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.