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United States Government Politics

Election Day May Go Away... In Florida 92

Posted by michael from the every-day-is-election-day dept.
That's Unpossible! writes "The Orlando Sentinel is reporting about a proposed change to the way Florida will run future elections. Due to the popularity of this year's 'advanced voting' trial run, it seems likely that the voting process can be streamlined by spreading it out over two weeks, allowing people to vote when and where they can. 'Fewer polling places would reduce the number of voting machines and would require fewer poll workers, which could cut salary and training costs. It also would reduce the chances of human error and electronic glitches, supervisors said.'"
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Election Day May Go Away... In Florida More

Election Day May Go Away... In Florida

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  • Nothing really new (Score:4, Interesting)

    by HotNeedleOfInquiry ( 598897 ) on Thursday December 02, 2004 @02:15PM (#10976249)
    Oregon has been doing vote-by-mail for a few years like this.

  • Think of the children! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Craig Maloney ( 1104 ) on Thursday December 02, 2004 @02:15PM (#10976250) Homepage
    But, when will the children get the use of their gymnasium back! Half-court basketball just isn't the same.
  • "human error and electronic glitches" - or just reduce the change of the errors being detected?

  • Hmmm (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MikeXpop ( 614167 ) <mike&redcrowbar,com> on Thursday December 02, 2004 @02:23PM (#10976331) Journal
    I've always wondered why voting isn't done like this in the first place. Why all the cramming into one day, and therefore driving away would-be voters because of the crowds?

    • Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Informative)

      by Coryoth ( 254751 ) on Thursday December 02, 2004 @02:41PM (#10976531) Homepage Journal
      In theory it is to stop early voting trends affecting the way people vote. Consider it this way: it took a lot of work to get the media to shut up and hold off on publishing their exit polls until after voting had closed. Despite that various exit polls were still published on-line. Now consider voting stretched over 2 weeks or more - can you really imagine exit polls not slipping out and getting published. Can you really imagine the mainstream media holding their tongue for 2 weeks?

      If you have a running exit poll every day for 2 weeks of "how the election is going" thatv is going to effect how people vote. It may not change your or my decision, but a surprising number of people vote on trivial reasons like "wanting to vote for the winner", and hence knowing who is head right now makes a difference. At the same time there are all the people who will be discouraged from voting because they think their person is already fated to lose/win. It has the potential to seriously mess with the numbers in strange ways.

      Jedidiah.
      • Alright, that makes sense. Honestly I think we have a bigger problem, that people who would want to "vote for the winner" being able to vote at all. But that's the cynic in me talking.

        As for people who would be discouraged from voting because their person's fate is decided, this is one of the reasons I hate the electoral college. That's happening already and happening all the time. For the past 4 years I've rolled my eyes whenever some liberal dishes out the "gore won the popular vote" line (and it looks l
      • Actually, the bigger issue is not "voting for the winner," but voter discouragement when it looks like the candidate you WANT to win is behind. If you think your guy is going to lose anyway, why go out and vote?

        Most estimates put the election 2000 vote loss for Bush in Florida at between 15 and 20 thousand when CBS called the state for Gore while the polls in the strongly conservative panhandle were still open.

        Personally, I'd just as soon see the state legislatures show some backbone and follow their con

        • Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Marxist Hacker 42 ( 638312 ) * <seebert42@gmail.com> on Thursday December 02, 2004 @03:59PM (#10977542) Homepage Journal
          Actually, the bigger issue is not "voting for the winner," but voter discouragement when it looks like the candidate you WANT to win is behind. If you think your guy is going to lose anyway, why go out and vote?

          Funny, I'd have the opposite reaction "hey he's losing, he NEEDS my vote more than ever".
          • Except that when the network calls a state, the understanding is that it doesn't matter if you vote, your candidate is going to lose. That's the whole point, of you know, calling the state.
            • With 2 weeks to vote, there's plenty of time to call up your friends to make sure they've all voted.

              I can see this increasing the voter turn-out. Particularly because there would be 2 weekends in the 2 weeks of voting.
            • With this long of voting, it's damned hard to call the state before the last hour or so of voting. NOTHING was called in Oregon, not even local races, before the last hour of voting, and even then, close races like Measure 35 were called both ways for a few days afterward. So no- that factor doesn't affect this.
        • There'd be voter encouragement, too. A certain sense of, "Oh my god! my candidate is losing, and I haven't voted yet!"

      • Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Enrico Pulatzo ( 536675 ) on Thursday December 02, 2004 @03:32PM (#10977181)
        I think that voting is truly an example of a quantum reality: attempting a measure affects the outcome.
      • This is exactly what happens every four years in the primaries. New Hampshire and Iowa and maybe a couple other states vote for someone, and that gives them enough momentum to get the nomination. This is why states keep holding their primaries earlier and earlier, like they're all competing for "fr0st pr1mary" or something.
      • Actually, the bigger issue is coercive voting. There's no "exit polling" here in Oregon, so voting trends aren't noted other than the usual polls on voter opinion, but one thing I have thought about is getting together with politically oriented friends and having a voting party where we discuss the issues and then vote. That's a relatively innocuous instance, but not being completely anonymous, could lead a weaker soul to vote with a group, or just group-think.

        The even bigger concern is say, an abusive o
  • I do believe that this should be implemented throughout the whole country, but slightly differently.
    I, for one, have to question the idea of reducing the number of poll workers. Doing so may increase the possibility of error, as well as provide more potential for someone to mess with the system.

    On the other hand, I think that requiring the polling places ot be open on weekends as well as weekdays should improve voter turnout, since currently, a lot of people can not seem to get away from work to go vote.

    To

  • Weird (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Thursday December 02, 2004 @02:28PM (#10976373) Journal

    Is democracy damned when people don't vote? The damned view believes that non-voters don't have fate in the system. On the other hand perhaps these people think everything is just fine.

    But would spreading voting out over more then a day really help? Those who "forget" to go would still forget and you would also miss the effect of having voting day. One clear day on wich everyone knows that today is the day to vote with everyone remembring people around them.

    Sure sure economic effect of people taking an hour of to vote (or even a day). So what? Cost of doing business. If a company really really needs all its people there let it open a polling boot inside.

    Also would candidates still be banned from campaigning during the entire two weeks?

    As for mistakes and cost of salaries. Well now the ballot boxes have to be guarded for 1 day. The staff needs to be paid for 1 day and only take 1 day of from their day job. You just increase the cost because now the polling station has to be guarded for 14 days and nights. The cost for foreing volunteers to observe the elections also goes op (hmmm might US elections not withstand foreign scrutiny?)

    Few polling stations? Oh goodie, means longer distances to travel. No problem for the rich and middle classes but poorer people might have to spend more money they don't have to get to their polling station. Isn't the entire idea of having so many stations to make them easily accesable to everyone?

    Lets review

    • Increase distance to polling station wich affects the poorer people most.
    • Decrease public awareness of "voting day".
    • Give the postponers more excuses to not vote because they will just do it tomorrow until it is to late
    • Increase security risks because the ballots have to be guared for far far longer.
    • Increase costs to volunteers because of time of needed
    • Increase likelyhood of failure in machine and electronics.
    • Impose a 2 week gag order on parties OR have campaigning during voting.
    • Cuts in staff are unlikely because you would have more people coming to the station and therefore more of a chance of a rush at peak times (like me who votes before going to work like all the other people in the que or is that just in holland?)

    Is it really that much of a problem to go and vote?

    • Re:Weird (Score:3, Interesting)

      by phyruxus ( 72649 )
      I'd like to see a system where voting is year-round, for the whole term. I want to be able to set my vote on the first day after the election, and change it anytime before the next one.

      Before computers, this would have been a tall order. Now it's realistic, if not easy. One national database, one PKI set, and no more chads or impounded ballots or fraud of any kind. Everybody wins, and most importantly, it'll probably drive the cost of holding elections way down.

      • Re:Weird (Score:3, Informative)

        by hab136 ( 30884 )
        One national database, one PKI set,

        Elections in the U.S. are required to be secret, to prevent vote-selling, among other things. It's also illegal to force people to present credentials to vote - because, among other things, this was used to prevent black people from voting in the South during the heyday of Jim Crow laws.

        • >>Elections in the U.S. are required to be secret, to prevent vote-selling, among other things.

          PKI would allow secrecy...? Maybe I am misunderstanding your post.

          >>It's also illegal to force people to present credentials to vote - because, among other things, this was used to prevent black people from voting in the South during the heyday of Jim Crow laws.

