All Fifty States May Face Voting Machine Lawsuit 436
according to an announcement made by activist Bernie Ellis at the premier of David Earnhardt's film "Uncounted [The Movie]" all fifty states could be receiving subpoenas in the National Clean Election lawsuit. The documentary film, like the lawsuit, takes a look at the issue of voting machine failure and the need for a solid paper trail. "The lawsuit is aimed at prohibiting the use of all types of vote counting machines, and requiring hand-counting of all primary and general election ballots in full view of the public. The lawsuit has raised significant constitutional questions challenging the generally accepted practices of state election officials of relying on "black box" voting machines to record and count the votes at each polling station, and allow tallying of votes by election officials outside the view of the general public."
Why not have voting machines that print ballots? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or would that be too sensible?
Re:Why not have voting machines that print ballots (Score:2, Insightful)
A printed ballot could have a barcode (Score:3, Interesting)
This give you automatic vote counting AND a full paper trail.
To keep the system in check, randomly chosen cards could be hand verified after the election to make sure the barcodes are correctly printed.
Maybe I should go out and patent this, just in case common sense breaks out somewhere.
Re:Why not have voting machines that print ballots (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Why not have voting machines that print ballots (Score:5, Interesting)
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Personally, after the 2006 election, I'd rather use pen&paper than that horribly crappy Diebold software..
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However, chads are a prime example of overcomplicating matters. To create chads you need a punch machine.
A pen and paper would have been easier for many, and resulted in ballots that were easier to determine.
Personally, after the 2006 election, I'd rather use pen&paper than that horribly crappy Diebold software..
Agreed.
Personally, I think that any 'touch screen' voting machines should be nothing more than gloriously overengineered prin
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The nice thing about printing the vote is that you get the electronic tally right away, so the world can know a "tentative" result by that evening, while a full count could take all night, or or maybe even a few days to certify.
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In '52, huge computer called Univac changed election night [usatoday.com].
It is the story of how Univac predicted that Eisenhower would win by a landslide, and CBS news wouldn't report the results because they didn't
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With the Oval Office up for grabs, why not be sure we've elected the jerk correctly? A few days' wait isn't going to kill anyone.
Re:Why not have voting machines that print ballots (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think candidates should be allowed to concede an election. An election isn't over until all the votes are counted and certified. period. If the candidate concedes before then, that should nullify the election as the voters were not choosing from the actual candidates. They were instead choosing between one person who wanted the job and another person who wanted to distract voters in some fashion.
I don't know...
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Since you don't have a preferential system in USA it should be even easier, all you need to do is tick a box. Even the voters of Florida should be able to handle that
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Both Machine and Hand Counts (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no reason the official count can't take a few days to complete, even doublechecked by multiple counts. That kind of human responsibility for the counting is entirely consistent with the democracy we're populating with the votes.
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But personally, I always trusted the machine more than people. Machines don't get tired or distracted, and 200,000,000 is a pretty big number to count all the way up to without making a mistake (ok, I already made one - that's population, not voters).
Of course, I can't say the same about spell checkers, which it see
Re:Both Machine and Hand Counts (Score:4, Informative)
-Lars
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There is no urgent need to know who won instantly. In fact, knowing early results before voting is closed will affect the results, and is not desirable. I'm prepared to wait as long as I need to to know the results are valid.
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The idea is that the machine prints the mark on the ballot for you. There are no issues of two check marks, no check marks, circling names instead of marking boxes, etc. The ballots are marked in a uniform fashion so they are easier to count.
Heck, a printed ballot could even have only the name of the selection; in a race between candidates X and Y, a vo
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' Now I suppose that system could be manipulated, for instance the exit poll data could be manipulated or a politician that lost could demand a recount even though they are pretty sure that they actually did los
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I suspect many people feel the same way.
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I personally think this aspect should be the primary reason to go with voting machines, with accuracy a second.
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Re:Why not have voting machines that print ballots (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Why not have voting machines that print ballots (Score:2, Informative)
Seriously, this has been discussed to death in the security / crypto circles and there are *a lot* of really good ideas floating around. All that's really needed is a competitive process to select the best one... like the crypto community did with AES.
