nyankoframe | Review of electronic voting systems (Reply)

While I was randomly browsing kuro5hin, I happened to come across this article on a review of the e-slate voting system which is scheduled to be implemented in San Mateo County this year for the elections to be held there.

It's common knowledge by now that the Diebold voting machines in use elsewhere have some serious flaws, and it seems that most of the issues mentioned have not been resolved as yet.

This is definitely a development to watch out for, both in terms of whether the introduction of such systems will reduce the necessity for and frequency of electoral re-counts and whether it will result in fewer contentious/contested races (such as the south Florida presidential ballot of 2000).

But one troubling aspect of American democracy that neither system addresses (and arguably, can't address or isn't designed to address) is increasing voter apathy towards the entire electoral process. This comment on the k5 article makes the point eloquently:

The random-choice-between-two-evils has gotten so bad that the results are within a couple of percentage points now, if that. This is dangerously close to the margin of error with manual processes. Again, if the difference is below the margin of error, what is the point of anyone voting? It is all just a toss-up. This was clearly shown in Oregon where each recount came back with different results.
So, something is needed and needed right away. Fraud? Fraud is far, far less severe a problem than apathy. Fraud is far less of a problem than the vote being "stolen" by the news reports claiming someone has one before the West Coast polls have closed.
Why does the US population seem to demand results within a couple of hours when other countries can wait two weeks? I don't know the answer to that, but I suspect it has to do with the whole idea of it being a "horse race" and there being a "winner" and a "loser". You do not have to wait two weeks for the results of any other sort of "race".
Just to clarify about the margin of error here... If you sit 100 people down to count jellybeans in a 100 jars you will end up with somewhere around 1-2% error even with the most careful people. It is possible to have every single operation repeated three times and only accept results where three different people come up with the same result, but that requires incredible patience, patience that the US population doesn't have for vote-counting. Check how amusement parks count cash and compare this to how votes are counted. It is highly unlikely we are going to see high-accuracy counting being done for votes. When the margin between candidates is 10-15% nobody cares about 2% error. When the margin between candidates is 0.2% then 2% error is 10 times the difference and it makes getting a repeatable, reliable and accurate vote count impossible. That is where we are today.

So having a reliable electronic voting system is only one part of the electoral system and of fixing its problems in the US, albeit a significant part - especially with the improvements made to the machines to reach out to blind and disabled voters.

When will we have anything like that here?