[LINK] Electronic voting in the ACT

[Chirgwin, Richard]

Jan:

>-  improved accuracy in counting  ????
>-  speedier counting, particular in close races with preferential 
>assignment  ????

Yes to both, but: what's the audit/recount trail? (In a perfect world, the
answer is that "you don't need one". This world isn't perfect.)

>-  handling table cloth size ballot options  like the Senate?????  this one

>seems less a possibility to attain because the list of people is STILL too 
>large for a reasonable person to make a distinction and hold all the 
>relative placement options in their head.

Indeed. For eg, imagine the font size to render the Senate in a single list
on-screen. [Anyway, I love doing the Senate paper. Number 1-133, putting all
the funny fronts at the bottom, is one of those insignificant revenge
fantasies that makes the exercise worthwhile! :-) ]

>Will this pilot test these things?
Jan, in addition to your own remarks, I would add that something touching
the foundation of democracy can't be done just because someone thinks it's a
neat idea. It must be the subject of as broad a debate as possible.

RC


-----Original Message-----
From: Jan Whitaker [mailto:jwhit@primenet.com]
Sent: Thursday, 18 October 2001 7:05
To: Chirgwin, Richard
Cc: 'link@www.anu.edu.au'
Subject: RE: [LINK] Electronic voting in the ACT


At 09:14 AM 17/10/01 +1000, Chirgwin, Richard wrote:
>Electronic voting is not, a priori, better because it's electronic. To
>justify the spend, the new solution must be significantly better than what
>precedes it. More steps and technical dependencies undermine this.

Potential betterments:

-  improved accuracy in counting  ????
-  speedier counting, particular in close races with preferential 
assignment  ????
-  handling table cloth size ballot options  like the Senate?????  this one 
seems less a possibility to attain because the list of people is STILL too 
large for a reasonable person to make a distinction and hold all the 
relative placement options in their head.

>The usual justifcation for this is "but it's only a pilot system". Fair
>'nuff: I will eagerly await evidence that the advocates learned lessons
from
>the pilot - and put those lessons into practise.

Will this pilot test these things?

Are the criteria measured against the current state of affairs [the 
baseline] to see what improvement there would actually be or
will the evaluation only be the attitudes or 'gut feeling' of the persons 
conducting the study?

I'm willing to keep an open mind on this for the potential improvements and 
reduced costs [sic] of processing ballots.  Over what time would the cost 
of development be recouped?  Are there other places where this program 
could apply, places with preferential voting?

Jan

JLWhitaker Associates
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit@primenet.com  --  http://www.primenet.com/~jwhit/whitentr.htm