[LMB] OT: Voting was all-purpose open letter

[PAT MATHEWS]

And - this may be a legend - it's said that once upon a time in California 
there was a move to add two lines to every voting choice: "None of the 
Above" and "Abolish This Office." The former passed. The latter was 
rejected, which if my memory of California ballots serves me well, was too 
darned bad.


http://idiotgrrl.livejournal.com/

Classical metaphysics in 4 words: "No matter...never mind."





>From: JenL <jenl1625 at gmail.com>
>Reply-To: "Discussion of the works of Lois McMaster 
>Bujold."<lois-bujold at lists.herald.co.uk>
>To: "Discussion of the works of Lois McMaster 
>Bujold."<lois-bujold at lists.herald.co.uk>
>Subject: Re: [LMB] OT: Voting was all-purpose open letter
>Date: Wed, 7 Nov 2007 15:08:42 -0500
>
>On 11/7/07, Peter H. Granzeau <pgranzeau at cox.net> wrote:
> >
> > And I have more than once voted "no" on all referendum questions and
> > left all of the office votes blank.
>
>
>Been there, done that.  ;-)
>
>The most recent voting news in Ohio is an unintended consequence of the
>requirement that counties "upgrade" their voting systems.  No more 
>butterfly
>ballots.  Some counties (like mine) have gone to giving you a page that you
>mark up and then run through a scanner (and if you've left some offices
>blank, it asks you to confirm you really meant to do that).  But many
>counties have gone to the electronic voting machines.  The law requires 
>that
>those machines have a paper backup system (complete with time-stamps).
>
>Well, some bright guy figured out that in low-turnout precincts, it was
>possible to take the voter logs (where the pollworker carefully writes down
>the name and address of each voter given a ballot) and the paper backups,
>and figure out (based on the order of voters and the time-stamps) how at
>least some of the voters actually voted on each office/issue . . . .
>
>(Given that the Mechanicsburg Public Library Levy won on a 5 to 2 vote,
>there are some VERY low-turnout precincts in Ohio, so it wouldn't be hard 
>at
>all to do this in some places.)
>
>jen
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