          I thought I heard about people being required to show not one but *two* forms of ID in the last presidential election

    • What's the you say? 2 weeks less of listening to politicians campaigning everywhere you look!?

      You've sold me. In fact, why just 2 weeks? Let's make it 2 years!
    • Decrease public awareness of "voting day".

      What media-free non-polarized nation are you living in? The 2004 U.S. Presidential election voting day was better known this year to Tuareg camel caravaners in the remotes of the Sahara than it was in Washington D.C. in 2000.

  • Reducing electronic glitches (Score:3, Insightful)

    by trevdak ( 797540 ) on Thursday December 02, 2004 @02:29PM (#10976377) Homepage
    Explain to me how running the electronic voting for a longer time will reduce glitches. Try running a windows machine for two weeks. Now run the same machine for one day. Which period do you think is more likely to have bugs arise. Sure Diebold machines aren't windows machines, but the point is the same. If a computer gives buggy results over a short period of time, running it longer won't smooth things out. Human error, on the other hand, will probably be reduced dramatically. I agree with that.

  • Cover for problems (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SpaceLifeForm ( 228190 ) on Thursday December 02, 2004 @02:29PM (#10976382)
    It also would reduce the chances of human error and electronic glitches, supervisors said.

    Malarky. Having fewer voting centers would not guarantee fewer 'electronic glitches'. On the contrary, it could exacerbate the problems.

    If you haven't checked recently, you need to catch up on what's happening in Florida [blackboxvoting.org]. Also interesting is that apparently Keith Olbermann is under extreme pressure to lie about Bev Harris [msn.com] of BlackBoxVoting.org, likely by TPTB. Probably to discredit Keith and Bev as he basically in the only one in the media that had any fortitude to actually perform a proper media role in questioning the elections voting integrity.

    • Window for fraud (Score:3, Interesting)

      by dpilot ( 134227 )
      A bigger window for voting also means a bigger window for fraud. At least with the current one-day polling, you can have volunteers from both parties monitoring the election. Once it becomes a multi-week process are we going to have sufficient volunteers so both parties can keep the ballot boxes under observation full-time? This of course excludes Badnarik and Nader fans, as well as Greens, but somehow in the current environment I doubt it would be possible to get Democrats and Republicans to cooperate long

  • Continuous voting (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dhilvert ( 608753 ) on Thursday December 02, 2004 @02:33PM (#10976427) Homepage

    This could be a step towards continuous voting [basiclaw.net]:

    Continuous elections may ... be organized through a system of automatic voting machines similar in principle to an automatic teller machine. Instead of depositing or withdrawing money from a bank account, each voter would be depositing or withdrawing his vote from a particular party or candidate.

    I'd probably prefer a condorcet-style ranked election method over the plurality method outlined on the page cited above, however.

    • Re:Continuous voting (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Coryoth ( 254751 ) on Thursday December 02, 2004 @03:36PM (#10977217) Homepage Journal
      The most interesting voting system I've ever heard of was called "Dynamic Recoverable Proxy", and was essentially a form of continuous voting like this. It was very ingenious, and is only possible now that we have powerful computing and communication resources, so ought to fit in well on Slashdot. Let me give you a rough overview of how it would work:

      At the base level it is a direct democracy on every issue. For every issue, every bill, everyone gets a vote, one vote per person. Of course most people don't care to follow every issue, nor take the time to vote on them. That's okay, because under this system you can pass your vote on to a proxy, who will vote for you. You can nominate anyone as your proxy - your wife, your brother, some professor you happen to think is intelligent and informed, or a politician who campaigned to get your proxy. In turn, the person with your vote can pass their (and all the votes of the people who nominated them as a proxy) on to yet another person. This essentially amounts to a concentration of votes into a small number of representatives - their voting power weighted by the number of people they are the effective proxy for. As you can see, keeping track of that tree of proxy voting requires some computing power, especially given that anyone can change their proxy at any time.

      Now, besides being able to change you proxy at any time (so there are no fixed terms, no fixed voting days to decide representatives), you can also, at any time, recover your vote. That means that if some issue does arise that you do have an interest in, you can, if you choose, cast your vote individually on that particular issue yourself. This can happen at any level of the proxy tree, so if you gave your vote to your brother, who in turn passed it on to some politician, your brother can recover and vote for both himself and you (unless of course you recover your vote). This means that you can always be sure that your vote goes the way you want, regardless of what your upstream proxy believes, on any issue you care about.