This problem is so solvable the current state is infuriating.
Go the other way (Score:3, Insightful)
Seems to me to work rather well.
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Why not have both? Some people do find the computers easier due to disability? I found the machines used in Ohio during the 2000s prior to the switch to the Diebold computers in 2006 to be preferrable to the computers or pen&paper, but everyone has their preferences. Having two options would be nice.
Re:Why not have voting machines that print ballots (Score:2)
That is 10,416 people doing nothing but counting votes for 8 hours a day, 5 days a w
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It takes 1 full minute to record and count a ballot? I think we can reasonably triple your estimate there and still be erring on the side of caution.
So we reduce your estimate... some 3000-odd people working full-time for a month, plus support infrastructure and personnel. That's not unfeasible at all. Not to mention that this is the way we've been doing it, with fair success, for the last couple hundred years, and heck, the percentage of Americans who vote used to be HIGHER than it is today.
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i.e. I vote, I can verify by hand that my ballot is correct, because for a few seconds, it is in my hand, until it goes to the box (meaning, the voting machine is one less avenue for screwing the election).
Later, they can go to a scantron style machine, and be tallied. If there is no contest about the election, then all is done, and nothing to worry about, but if the district/state/whatever h
Additional steps and features (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course you will have these machine printed ballots print all the vote selections in clearly readable text. But in addition to that, also include a copy of all the votes in bar code, along with a secure checksum. Before putting the ballot into the box, scan it on a verification machine. This machine performs optical character reading (OCR) of the text. It compares that to the bar code, and generates a checksum to compare as well. If anything is inconsistent, it reports an error so that vote can be do
Right idea, wrong request (Score:5, Insightful)
It just has to have a paper trail, not reveal to outsiders who you voted for, and, y'know, not be backed with Microsoft Access.
Re:Right idea, wrong request (Score:5, Insightful)
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Points will be deducted for excessive stock that will have to be destroyed as well.
With electronic voting, it's a simple matter of selecting a different language on the first screen.
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Re:Right idea, wrong request (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to think this as well, but then I saw a talk by a Ben Adida, a cryptographic voting researcher. It turns out there are electronic and hybrid voting systems that allow every step of the process to be independently audited. Individual voters can log into a website and ensure that their vote was recorded correctly (and yes, this is done in such a way that nobody can prove to another party which way they voted). Anyone can get a list of the people who actually voted, so they can check that nobody voted twice and that every voter was valid. Each of the candidates can independently and programatically verify that the tallying was done correctly (again, without exposing any one specific ballot). This is far superior to traditional paper ballots, and there's no technical reason we can't have it today.
Here [adida.net]'s a paper that gives some more information. I believe Dr. Adida mentioned that this particular system has a few problems that would prevent it from being used in practice, but it still gives a pretty good example of how a cryptographic voting system could work.
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The software itself is free, so the only cost is a PC, and it doesn't necessarily need to be an expensive one.
Plus, with well-designed software, you avoid the sort of issues that the Florida election had in 2000 (hanging chads, etc). Granted, that could be said about paper ballots, but with an electronic ballot you are able to get confirmation of who you voted for before it prints.
In the initial count, you avoid having to do a manual count of every ballot (as it's done electronically), but we st
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It's not meant to be a backend for any sort of software.
If you want a Microsoft product for that, try SQL Server, though I personally prefer MySQL or something like that.
Suddenoutbreakofcommonsense applies... (Score:3, Insightful)
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Open Source & Paper Trail (Score:4, Insightful)
No EVoting can be "trusted" (Score:5, Insightful)
Joe Average can look at a vote, see the cross and verify that yes, whoever casted this vote voted for the person or party where the X is. That's the difference.
Yes, of course we trust us. But can we be trusted? Hey, of course we can, I know that, you know that but essentially, it's the same situation we have with closed source voting machines: An outsider does not know whether we, computer people, are to be trusted. Like we, as outsiders, stand in front of the makers of voting machines and question their trustworthyness, so will non-tech people stand in front of us and question ours.
