[LINK] Electronic Voting

[Chris Maltby]

On Fri, Nov 17, 2006 at 02:32:44PM +1100, Howard Lowndes wrote:
> They are entitled to, but only the major parties usually do, the others 
> can't get the manpower.  In fact each candidate on the ballot paper is 
> entitled to have one scrutineer each to oversee each electoral roll 
> clerk during the actual polling and one scrutineer each at the primary 
> count.

That's a worst case - scrutineers are provided by parties and
independents who feel they have a chance of winning the seat. Those
scrutineers pay attention to votes for all candidates because they
care about preference flows.

Scrutineers look at a representative (and random) sample of formal
ballot papers from all tables and almost 100% of informal and
questionable ones. The polling clerks are also very conscious of the
importance of integrity in my experience. They are all casual workers
but display a mostly high professional standard.

> So if you have say 12 candidates on the paper and say 10 electoral roll 
> clerks (not unreasonable figures) you could have 120 scrutineers during 
> the actual polling, and they are each entitled to lodge an objection to 
> every voter who presents which the polling manager must record, then you 
> could have 12 scrutineers at the primary count and they are each 
> entitled to request to see, but not touch, each ballot paper counted and 
> to lodge an objection which the polling manager must record.

This doesn't happen because the election night count is only ever
a first count and sort. The real count happens later - with fewer
officials - and it carefully rechecks the election night counts from
each booth. While the ballot papers could be interfered with between
election night and the start of the official count, the election
night scrutineer data (and other processes) limit the opportunity to
influence the result by anything more than tiny amounts.

> If you really want to kill a system then that has the potential.

But why? Also, the behaviour of scrutineers is subject to the approval
of polling officials. I have seen scrutineers receive correction of
their behaviour - always with good reason.

Chris