I really thought the US voting system would be more efficient.
Australia had an election about 4 weeks ago... It took maybe 10min to vote. All voting is done on old-fashioned ballot papers which are counted by hand, and the result was known maybe 4 hours after the polling places closed on the East coast, and 2 hours or so on the West coast.
There's nothing about this voter turnout stuff in Australia... anyone over 18 MUST vote... or get fined!
Australia had an election about 4 weeks ago... It took maybe 10min to vote. All voting is done on old-fashioned ballot papers which are counted by hand, and the result was known maybe 4 hours after the polling places closed on the East coast, and 2 hours or so on the West coast.
There's nothing about this voter turnout stuff in Australia... anyone over 18 MUST vote... or get fined!
audiousername said:
Pretty much the same in Canada... each of our countries does have only about a 1/10 the US population
That is interesting...
dave
I notice that most of the critique regarding the brevity of the voting process are coming from areas that have parliamentary systems. As someone who also votes for a parliament, I can safely say that there are usually only an MP (and/or a Senator) to vote for and/or only one referendum to deal with. The checks and balances ironically provide the complexity. The other advantage of the British legacy is that there must be a centralized body to oversee common voting regulations. The political strength of the individual States in the federal system creates a climate where each jurisdiction can (and does) have its own oversight with widely differing voting rules. Americans must take their time, it's necessary just to vote intelligently there.
🙂ensen
🙂ensen
purplepeople said:
Interesting concept. Does flipping a coin take so long, or does Joe Public need a while to decide which one's been hoodwinking them the most? ;-)
One quote says it all 🙂
"I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President next year." -- Wally O'Dell - CEO of Diebold, Inc.
I wonder how it can even be legal to use electronic voting equipment that does not output a detailed log on paper in addition to the electronic registration of the votes. How to you do a manual recount?
"I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President next year." -- Wally O'Dell - CEO of Diebold, Inc.
I wonder how it can even be legal to use electronic voting equipment that does not output a detailed log on paper in addition to the electronic registration of the votes. How to you do a manual recount?
That's right. In countries where it is not compulsory, only people that are motivated to do so actually vote. Trouble is, the most motivated people are often cranks.audiousername said:
Jeff- Quite the overload of info.
Is a picture worth a thousand words?
The FBI prolly has more important things to do. I wonder who'll take Ashcroft's place? Wolfowitz?
Is a picture worth a thousand words?
The FBI prolly has more important things to do. I wonder who'll take Ashcroft's place? Wolfowitz?
Circlotron said:
In the United States you are only required to do 3 things as a citizen:
1) Serve for jury duty if called
2) Serve your country in time of war, if called
3) Pay your taxes
x. onasis said:
I hate charts like these where they don't start at 0... it does not give a true sense of the differences.
dave
planet10 said:
Me too, but the interesting bit in these charts is more of a "big picture" king of thing.
In states with paper ballots, the actual voting results pretty much aligned exactly with the exit polls. In states with electronic voting and no paper trail, these statistics show that there was often a significant variance between voting results and exit polls. It was as much as 8% which is huge.
Now for the creepy part - in every state where there was a significant variance, the variance favored Bush. The exit polls showed Kerry winning some of these states - enough to take the election.
What is the statistical possibility of this happening by chance? Very very low, I'd say. Certainly less than 1 in 100.
All this might only signify a flaw in the way exit polls were conducted in these States, you say? The chances of this are low, given that the variances only occurred in states with electronic voting.
No matter what your opinion, I think this screams for the return of paper audit trails to all voting machines. The already reported mistake in Ohio would have made the difference in the entire election in 2000 had it happened in Florida.
It screems for a new election, under accepted democratic circumstances. No registering, fingerprints like in afganistan or so, votes on paper. No election on a working day, and best would be duty to vote. Also a more democratic system with more than one political party would help...
jeff mai said:
Thank you conspiracy theorists around the globe. Statistics are my baby.
The early exit polls were conducted by Democrat operatives and leaked by bloggers, these were not conducted according to rigorous statistical standards. To wit, a preponderance of sampling in urban areas and amongst women, not statistically acurate for the US, was leaked to some media indicating that Kerry was a 20% favorite. This was in stark contrast to the more reliable statistics from Monday. In point of fact, the samples, used by the Dem operatives were purposefully skewed (that's kurtosis in my book) 70% young, white female.
The U.S. media avoided use of the exit polls because of the problems in 2000 -- how is it that the major networks didn't realize that a large part of the conservative panhandle of Florida was not in the Eastern Time Zone.
Funny, I don't hear any of you complaining about the exit polls in the recent Venezualan election.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BRI411A.html
My only comment on this "election" - hope we can survive the "remaking of the world in the neocon's image".
Check the list above and compare - I am from a country where we had to endure one " greatest leader of all times" already.
My only comment on this "election" - hope we can survive the "remaking of the world in the neocon's image".
Check the list above and compare - I am from a country where we had to endure one " greatest leader of all times" already.
jackinnj said:
Dear Mr. Statistician, speaking of rigor, you forgot to cite your sources on this info. Just because some unreliable exit polling occurred does not mean that the ones cited in the article I linked were also unreliable.
This sort of contempt for any information conflicting with one's world view, because it may have come from "the other side" is an extremely convenient excuse for dismissing the facts and is used by many conservative *and* liberal pin-heads.
jackinnj said:
I'm not a Venezualan citizen.
I'm not now nor did I ever claim a conspiracy, but at the very least it demonstrates the need for paper records of voting.
Alright then, who conducted your exit polls? The media in this country is very left-leaning, it is a fact as shown by the number of positive news stories about Kerry versus the number about Bush. In 2000 when the thought that Gore had won Tom Brocaw actually said "we won" on the air!jeff mai said:
Why not rely on machines....?
In the netherlands most places have voting computers. Takes 5 seconds to vote.....counting ...no need....happens at the push of a button. In the UK you would still have to count by hand..so you might not have problems with counting but the officials will.
markp said:
No it isn't. As proof of the silliness of your supporting evidence I could say that the news is all pro-American, anti-Islam, jingoist lies because there are no positive stories about Osama Bin Laden. It doesn't enter your head that perhaps there are more positive things to say about Kerry?
Americans have a very distorted view of left and right. Kerry could have used exactly the same platform to run as a moderate conservative. Yet somehow he gets labelled as a an out of touch left wing kook.
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