The only way to have elections that cannot be questioned by anyone is to create a system that everyone can verify if they want to. And the only system is simply one that everyone can "read". So it's paper or nothing.
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Re:No EVoting can be "trusted" (Score:5, Interesting)
Can we? I'm about six months short of my bachelors degree in CS, and I couldn't examine a computer voting machine and determine that it was trustworthy in any reasonable amount of time. With a properly marked paper ballot, anyone can tell you what it says and any attempt to change it requires at least couple of seconds alone with it. With a flash memory card, who knows? A person can't say *anything* about what's stored on it without putting it in a reader, and any reader device can trivially and tracelessly change the data in milliseconds.
So not only is your point absolutely correct - it's understated. We absolutely do need a system where "everyone can read" the ballots, and any sort of electronic ballot system is a system where *no-one* can read them. Obviously Joe Average can't, but even the engineers who built the thing can't read the ballots directly.
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Also, you mention another very important point: We need a system that you need to be able to read without subjecting the information to a process that may alter the information. A cross on a paper can be viewed from a foot away without the reader having any chance to change the information stored. This is not a given with other storage media that require devices other than our senses to make the information accessable to the human mind.
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Cryptography is neat, but it's not magic dust that you can sprinkle on things and make them secure. There are specific algorithms and protocols that have specific properties, and not a single one of those properties is "you can know what a given electronic device does by looking at it". Unfortunately, that property is absolutely essential for any of the electronic-ballot systems I've seen to be trustworthy at all.
Verifying a unit != verifying a system (Score:2)
You can verify the code in an open source system, but it can still have its disk wiped or be disconnected from the backend server so that the votes don't count etc etc.
Hand counting is a fraud too (Score:4, Insightful)
Computers count better than people do, otherwise, you would see calls for people to manually tally your bank balance...
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Blaming the computer for an error, in whatever fashion/manipulatable method, is a bit different, and all accountability is now gone: "It isn't me its an inanimate object(computer)" goes to "it wasn't the object its the owner of said object's fault" goes to "it's not the owner, of said object, he just bought it from XYZ company" seeing as that would be a corporation, means that there is 0 accountability whatsoever.
Re:Hand counting is a fraud too (Score:5, Informative)
Another idea (Score:4, Insightful)
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Jimmy Carter, who has participated in the monitoring of many elections in all sorts of countries is on record as saying that if he had to monitor US elections, he would have to declare them as unfair and open to abuse.
There are jokes made about dead people voting. Unfortunately, its true. As are the votes of the same person multiple times and the votes of people ineligible to vote.
Until those problems are fixed, how the votes are counted it really irrelevant, and
There's no rush (Score:5, Insightful)
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I wonder what not allowing exit polling to be published for 72 hours (or so) would do for fair elections.
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And it makes people further West on election day feel like their vote doesn't count. Think about poor Hawaii! Why would anyone there bother to go to the ballot box?
-Grey [silverclipboard.com]
E-Voting that matters (Score:3, Insightful)
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I'm amazed that anyone here would trust their vote about ANYTHING on the internet.
But the referendum Idea is one I'd go along with. There's no reason any law has to be passed RIGHT NOW; we could vote every year. I'd have the same way we do it now; a bill passes the house and Senate, then is vetoed
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Of course the reality may be somewhat different, but I don't like your idea any better.
Thank you, FINALLY someone gets it (Score:2)
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Exactly how are you going to count them all by hand between the election and swearing in? Also, if there is some dispute, how many ordinary people will be needed to count the election?
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Pardon my French, but (Score:2)
Very Nice for a change (Score:5, Interesting)
It's very nice to hear of a soldier truly understanding the role of patriotism and protection in America these days. Well done, Sir.
-Grey [silverclipboard.com]
Not all 50 (Score:2)
Right, Because people are so trustworthy too...... (Score:2, Insightful)
After all, it shouldn't take a rocket scientist (or even a dim witted 3rd grader) to remember all of the "vote wrangling" that went on when various "human" counting systems were employed in Florida, Ohio, Iowa, etc over the last few general elections.
