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

[Peter H. Granzeau]

At 05:38 PM 11/7/2007, Mandos Mitchinson wrote:
>
> > Well, as it is a secret ballot, and (at the moment) cast on
> > paper, you can always leave it blank. Our real problem is the
> > "donkey vote":
> > people who just number 1,2,3 etc down the ballot.
>
>New Zealand has a similar proble with it's local body elections. There is
>very little in the way of campaigning meaning you either give your votes to
>a specific party or judge the person based on a few lines of blurb in the
>pamphlet you revieve. (All voting is by Mail).
>
>Most people simply select the top five resulting in cases where the council
>or Board of a DHB are all made up of last nakes from the first few letters
>in the alphabet. Here are the names of the Board members from on of NZ's
>DHB's.
>
>Aitken
>Bowkett
>Bradwell
>Dady
>Douglas
>Faulkner
>Gotlieb
>Ritchie
>
>Only one name out of the list is not from the first 7 letters of the
>alphabet.

Virginia has an interesting problem in a county near here--an 
election for school board in which there were no candidates who 
qualified to have their names placed on the ballot.  They now have to 
count 1,500 write-in ballots.  One of the questions is, of course, 
the possibility of names written differently.  Is Henry J Kaiser the 
same person as Henry Kaiser?  How about Hank Kaiser?  Henry 
Kaisar?  H. J. Kaiser?


-- 
Regards, Pete
pgranzeau at cox.net