[IP] Fwd: THROW YOUR VOTE AWAY, REDUX.
I was born and raised in Jersey City in the Hague era. I was told that it
was common to require voters to show how they voted (often by watchers
looking over their shoulder).
If we have paper receipts with the way the user voted on them I guarantee
that politicians some place and maybe many places will ask to see them from
voters and if denied favors from the politicians will vanish etc.
Please don't tell me that would be illegal (SO WHAT!! Look at Florida!).
Am I missing something??
Dave
Delivered-To: dfarber+@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Sat, 08 May 2004 07:42:13 -0400
From: Barry Ritholtz <ritholtz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: THROW YOUR VOTE AWAY, REDUX.
To: Dave Farber <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>
Dave,
For IP, if you like:
Nick Confessore brings up the obvious (but overlooked) regarding requiring
a paper receipt for touch screen voting.
Here's the relevant quote:
THROW YOUR VOTE AWAY, REDUX.
<http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2004/05/index.html#002962>http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2004/05/index.html#002962
I'm sitting here looking at a WalMart Receipt that has about 100 grocery
items listed on it by name, barcode number, price and quantity. It also
has a time stamp, my credit card number with the first digits x'd out and
the clerk's name and register number. It's about 15" long by 2.5 inches wide.
The cash register that produced this receipt is operated 24 hours/day for
365 days/year and there is usually a line of people waiting at the
checkout line. It takes a minimum wage grocery clerk about 4 seconds to
pop in a new roll of paper when it runs out. The information on this
receipt exceeds that which would be required for any election that I have
ever heard of. And the volume of receipts printed out by any store far
exceeds the volume produced by any voting machine. Think about it. The
average clerk probably scans grocery items 100-times faster than the
average person votes, and people pass through the cashier line a lot
faster than any voting booth. In fact the new self-service checkout lines
at the grocery store produce receipts that are already pre-cut and ready
for you to grab. So industry can obviously design a recipt printing
machine that is self-service and user-friendly.
Don't let anyone tell you that it is too costly, complicated or difficult
to print out voting receipts. The printer technology is used in every
store in the developed world. As far as the 37 page [sic] nonsense. They
don't need to print the entire voter's guide on the reciept, or even the
entire ballot with all the candidates that you DIDN'T vote for. All that
is necessary is a short abbreviation of the ballot line (Pres, Sen, Bal.
Meas. 15, etc) and your actual vote (candidates name or yes/no in the case
of ballot measures). That information can easily be fit onto a cash
register recipt.
Makes sense. If every supermarket and discount store in the US can do it,
so can Diebold and the FEC . . .
Barry L. Ritholtz
Market Strategist
Maxim Group
britholtz@xxxxxxxxxxxx
(212) 895-3614
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Big Picture: A blog of capital markets, geopolitics, with a dash of film!
<http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/>http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/
</x-html>
-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as roessler@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To manage your subscription, go to
http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip
Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/