Because of course, a HUMAN would NEVER have any agenda at all when it comes to vote counting......
Oh wait........
Hanging Chad's an
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If we learned anything from the recent cycles of elections, it's that people are inherently LESS trustworthy than machines are.
Right. Because, of course it's not the machines themselves that we worry about; it's the humans that program them, and we'd like to be able to see what they did, after they did program them.
And note, this applies to BOTH sides equally, so if you desire to blame the "mean ole conservatives" or the "damn looney liberals",.....Don't.
Exactly! This isn't a liberal or conservative or Democratic Party or Republican Party issue. It's important for everybody that the vote counting should be open and above board, and that there should be not be grounds for doubt about whether the election was rigged. In fact, it's most important to the party that
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Re:Right, Because people are so trustworthy too... (Score:2)
NY lever machines (Score:2)
I am biased as I lived here my whole life and am used to it.
Touch screens still don't seem good enough though.
If they look like bank ATM's
Paper does have a paper trail, it would be weird if it didn't, but it almost seems too low tech.
If hyperbole is used then I could compare it too etching on stone tablets; that would require a bit of insanity though.
Levers look simple just look across for the name/party and down for the position.
They also
All 50? (Score:4, Informative)
You get your ballot in the mail, and fill in the little bubbles with a pencil or pen, just like the standardized tests we're all familiar with. You fold it up and seal it in a "secrecy envelope" which does not have any personally identifying marks. Then you seal that in another envelope which has your name, mailing address, and a barcode on it; this envelope must be signed. You can either mail it, or drop it off in a secure ballot box somewhere (such as at a public library). You can do this at your convenience, it doesn't have to be on election day.
As ballots are received, they're scanned, unopened, and the signature is compared to what the state has on file from your voter registration. If the signature doesn't match, they'll contact you. If they receive two ballots from the same person, they'll contact you. If you don't receive your ballot, they'll send you another one with a different color outer envelope, so if they receive two, they know to discard the original one.
Finally, on election night, the outer envelopes are opened and the inner envelopes are mixed together, then the inner envelopes are opened and counted. It's done by machine, but could be done by hand just as well (it'd just take longer). They get the results very quickly.
Everything is done in the presence of observers from different political parties and members of the public (I haven't volunteered for this yet, but I think I'll look into it next year). All the machines involved are tested with a known quantity of sample ballots to make sure they're working properly. If somebody tried to rig the election, people would see it. Recounts are not a problem.
The only problem with our system is that it doesn't prevent vote buying, because someone could watch you fill out your ballot, seal it, sign the envelope, and drop it in the mail, then pay you for voting the way they wanted. But so far this hasn't been an issue, and in general, most Oregonians won't stand for that sort of thing. We'd much rather accept that risk in exchange for the convenience of being able to vote how we want when we want, without trying to get to a polling place on election day.
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It would be nice if some of the states have loser pays laws so that when these schmucks lose they'll have to pay for the priveledge.
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I'd support that. This is what surprises me. I think it's kind of strange we don't do this for more things... is this kind of "absentee balloting" common in other countries?
This seems to make the most sense to me. Our current system seems like it would clearly work better in the early 1800s when there were not nearly as many people. We wouldn't have to worry about poling places, getting people to them, turning away minorities, not having enough time to vote, etc.
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One is as mentioned above where ovals have to be filled in.
Others use a set of big arrows pointing at the person/thing you are voting for.
The arrows have a gap - you draw a line in the gap to complete the arrow.
How can you verify your vote counted? (Score:2)
But I don't mean "use OSS for the machines", I mean open-source the ACTUAL VOTES. How about this:
1) Voter votes on an electronic voting machine
2) Machine prints out a slip with their votes, and maybe a checksum/MD5 hash of the votes.
3) Voter verifies this on as many "neutral", 3rd party and/or official vote verification sites as possible, making the possibility of sabotage very slim since they can go to any one of these sites
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Who said anything about breach of secrecy?
