Stupid idea of the day

[andrewducker]

If voting took place over a couple of days, with counting going on simultaneously, and the results available in real time, then this would encourage more people to participate as time went on, if they saw that the result was close, and thus their vote mattered.

Has this ever been tried, and if so, what appalling side-effects did it have?

Comments

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

It would encourage the /b/ folks at 4Chan to hack the voting system if the election didn't seem to be going towards the candidate they wanted.

[ashfae.livejournal.com]

Heh, I was thinking something similar.

[andrewducker]

Tricky to do with non-electronic voting...

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

The UK doesn't have electronic voting?

And, if not, how would you have simultaneous counting in real time?

I thought everyone switched over to electronic voting after the hanging chads nightmare of the US 2000 Election.

[andrewducker]

That was what we call a "stupid American problem". We vote with a pencil on a piece of paper, drawing an X in a box (or a number, depending on the voting method). It's a very simple system that never has problems due to software or hardware going wrong.

There's very little electronic voting, anywhere in the world.

[despotliz.livejournal.com]

There was a pilot e-voting scheme in the UK, but I haven't heard anything since.

[andrewducker]

And we count them with actual people, counting Xs. It works remarkably well.

[princealbert.livejournal.com]

Not the last MSP elections, nor the forthcoming election for our MSPs either.

[andrewducker]

Aha! Hadn't realised that - thanks!

[princealbert.livejournal.com]

I'm finding it hard to believe you and others have forgotten the chaos of the last Scottish Parliament Election counts.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Nope, the UK does not have electronic voting. No voting machines, either. We do it by hand.

British ballots are much simpler than American ballots -- a lot of offices that are elected in the USA are appointed in the UK. In a British election you will have, at most, ballots for (a) Member of Parliament, (b) local Council, (c) Member of European Parliament, and (d) Member of (Scottish Parliament|Welsh Assembly) and/or Party List. In practice you'll seldom see more than two items voted on at the same time.

Consequently, an election count can be tallied by hand in 2-6 hours by a bunch of volunteers, overseen by candidates and their election agents and reps from the electoral commission, and the results of an election are usually nailed down within 24 hours including recounts).

Upshot: less democracy, but much more efficiently implemented.

(And I have yet to hear a good explanation of why it's sensible to elect judges, prosecutors, and municipal dog-catchers -- but can think of plenty of reasons why it's stupid or dangerous to do so.)

[princealbert.livejournal.com]

We in Scotland do have electronic counting exclusively for our primary elections (Member of Scottish Parliament).

We vote on paper as stated above, these are scanned at high speed and tallied on non-open source machines.

[matgb]

And for the locals so that the STV results can be calculated easily.

But it's counting only, the voting is still done properly.

[matgb]

an election count can be tallied by hand in 2-6 hours by a bunch of volunteers, overseen by candidates and their election agents

Not volunteers, the counting staff get paid.

Election agents don't though, even when we're there all night and the result isn't called until 8am because the idiot in charge didn't oganise the collection of boxes properly.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

One *can* DoS a polling station too, by violent or destructive means. This is admittely neither trivial nor guaranteed to prevent voting.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Didn't the first W Bush election have an effect when Fox news started calling Eastern seaboard states for Dubya while the polls were still open? And it discouraged Democrat voters from going to the polls because they felt they had lost anyway, so why bother.

[andrewducker]

If people see the election as lost, then yes. But in areas where the vote matters, then that seems less likely. If they were reporting that W was 1% ahead, surely that'd get the Democrats out there voting to stop him?

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I thought it would work that way, which was why I was surprised by the poll analysis person who said it cost the Dems a lot of votes in the western states.

I guess its that instinct people have, that they want to vote for a winner, and if they feel like they're losing, they won't bother trying.

[palmer1984.livejournal.com]

I guess its that instinct people have, that they want to vote for a winner, and if they feel like they're losing, they won't bother trying.

I think this is true - my co-worker said that she wasn't going to vote, because she'd be annoyed if her party lost!

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

I used to have a lot of frought arguments with friends who said much the same thing. Or at least, they felt there was no point voting for the party they wanted, because they had no chance of winning.

When I pointed out that thinking is precisely why the Lib Dems don't win more seats, they always just seem to shrug and say 'But they won't win anyway, so I'm not bothering'.

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

Judging solely by what happens with LJ/DW polls, if people can see the results before voting they don't bother.

[andrewducker]

Really? You'd think that if people cared, and saw that the other side was 5% ahead, they'd get their friends out to vote.

Of course, if the other side is 30% ahead then they won't bother, understandably.

[lizw.livejournal.com]

... which could lead to distorting effects based on different routines amongst different demographics. Consider, for instance, how the interim figures would change through the day - and how those fluctuations might affect votes - if one party is disproportionately popular with workers who vote on their way to the early shift, another with parents who vote on their way back from the school run, and yet another with young unemployed people who vote later in the day.

[andrewducker]

Which was why I said multi-day :->

But I can certainly see it changing things - the question is whether keeping it secret is a distortion or making it public is a distortion, or whether they're just different effects.

[dpolicar]

Of course, if we ran elections that way, we'd have to keep the results of the election secret from people who didn't vote.

That would be awkward.

[dpolicar]

You get a similar, though milder, effect when voting takes place over several timezones.

The conventional wisdom is that the result depends on which candidate people perceive to be winning (which is not necessarily the candidate who has the most votes, nor even the candidate who has the most electoral votes, because people's judgments of "winning" are very subjective).

That is, people who aren't firmly in a camp are more likely to vote for the perceived winner, and people who are firmly in a camp are more likely to vote if they perceive the vote is close and more likely to stay home otherwise.

I have no idea if this is born out by data.

[matgb]

You reading Seth Godin as well today?

Biggest flaw I see is it gives an advantage to undecided voters to voting later, especially in an FPTP election, whereas it gives an incentive to partisan voters to vote earlier.

If it's half an hour before close of poll and you haven't made your mind up, then you can see the two leaders and pick only between them, thus exacerbating even more third party squeeze and two party duopoly.

And in a preferential system, especially STV, bugger to implement in any sane way at all.

As for side effects, well, voting used to be openly declared, and counting in real time combined with tracking when people voted within a district would make working out who individuals voted for a lot easier, weakening secret ballots. We moved away from open declaration for a reason.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, wouldn't work with STV at all.

I do read Seth Godin, and this is one of those things I'd wondered about before - whether it would give people the impetus to contribute, or act against that. The comments from you and dpolicar have persuaded me that the results wouldn't be good :->

(Not that I was convinced they would be - there are always negative side-effects to things).