      The two major problems with this system that I can see are implementation, and getting such a thing instituted. To track all the votes, and allow anyone to cast their vote individually requires a strong secure network with some powerful mainframes to keep the tallies. Implementation is far from trivial. At the same time, this isn't a system that can evolve naturally from current systems, it would require a ground up restructuring of whatever democracy decided to implement it - it's a revolutionary rather than evolutionary change. That means, realistically, it won't be implemented by any current modern democracy, but instead possibly by some future newly formed democratic republic.

      Jedidiah.

      • Re:Continuous voting (Score:2, Insightful)

        by dhilvert ( 608753 )

        'At the same time, this isn't a system that can evolve naturally from current systems...'

        The proxy/recovery approach you describe could probably be applied in other contexts. (Investment decision-making comes to mind, but it might not be a terribly good example.) Once the technology is proven for other applications, adapting it to function as the decision-making process of a large political system would probably be an easier task.

        • The proxy/recovery approach you describe could probably be applied in other contexts. (Investment decision-making comes to mind, but it might not be a terribly good example.) Once the technology is proven for other applications, adapting it to function as the decision-making process of a large political system would probably be an easier task.

          True, but realistically I see it as more likely that such a system might get instituted somewhere small, or in an emerging democracy, and after having proved itself
        • actually, like most good-governance ideas, (and most bad ones too- how else would we learn) it has already been implemented on wall street. I believe, but am too lazy to check, that proxy voting has existed since well before computers were available, though it enabled a large number of small shareholders to consolidate their influence. In fact, many movies have been written (and watched) in which the plot swung on the correct tallying of proxy votes.

          The recoverable part is, in my notably inexpert, opini
      • The problem is less the complexity of the implementation.

        How do you avoid votes being bought?
        And how do avoid a reversal of power? In other words, how do you avoid that you empowering your proxy doesn't give him the power to coerce you to make him your proxy? The anonymity of the voter is a very important part of democracy.

        See, it's not like you couldn't vote in "Communistic" countries. In some, there were even other parties, or you could elect any person you like. But you may guess what will happen, if y

        • Re:Continuous voting (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Coryoth ( 254751 )
          The problem is less the complexity of the implementation.

          How do you avoid votes being bought?

          By lack of assurance that you get what you pay for, just like the current system.

          And how do avoid a reversal of power? In other words, how do you avoid that you empowering your proxy doesn't give him the power to coerce you to make him your proxy? The anonymity of the voter is a very important part of democracy.

          There's no reason to eliminate anonymity here - not unless the central server keeping track of eve

        • As to the coercion issue, just don't tell the proxy, anywhere along the chain, when a person has decided to recover their vote. Just give the proxy a "Vote this way for all votes assigned to me" button, but no access as to how many they -do- have or whose they are. Under the current system, someone can -try- to force you to vote for candidate X, but they can't go into the voting booth with you. (Even if you say you want them to.)

          The core principle, in both cases, is that if someone tries to coerce you, the

    • The problem with this system is people voting based on spur of the moment decisions. Many times, history has shown that moral issues seem correct at the time, but later turn out to be bad judgement. Examples of this include slavery, womens voting rights, civil rights, and gay marriage. All were unpopular for their time, and if we had continuous voting, all would probably still be illegal.

      Personally I don't like this system, because people are way to quick to say somebody is guilty without allowing them

  • It would increase the chances of voter fraud and ballot stuffing. This last election showed how easy that is. One case as an example. One polling place had lever machines already having 1500 votes tallied when the poll workers showed up in the morning. They were told not to worry about it.

    • If you're talking about Philadelphia, they were told not to worry about it because the votes were for a previous local election, so those wouldn't affect any of the things on the current ballot. The end result would come out like this: GW: 1,254 Kerry: 1,923 Person #1 from old local election: 1,325 Person #2 from old local election: 1,834 Don't get me wrong, I agree that voting over a long period of time can cause problems. I just don't think this is a good example of them (unless you're not talking abo
      • No, I was referring to Philly. I agree that there is rampant vote tampering throughout this country. If you think of it, back in the birth of our nation there was the same trend. When we studied Edgar Allen Poe, there was an emphasis on how there would be poll gangs: people who would travel from one polling place to another to vote.

