Democrats Win

[Dr. Shane]

FOXNews has projected the Democrats winning control of the House of Representatives.

Are we going to hear cries of fraud and rigged voting machine?

[Bravus]

Apparently we already are hearing some such cries from Republicans, in Ohio in particular.

To me, that's one of the sad things about the way electronic voting has been handled: *no-one* is fully confident that it's safe and secure anf ari, which means *every* loser of whatever stripe has scope to complain about it.

The US needs to work on making its democracy more transparent and clear, for the good of every American.

[Dr. Shane]

Well the results are about the same as the polls predicted. If the polls predicted one result and we got a drastically different one, than I would have more reason for concern.

[bevin]

Us computer people were talking about this over coffee yesterday morning.

Both NH and MA use a paper ballot that you mark with a felt-tip pen and then is run through a simple counting machine.

This gives you three advantages

1. It scales to many stations - you just need a curtain, table, and felt-tip pen. Very cheap.

2. It is low tech. There is not a lot of software or fancy programmed magnetic cards to go wrong.

3. It has a paper trail that is easy to recount.

Why do you need anything fancier? More than this is a waste of money and increases the chances of both accidental problems and deliberate fraud.

/Bevin

[Dr. Shane]

4. It doesn't need to be stored in a climate controlled warehouse.

[Jeannieb43]

Us computer people were talking about this over coffee yesterday morning.

Both NH and MA use a paper ballot that you mark with a felt-tip pen and then is run through a simple counting machine.

This gives you three advantages

1. It scales to many stations - you just need a curtain, table, and felt-tip pen. Very cheap.

2. It is low tech. There is not a lot of software or fancy programmed magnetic cards to go wrong.

3. It has a paper trail that is easy to recount.

Why do you need anything fancier? More than this is a waste of money and increases the chances of both accidental problems and deliberate fraud.

/Bevin

And I noticed last night that CNN was commenting about the "Democratic tide" having been "started in the Northeast, and is sweeping across the country, including some of the Central states." But the Northeast votes were simpler to tabulate, evidently, because their results came in earlier than some other Eastern states.

I think we should all be afraid of Diebold and its high-tech, easily tampered-with voting machines. And having no paper trail.