Paper and pencil (Score:4, Insightful)
I just don't get why there's such foot-dragging... (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Demand that Diebold and all of the other voting machine folks print a receipt for every voter. This wouldn't be any more difficult than printing a receipt at the supermarket. You get to look at it, you put it into the basket on the way out. The paper becomes the "official" ballot always, the machine is just there to give quick results.
2) All the vote counting is redone at a central location, and EVERYONE can watch on the cable access channel or over streamed video. Want to watch 96 hours of vote counting from front to back? Sure, knock yourself out. The video feeds are provided the the cable franchise holders in every city to present on their networks on the usually blank city council channel. For those without a cable franchise for the city, you can simply lookup the video feeds on the internet.
The foot dragging on this issue is really starting to make me believe that the elections ARE being manipulated. All the horse-pucky form Diebold and the like about "too hard to make a printed tally".... Yeah, sure... And it's also too hard for cash machines and cash registers to print a receipt and verify that I've got funds before you give me cash...
As far as ballot counting, the infrastructure to let everyone watch is already there.
We just need to keep pushing until this gets done. I'm getting really tired of the 50.01% vs. 49.99% vote manipulation that's passing for "legal and fair" elections in this country. Making things look "close" is really the smoothest form of manipulation, I don't think anyone would believe the old Soviet style manipulation where the votes are always 98% for the party, but shaving just enough to make it 51-49 would be almost believable.
This really does need to get done NOW. No more fooling around, OSS voting machine code, printed receipt, video feeds of the counting and no more voter supression!
Re:I just don't get why there's such foot-dragging (Score:5, Insightful)
I personally see nothing wrong with counting machines. Yet some of you act like Herman Hollerith was the instigator of a massive shadow conspiracy. The requirements for valid voting are few: 1) recountability; 2) certification; and 3) transparency. The off-the-shelf Diebold machines won't pass muster, but most of the tried and true optical and punch systems will.
Oh, and next time don't wait until two months before the primaries start. Sheesh.
Bits vs. Atoms (Score:3, Insightful)
Atoms, however, are hard to dispose of - yes a paper trail gets counted too, but it's much harder to deny the physical reality.
A voter can verify his correct paper ballot went into a locked box, and observers can make sure the locked boxes are transported and the contents counted. If there is a question, it can be repeated with closer inspection.
When I touch the "vote!" box on a screen, I have no idea what happened next, and verification is difficult.
Illinois should counter sue then (Score:3, Interesting)
The last two elections I voted on a touch screen, and was presented with a paper audit trail that I presented to the election judge, who put it in a ballot box.
Not every state has Diebold crap.
And it wouldn't matter if the machine used Access as a database (or even Excel [slashdot.org]. Since there's a paper trail you can always retabulate the results, by hand if need be.
-mcgrew
Paper trails are inaccurate (Score:2, Insightful)
greater than the percentage of votes by which George W Bush "won" his first presidency.
If you're going to have close elections like that, then with a human paper counting system you may
as well just call it, heads or tails, because that will be just as valid as the alleged "result."
Some kind of open-source hardware and software stack, top to bottom, using public key encryption and
digital signature techniques to
Massachuetts got it right (Score:2)
It is straight forward to use a
Um? (Score:2)
How the heck does Switzerland deal with these things, since they are big on plebiscites and referenda? The excuse I hear constantly is that ballots in the States, particularly where initiatives end up on the ballot and w
That's a great idea! (Score:2)
Oklahoma (of all places) has it right (Score:2, Interesting)
When polls
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New york is taking their sweet time trying to do it right, unlike California which has had several machines with all sorts of screwy updates in them.
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Taking in my experiences in voting in the midwest, which have universally been 'scanotron' sheets, there are at least some states with a verifiable paper record that can be recounted by hand if determined necessary.
One problem with all this 'hand count' stuff is that even hand counting has an error rate - often a higher one than the sc
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Tollfeed (Score:5, Informative)
What we need to do is eliminate the electoral college and just go with the popular vote. Imagine a country where the voice of the people actually counted for something.