        Then, there's the old machine politics. Let's face it, the issues we're facing now in terms of voter fraud are nothing new in this country. However, I think the trend to increas
        • I have to agree completely that Putin is trying to rid Russia of democracy. His goal is to bring Russia back up to its previous power, with him at the helm of course. And he's following Bush's example by using terrorism as an excuse to consolidate power (though he is able to do it to a far greater extenet than Bush ever would be, and I find his motive far more sinister than Bush's). After the school attack, he used the fear of terrorism to eliminate a lot of local elections. Permenantly. Those local ad

  • Fewer Polling Places? WTF!! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by GOD_ALMIGHTY ( 17678 ) <curt.johnson@NoSPaM.gmail.com> on Thursday December 02, 2004 @02:38PM (#10976499) Homepage
    After having to wait in line for nearly 3 hours to vote early in FL, and delivering water to other early voting places where people were waiting just as long... WTF?

    In Ohio, some people waited up to 9 hours to vote. We need more polling places, more machines and more poll workers, not less. While I'm all for a 2 week voting period, using one as an excuse to reduce the number of machines and locations is insane. What about people who have a hard time with transportation? Will they no longer be able to go to their local polling place? Will we just cut out polling places in poor areas or rural areas, tell those folks they've got 2 weeks to go stand in a long line miles from home to exercise their Constitutional rights?

    This is only a solution if it increases overall availability of the polls to all voters, anything less smells of poll taxes and literacy tests.
  • We could reduce the burden of elections (by one) even further if State Legislatures would just have the intestinal fortitude to pick Presidential Electors themselves. Having a statewide vote & locking in electors is a cop-out.

  • Hmmm, I wonder what laws cover that. (Score:3, Informative)

    by ComputerSlicer23 ( 516509 ) on Thursday December 02, 2004 @02:44PM (#10976563)
    Congress has the powers allow or disallow that.

    For the presidential election see the Constitution, Article II, Section 2, paragraph 4.

    The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.

    That's for Electoral College votes (only 538 of those each election). So I guess it depends on if Congress has enacted a law which would prohibit the states from using that as the "Time of chusing the Electors" (that's what we do on election day) or not. There is a similar statement covering the two houses of Congress. I'm not familiar enough with Federal Election laws to be sure what if any limits Congress has passed covering this. However, I'm guessing it's not incredibly illegal otherwise Florida couldn't have done it this year. Presumably, it's the same provision that makes Absentee ballots legal. I know several people who voted early in Nebraska (where I live). One I believe was thru a local polling place that accepted absentee ballots early when given in person.

    Kirby

    • That statement about Electors doesn't mean common people, but who the State Legislatures appoint to the Electoral College.

      And, IANAL, but maybe that "Day" could be interpreted to be the day that votes are counted, whenever they were cast up till that Day.
    • In this context, the "Time" mentioned can refer to a period of time. In other words, it could be interpreted as some week where all the state legislatures meet to appoint electors, or during which the people of a state choose through popular election. The "Day" references a specific date. This is actually the way it's set up, with all the states' electors meeting in their respective capitals to cast their votes on the same day. (I want to say it's Dec. 6, but I'll need to check.)

      Also, there was a Supre

  • Fewer polling places may not be that good an idea. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Mick D. ( 89018 ) on Thursday December 02, 2004 @02:49PM (#10976642) Homepage Journal
    If there are fewer polling places won't that just make it easier for shinanegans at one polling place to affect more people. Fewer poll workers means fewer people to bribe. Fewer polling places means you are losing statistical redundancy. It might help exit poll accuracy, but it also means there is more time to spread out inconsistencies, and make them seem less catastrophic.

    There are reasons 100% uptime computer systems use redundency all over the place. Spreading the voting over time adds redundancy, but if they are expecting this to save money, then I bet they plan to cut the number of polling places so that the removed redundancy is greater than that added by the longer term.

    The last thing we need is for this to actually put MORE possibility of error into the system.
  • Fewer polling places would reduce the number of voting machines and would require fewer poll workers, which could cut salary and training costs.

    Fewer polling places would also make it harder for the poor to reach 'super' polling places especially if they were located with ill intent. Remember that there were long lines at many of the 'super' polling places open early in Florida this year all through the voting season. Having fewer places open longer is not necessarily a panacea.

