The Election Monitoring Room is probably only compatible with electronic voting machines.

The 2 or more monitors for every polling place (supplied by the parties) will vote first.
Directly after voting, they will enter the EMR and be sealed in prior to anyone else voting.

Once sealed in, others are allowed to vote. A light indicates votes being cast from a certain station and the tallies will be updated inside the room - real time. The monitors inside the room will have no way of seeing who cast the vote and no way to communicate with anyone outside. They only watch to see if there is an appropriate collection of the votes via the tally screen.

A print out will occour at the end of each monitor's shift (I assume 4 hours) so they can give this print out to their replacement. (voting will also have to stop at this changing of the guard)

This causes the vote of the monitors to no longer be secret, but I can't think of any other solution to help verify that the recording of the public's votes are accurate.

It now occurs to me that this system can be rigged just as well without partisan monitors on the voter's side.

The only way I can think of now is to have a light on top of each voting station flash each time a person casts the final vote. This light flashes in conjunction with an opaque light that is viewable to both outside and inside monitors.

In the event that the change in vote totals are questionable, A monitor can push the big red button to record the time of the event. The monitor writes in a log book a description of the anomoly (& opposing monitor also documents this.)

I can't think of how to defeat this, but someone probably could. It's the best I could think of, and after reading RFK Jr's article & hearing some other stuff, I am starting to think that Democracy is Broken.
-- Zimmy, Jun 05 2006

The Article I mention (It's getting harder to find by google) http://www.rollings...004_election_stolen
I don't mean to start a political debate (Rep vs Dem), I have heard that this stuff goes both ways. [Zimmy, Jun 05 2006]

salon.com: Farhad Manjoo debunks ^^^ http://www.salon.co...nnedy/index_np.html
[jutta, Jun 05 2006]

Detailed claims and counterclaims (PDF) http://electionarch...org/ucvAnalysis/US/
Warning, math ahead. [jutta, Jun 05 2006]

//Election Monitoring Room //
An xxx web-cam in Japan?
-- Ling, Jun 05 2006


F*ck, I just wrote a very lengthy anno here and deleted it by accident. To summarize:

What a stupid idea, but you say so yourself.

Thanks for the link, that was infuriating to read. I rambled on and on about how bad it all is, probably better it got deleted.

Solution: more voting places, more voting machines. From the article I learned a little of how the election is organised and I think it is very badly done, even without the tampering it is clear from this article alone that there would have been some waiting time anyway. I suppose that if we had a waiting time of ten minutes in my country, the Netherlands, half of us would not go voting because of it and the elections would not be legal due to a low turn up. TSK TSK americans are crazy, crazy I tell you.
-- zeno, Jun 05 2006


I've watched that Rolling Stone article get debunked on a mailing list last week - let me find some links. Summary: Yeah, it was poorly organized, but it took a lot of selective interpretation to make it into a smoking gun.
-- jutta, Jun 05 2006


I didn't think I said it was stupid, just the best I could think of for now. (maybe the same?) The 40 other ideas I've had, I probably would call stupid.

The article is 4 different pages - some of the later pages going over an analyisis of the voting patterns that seem unlikely, enough to question the validity of those votes. (a couple small examples: 41% of a strongly democratic precinct's voting for an independant candidate with ideals differing widely from the democratic party & 16000+ votes for Bush AND "for" gay marraige in one precinct - the latter being VERY unlikely for those unfamiliar)

I have no confidence in the electoral system at this point. Something should be done, but there seems to be no easy answer as to what. This story is getting next to no air or print time here in the US. I'm curious about elsewhere.

[jutta] I was able to verify all of the facts in the article I searched for, though It was a small sample. These were mainly from the Cuyahoga County presidential voting records.

some of the things in the article are probably un-verifi-able, but I haven't been able to find any yet. The Nazerene College / Kenyon College bit did occour. It is where I grew up & I still have most of my family living there.

I also heard that in 2000 there were instances of voting fraud that hurt Bush. (I didn't vote for either of them and niether Party is my Party.)
-- Zimmy, Jun 05 2006


My main ire was not really aroused by an exit poll discrepancy. It was when actual incongruent voting patterns were discussed that I got angry.

I can think of possible explainations for exit poll variences, I can think of no good explainations for certain voting combinations (Bush + Liberal candidates on same ballots). I so far have not been able to verify these.

Thanks for the links by the way [jutta]. They are one of the more rationally constructed arguements against the article I've seen.
-- Zimmy, Jun 05 2006


//I can think of no good explainations for certain voting combinations (Bush + Liberal candidates on same ballots).//

People are idiots. In the UK at council elections it's not that unlikely for people to split their three votes between parties, despite them having oposite goals. It's probably similar to the sort of people who will tell you that they have voted labour all their life, but feel like a bit of a change and suddenly vote for the most right wing party they can find. Or the people who just cast their votes for the person at the top of the list.
-- RobertKidney, Jun 05 2006


[RobertKidney] Yeah. In the link [jutta] provided it claims that that instance might be explainable due to no party affiliation being on the ballot for that case. (I think it was a judge).

I may have gotten myself a little too worked up over this when all I could find for an opposing viewpoint was people calling other people names & stuff. I probably didn't look hard enough. I still have a bit of mistrust, though.
-- Zimmy, Jun 05 2006



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