The electoral college is designed to punish candidates who appeal to a limited geographic region.
The only time the electoral college system makes any real difference is when the popular vote is close - then the number of states you won ends up making a difference.
The 2000 election is a good example. Al Gore won the popular vote by 0.5% - but Bush carried 9 more states, which earned him 5 more EC votes than Gore.
Is this a good system? I think so. It doesn't ignore "the voice of the people" - you elect the electors, and the system forces candidates to represent the entire country instead of just the East.
Re:Tollfeed (Score:4, Informative)
The Electoral College was created because we simply didn't know how to elect a president. The original Virginia articles (which our Constitution was based upon) had the Senate (which was elected by the House) elect the President. Almost all of the delegates protested this because it was completely against the idea of separation of powers. Pennsylvania proposed election by popular vote, but Virginia objected because they had more people than Pennsylvania, but had fewer voters (since they had such strict voting requirements).
The whole thing was sent off to committee to decide universal voting qualifications for president. This completely failed because Pennsylvania had almost universal suffrage while Virginia wanted ownership of a certain amount of land. New York wanted a certain payment of taxes, Massachusetts wanted ownership of a certain value of real estate, and you get the idea. No one could agree on a Constitutional provision of who could vote for President. Even worse, a few states insisted that the state legislatures should have a say in who is running the country.
In the end, a compromise was reached: Each state got a certain amount of votes, and it was up to the individual states to decide who and how these votes would be cast. Thus, the Electoral College.
The Electoral College was a complete failure from almost the very beginning. George Washington was an easy choice, Adams was his vice president, so he was chosen in the third election. The fourth presidential election was the very first truly contested presidential election and the Electoral College almost completely tore the country apart. Thomas Jefferson won the Electoral College over Adams, but he tied with his veep due to the way the Electors were chosen. Back then, every elector got two votes and the second place finisher was the Veep. Jefferson tied the electoral vote with his veep candidate Aaron Burr. However, Adams supporters convinced Burr to actually claim the Presidency. It took over a dozen votes in Congress before Jefferson actually won. Many states threatened revolt if Jefferson or Burr was elected. It was Hamilton who finally cleared the way for Jefferson's election. Hamilton got the Federalists to support Jefferson in order to keep the country together.
The result ended up being the Hamilton Burr dual and extremely strained relations between Jefferson and Burr (who Jefferson later had tried for Treason). The twelfth amendment changed the way the Electoral College worked in order to prevent this from happening again.
The Electoral College encouraged states to keep suffrage low since the states aren't punished due to limited suffrage. The South knew that if Blacks were kept from the polls, they still had just as much say in Congress and the Presidential elections.
The Electoral College encourages limited Presidential campaigns since each state votes in a large block. The Presidential campaign skips over California and Texas, the two largest states since the outcome is known in those states, and the campaign hits only a half dozen or so smaller states. For example, Al Gore won more votes in Texas than in New Jersey in 2000, but it was New Jersey's 17 electoral votes that mattered and not the millions of votes Gore received in Texas.
And for the same reason, the Electoral College keeps voting participation low. Why bother voting for the Democratic candidate in Texas or the Republican candidate in California since it really doesn't matter. Our voting participation rate for President averages just over 50%. However, battleground states usually have a voter turnout above 80% while most other states have voter turnout around 40% to 50%. Why bother to go to the polls in Texas? You know the Republican candidate is going to win. If you're a Democrat, it's just a waste of time. If you're a Republican, it still isn't worth it. Texas's 34 electoral votes will still go to the Republican candidate whether or not you vote. With the Electoral College, your vote doesn't matter i
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It was a much more complex, messier, and horribly mangled process. I'm not going to write it all out for you, because there is plenty of information out there, but your version of how it went is not even close to correct.
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Not to mention that the actual problems with the election couldn't possibly have been addressed by simply counting again: Some people were alleged to have been denied the ability to vote through last-minute changes to less
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