  • Oh Good! (Score:2)

    by GypC ( 7592 )
    That will give us (the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy) even more time to hack the vote!

    Florida will be a cinch in 2008.

  • ...doing this in Florida. Everyone knows that nobody down there knows how to vote anyway, so what difference would it make?

  • This could profoundly distort the results (Score:4, Interesting)

    by tm2b ( 42473 ) on Thursday December 02, 2004 @03:03PM (#10976819) Journal
    The problem is that in many places, especially in Florida, there are a substantial number of voters (especially elderly) who are not willing (or really able) to travel farther than their local precinct.

    Early voting here, in Pasco and Pinellas counties, took place at three locations in each county in county government buildings. These buildings (more so in Pinellas than Pasco, which is a more rural county) are in fairly heavily populated areas, and many elderly are unwilling to travel to such areas due to the traffic congestion and the uncertainty involved in travelling farther from home. Further, many are barred from travelling farther than a certain distance from their primary health care provider. Lastly, many can travel only short distances due to the logistics of their limited mobility.

    If voting locations are going to be open for two weeks, I don't see how they'll get around this - they're certainly not going to be using churches and schools, the current precinct poll locations, for two weeks straight.

    I voted early here, and loved it... but I live about 5 minutes from one of the three locations in Pasco county where I could vote, so it was trivial for me. I think we still need to have a small window where people are able to vote locally. Otherwise, this could effectively disenfranchise a lot of people.
  • Oregon, as someone mentioned, has done vote by mail for quite a while but when my company was hired to do some work for some Oregon campaigns I found out that the information on who has or has not voted is published daily. The campaigners keep hounding the people who haven't voted yet.

    It seems like there is much more possibility for illegal pressure or influence (payoffs, etc.) when people don't have the option of voting at a polling place. You may tell someone how you will vote but the booth is private. T
    • Oregon, as someone mentioned, has done vote by mail for quite a while but when my company was hired to do some work for some Oregon campaigns I found out that the information on who has or has not voted is published daily. The campaigners keep hounding the people who haven't voted yet.

      What's downright sad is that many campaigners completely ignore this source of information as well- I kept getting "have you voted yet" calls for a full two weeks AFTER I voted- despite the fact that it wouldn't make a bit o
  • We've had this in North Carolina for a while, but I believe this was the first year that we were able to vote for president early. Almost 18% of the vote was cast in the two weeks before election day.

    I went to vote early, but it was still going to take three hours so I waited for election day (and an hour and a half wait).

    One interesting side effect is that the infamous last minute "surprises" that the candidates like to spring are much less releavant. Well...at least now they'll have to pull them two w

  • WF?!? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by James.Stanton ( 819324 )
    How can this possibly be workable? I never understood how early voting was allowed in the first place (my state, MA, doesn't do it).
    • When does campaigning stop?
    • How do you exit poll across a two week span? (which with no paper trail, seems to be the only way to even kinda-verify the results)
    • Will there be daily backups of the systems?
    Seems like a recipe for a whole new set of disasters.

  • More potential for abuse (Score:3, Insightful)

    by spencerogden ( 49254 ) <spencer@spencerogden.com> on Thursday December 02, 2004 @03:37PM (#10977227) Homepage
    The longer the voting period, the more potential there is for individuals casting multiple ballots. Yes these problems can be fixed, but they aren't currently. In a few states an ID is not neccessary to vote since that is discriminatory towards people without ID.

    In Afganistan they were in an uproar that permanent ink used to prevent this problem wasn't string enough. Here we have huge percentages of voters voting with absentee ballots unneccessarily and people voting without IDs!

    If voting periods are lengthened will will continue to see me counties with more votes cast than there are registered voters. And yes these things still happen.

  • Smoke Screen (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ignatzMouse ( 447031 ) <ignatzmouse@@@pobox...com> on Thursday December 02, 2004 @04:02PM (#10977590) Homepage
    Don't do anything until voting integrity is insured. Everything else is a waste of time.

    Did your vote count?

    Until the voters of Florida can answer that question with certainty no other question needs to be asked.

    This is a smoke screen distracting us from the real problem. Our voting system is a joke. Fix it.

    Votes have value. Treat them as such.

  • Voter fraud (Score:2, Insightful)

    by deanj ( 519759 )
    This will just encourage more voter fraud. Next thing they'll be saying is that people won't have to show ID to vote. Oh, wait...

