Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Thoughts on voting

This is my first election cycle back in Georgia, and so some things stood out.

1. I had to show ID.  I approve - if elections are so important that disenfranchising people is a horrible, no good, very bad election policy, then it seems that letting people vote who are not entitled to (i.e. fraud) is by definition disenfranchising people who have a legitimate right to vote.  In other words, by its own logic, allowing voter fraud is a horrible, no good, very bad election policy.

2. Georgia uses electronic voting machines.  This is bad juju.

3. The electronic voting machine does not print out a paper copy of my ballot for me to verify and deposit in the ballot box.  This is double plus ungood - how can I know that my ballot was correctly tabulated?  What, I'm supposed to trust that the elected officials are security savvy enough to keep someone from fiddling with the code?

Like I said, allowing voter fraud is a horrible, no good, very bad election policy.

6 comments:

aczarnowski said...

Had an earnest door knocker stop by the other day. Yes, I'm voting against the stupid-as-hell gay marriage ban.

He smiles and nods.

No, I think you should have to show ID to vote.

He is confused! (I'm channeling PDB!)

He begins telling me how much this will cost because IDs will have to be provided free by .gov so as not to be an unconstitutional poll tax.

I fail to be impressed with numbers that are human sized when compared to today's galactic sized .gov budgets.

He moves on to the next house down the street after realizing he is well and truly off the script.

He completely forgets to push his clipboard and pen toward me! Win!

Old NFO said...

Yeah, we haven't SEEN voter fraud yet... Hackers are standing by... sigh

Rabbit said...

Voted today in our Senate runoff election (Cruz won). Dallas county used "fill in the circle" ballots for all the elections when I've lived in the county- like Scantron sheets. The previous county used punch-out sheets with a chip encrypted card as xref. I always made sure there were no 'hanging chads', but they seemed to have a pretty decent cardstock. Most of the elections in Dallas are stolen by absentee and unlawful voters, anyway.

Anonymous said...

I disagree as dead people get to vote, countless illegals and imaginary people I want to know wheres my vote at least I pay my taxes which is more than they do. Taxation without representation does that give me the right to overthrow the government. Because I believe King George III was a saint compared to our current King in the White House. Sarcasm ends.

Dwight Brown said...

I was going to make this observation on my own blog, but I can't find a good place for it, and I think it fits in here:

While I was eating at Shabu Shabu Paradise, a young gentleman with a "Team 2012" t-shirt and clipboard came in and started asking the waitress and chef if they were registered to vote, and if they wanted to register to vote, and why didn't they want to register to vote...

I don't care if you're Republican or Democrat, harassing the waitstaff at a busy restaurant during the dinner rush is not optimal strategy. As a matter of fact, it is likely to get them upset. It is also likely to get people who witness this a little bent out of shape.

dsmith512 said...

How do you know fraud does not occur with your paper ballot? Politician cohorts take your paper, toss in fire, and substitute different paper ballots. Don't act like your paper ballot is safer than electronic ballot because this scenario has happened in our country's history.