vision2020
RE: FL voting laws
Dear Friends,
We have been talking quite a bit about the ballots now. Even though I am a
proponent of making things more simple I have to admit that the ballots in
question were not that confusing. I still think we should have a
standardized ballot all over this country. I think we should go to the
bubble sheets instead of the punch and I think we should go to digital
format as soon as possible. The FL ballots did not require a PHD to figure
out. I guess some of the elderly with poor eyesight might have difficulty
with it. Since FL seems to have a large number of elderly citizens, I would
think they would have friendlier voting apparatus. I am sure it is difficult
to punch the holes if you are suffering from arthritis.
If we could implement an efficient digital voting scheme, we could put more
decisions in the hand of the citizens of this country. The people would have
more direct involvement in the decision making of our country.
In my opinion the ballot layout is not really the main problem. It seems to
me that the whole punch card system is flawed and inaccurate. Even if
everyone did everything right, the results of the counts would always vary.
I think this is fundamentally unacceptable. I find it interesting that New
Mexico's re count seems to be going to Bush's favor. I wonder how common
this problem of inaccuracy really is?! I guess normally when the votes are
not so close it is irrelevant but in closely contested elections, this
becomes a huge issue. If you have a 1% error margin, and 10 million people
are voting, and the difference between the yes and no is only 100 votes then
we have a problem!!
All this said, my biggest worry is not the ballot anyway! If any of the
charges of minorities not being allowed to vote and being harassed or the
people not being able to get another ballot turn out to be true (I hope not)
we will have to really worry about the validity of our elections in general.
This of course is another argument for my digital voting!
Your brother in arms,
Shahab...
-----Original Message-----
From: Bob Hoffmann [mailto:escape@alt-escape.com]
Sent: Friday, November 10, 2000 2:43 PM
To: Vision2020 Listserver
Subject: Re: FL voting laws
At 01:26 PM 11/10/2000 -0800, Stephen Cooke wrote:
> "TO VOTE for a candidate whose name is printed on the
>ballot, mark a cross (X)
> in the blank space at the RIGHT of the name of the
>candidate for whom you
> desire to vote."
>
> - From Florida statute concerning guidelines for
>election ballots
Yes, and this starts "The general election ballot shall be in substantially
the following form." Yet Palm Beach ballots used punch cards, not
write-in-the-X paper ballots. Punch cards must be considered
"substantially" equivalent. But how to adapt the paper ballot to the punch
card ballot, and whether anything was "substantially" changed? The paper
ballot presumably wasn't in a booklet form (I presume), as the punch card
system is (as in left-hand page, right-hand page). So is the entire
punch-card system illegitimate? Boy, the lawyers will have fun with this
one.
Guidelines for the presidential vote:
"The general election ballot shall be arranged and printed so that the
offices of President and Vice President are joined in a single voting space
to allow each elector to cast a single vote for the joint candidacies for
President and Vice President."
Presumably, these are additional guidelines to the above "right-X"
guidelines. But in court, one side would argue that these latter
guidelines are the only explicit guidelines for the Presidential election,
and that they were indeed followed.
And this is an issue because of the Electoral College.
Constitutional crisis, anybody?
Bob Hoffmann
846 Mabelle St.
Moscow, ID 83843 USA
Phone: (208) 883-0642
Fax: (877) 495-2279
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