    Comes down to this. Lose elections, figure out a way to make sure you can win.

    Whether it's redistricting in Texas, or recounts until you get the result you want in Washington, stuff like this shouldn't happen.

  • Australia does this and more (Score:3, Informative)

    by dacarr ( 562277 ) on Thursday December 02, 2004 @06:23PM (#10979568) Homepage Journal
    In Australia, general elections are not only held over several weeks, but voting is compulsory. See here [aec.gov.au], mate.

    • In Australia, general elections are not only held over several weeks, but voting is compulsory. See here, mate.

      This isn't really true. While there is prepoll voting in Australia for a couple of weeks beforehand, most polling places are only open on polling day and the vast majority of people vote on polling day.

      You are right that voting is compulsory which delivers turnouts of 95%+. It should also be noted that there is widespread agreement about compulsory voting. Opinion polls are usually about 2/3 in

  • Not far enough (Score:3, Funny)

    by raider_red ( 156642 ) on Thursday December 02, 2004 @06:32PM (#10979629) Journal
    How about if we just eliminate voting in Florida? It would be nice not to hear about any more botched elections again. We can have a lottery to select government officials, and have the state legislature choose the electors for president every four years.

    (No, I'm not serious)
    • ...and have the state legislature choose the electors for president every four years.
      That's exactly how it happened in at least 9 states for the first 8 Presidential elections...and it worked!
  • I realize it sucks when your candidate loses an election. But just because you lose doesn't mean that the other side cheated. There is a reason a lot of this evidence doesn't go anywhere. It is pretty much all grasping at straws. Very little of it is hard evidence. Consider the sheer number of people who would have to be in the deception. Someone would eventually talk.

    • Re:Election fraud (Score:3, Insightful)

      by teamhasnoi ( 554944 )
      I realize it sucks when your candidate loses an election. But just because you lose doesn't mean that the other side cheated. There is a reason a lot of this evidence doesn't go anywhere. It is pretty much all grasping at straws. Very little of it is hard evidence. Consider the sheer number of people who would have to be in the deception. Someone would eventually talk.

      Let's get this straight. I don't give a good goddamn who won or lost. What I do care about is being ABLE TO TELL. If there is one unveri

  • In Texas, we have a 2-week period of "early voting" that ends the Friday before election day. There's usually a handful of polling sites in big cities, probably 1 in rural counties. They are open 9-5 and later on some days. You can vote at any location in your city and if there's no city elections, anywhere in the county. They are usually open on at least 1 Saturday also. Everything is watched by representatives from all political parties, so there's no more of a chance of hanky-panky than on election
  • Doing away with a lot of the precincts, replacing them with voting centers. Won't this create a problem for those who may wind up having to travel further?

  • fix it in public first (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Saturday December 04, 2004 @12:27PM (#10996433) Homepage Journal
    The way Florida does it, eliminating Election Day will also move the submission of votes out of the public eye, out of the oversight of pollwatchers, out of the reach of exit pollers, and entirely into the corrupt hands of the partisan vote fraud fixers running the state elections. Today (and in this November's election, and in the last election in 2000), that balloting czar, the Secretary of State, is also the head of the Republican Party campaign for Florida. An outrageous conflict of interest that has made "Florida" synonymous with "vote fraud". Next time around, after Jeb Bush is gone, that job could easily be filled by a Democrat vote fixer, pulling on Florida Republicans the same dirty tricks, suppression and fraud now perpetrated by Republicans.

    Florida has a lot more repair of its voting in store, before it gets to work on "more convenient". Those changes need to be made in public, and tested free of fraud before they hide its workings deeper in the offices of the unaccountable criminals who count the votes, and control the elections.
    • The way Florida does it, eliminating Election Day will also move the submission of votes out of the public eye, out of the oversight of pollwatchers, out of the reach of exit pollers, and entirely into the corrupt hands of the partisan vote fraud fixers running the state elections.

      Sorry, this is completely illogical.

      Having fewer polling places makes it much EASIER for non-partisan poll watchers to keep an eye on the entire process and keep everything fair.
      • What are you talking about? Rather than votes cast in public, where pollwatchers can watch, they'll be collected and counted within the bowels of the government, under the control of whichever party fills the Secretary of State office with their fixer. That obviously makes it harder. What kind of logic are *you* using?

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