing since 1996 is voting machines breaking down for some reasons, mostly mishanded, droped to the floor, and so on. About 0.1% of the machines break down, and there are about 1 or 2 on every location for such ocorrences. Even if more break down, the voting is done manually, and since the checking of such votes is also done eletronically (optically), and since it represents around 0.01% of the votes, they get counted pretty quickly and summed up with the eletronic votes.
Dumb people: well, freaking NAKED INDIANS voted on that damn thing (indians, the REAL ones, can vote only if they want to). But yes, we had some problems with the elderly people. In 2002, for some weird reason, elderly people everywhere got dumb, and they took literally minutes to vote - it takes no more than 20 seconds, depending on how many people you are electing. It didn't happen this year, and somehow everyone learned how to press 2 buttons to choose your candidate and a green one to confirm your vote.
What could be done in the US:
1- The presidential election gets regulamented and control by the federal government, so it's run the SAME way everywhere.
2- Organize the registered voters and specify clearly their voting locations. Don't do it 2 weeks before the election, do it years before.
3- Give a 2 digit number for every single party. Democrats can be, like, 10, and republicans 20, and comunists 30, and green party 25, and sci-fi book readers party number 42, and so on. Reserve numbers 80 to 99 for testing and educational use. I'm sure there are less than 79 parties in the US.
4- On election day, the person goes to where she is set to vote, press the two digits - a picture of the candidate and his name will appear onscreen - and he pressed green if he wants to confirm, or red if he wants to correct that.
5- I'm not sure how congressmen are elected in the US, but over here they have the 2 digits from his partie, plus 2 or 3 more unique digits. If I was a democract candidate, I could be number 10123, or 10455, or 10666. When you get to vote for him, you press his numbers.
6- After election is over, each state gathers the information from the voters by a intranet or internet.
About the costs: I'm am positivly sure the costs of such an organized, equiped election are LOWER than the costs of a unorganized, manual election that takes weeks to resolve and causes many errors and different interpretations. We had this applied here in Brazil because it proofed to be less expansive than our old manual way. Besides, we're freaking Brazil, if we can afford it, so can the United States of America.