I have to confess. I hate Diebald voting machines.

[Solver]

Originally posted by Asher
Passports are much harder to get than voter registration.

I think voter registration is essential to prevent duplicate votes. It's also easier than requiring everyone to have a passport...

Well, since everyone is given a passport at 15 here, and you can vote at 18, that sort of ensures that all eligible voters have a passport. In fact, everyone is required to have a passport at 15, if not earlier. And duplicate votes are pretty much impossible with this system unless you can forge a passport. In which case the country probably has a bigger problem than you voting twice.

[Pekka]

Asher, ah ok.. so what was the problem with US registeration again?

[LordShiva]

But what about large constituencies with millions of residents? There may be a thousand "John Smiths," the election monitor would have to go through thousands of pages of lists, and find the right John Smith to cross out.

edit: Major x-posting

[Asher]

Originally posted by Solver
Well, since everyone is given a passport at 15 here, and you can vote at 18, that sort of ensures that all eligible voters have a passport. In fact, everyone is required to have a passport at 15, if not earlier. And duplicate votes are pretty much impossible with this system unless you can forge a passport. In which case the country probably has a bigger problem than you voting twice.

Seems odd to me that you can just give everyone a passport.

In Canada, to get a Canadian Passport you need to jump through a lot of hoops, including getting letters of support from upstanding members of the community (doctors, lawyers, etc). You also need to re-do these processes every 5 years to retain one.

[Pekka]

Well you break it down to even smaller regions. As in places you can vote, or do millions of people come into the same building? Or few same buildings?

If you have sorted the names, do you have to go through thousands of names? Like phonebook? Do you go through thousands of pages when you search a number from a phonebook? no you don't

[Solver]

Originally posted by Asher

Seems odd to me that you can just give everyone a passport.

In Canada, to get a Canadian Passport you need to jump through a lot of hoops, including getting letters of support from upstanding members of the community (doctors, lawyers, etc). You also need to re-do these processes every 5 years to retain one.

Seems odd to me that in some countries people can live without a passport. I mean, if you have no passport, than what can you use as a valid ID and be sure that it will get accepted? Everyone having a passport solves this issue, and passports are even considered by the law to be the only ID that is valid for all purposes.

On the one hand, it's somewhat easy here, just 2.3 million people. On the other hand, not so easy - starting in 1991, we were changing all passwords (everyone had USSR passwords before that obviously), and it took too long and there was trouble. But as far as I know, most European countries have passports for everyone.

[LordShiva]

You'd still have the problem of multiple voters with the same name. One solution would be for the list to contain much more private data. But I'd be more comfortable with taking a little registration card with my name and voting precinct on it, and have the guy look at it and say "OK, you can vote here," and perhaps stamp it or something so that I can't vote again (in India, they put a little mark on your finger with indelible ink).

edit: x-post

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by Solver
Seems odd to me that in some countries people can live without a passport. I mean, if you have no passport, than what can you use as a valid ID and be sure that it will get accepted? Everyone having a passport solves this issue, and passports are even considered by the law to be the only ID that is valid for all purposes.

On the one hand, it's somewhat easy here, just 2.3 million people. On the other hand, not so easy - starting in 1991, we were changing all passwords (everyone had USSR passwords before that obviously), and it took too long and there was trouble. But as far as I know, most European countries have passports for everyone.

You said "passwords" twice

I don't know the figures, but in India I think only a small proportion of the population has passports. Even in America, I don't think the number is anywhere close to 100%.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Solver
Seems odd to me that in some countries people can live without a passport. I mean, if you have no passport, than what can you use as a valid ID and be sure that it will get accepted?

Passports have a lot more weighting than a simple form of ID -- they mean you are free to leave the country and enter other countries as a member of your home nation.

This does not apply to all people. For instance, many criminals or people standing trial cannot have passports.

Any form of government issued photo ID suffices -- be it a free government ID card (it's like a drivers license, without the license part), a drivers license, a health card, etc.

[Solver]

Yeah, I use "password" so much more often that it comes to mind .

In the US, I believe, it's indeed a small percentage. I can't find exact data, but it seems that various estimates put passport-owning Americans from 20% to 40%. Anyhow, less than a half.

[Pekka]

I suppose you'd sort with the same name by their SSN.

The registeration process is not what I'm here debating about anyway. It's the actual voting with these machines. Seems ridiculous to me, after all we know they have tons of problems. Leaves no trail. Need I say more? The threat is bigger since even if one is able to alter or modify some of the processes, they can effectively modify the votes of MANY. If you get a fake passport, forge everything and vote with paper and pen, you effected one vote. A problem, but not so alarming.

I just don't see what the problem with paper and pen is. It is safer, cheaper and leaves a trail. And most people know how to use it.

[Pekka]

And about passports, any government issued ID will do with photo. Passport is just the most preferred.

[Solver]

Originally posted by Asher

Passports have a lot more weighting than a simple form of ID -- they mean you are free to leave the country and enter other countries as a member of your home nation.

This does not apply to all people. For instance, many criminals or people standing trial cannot have passports.

Any form of government issued photo ID suffices -- be it a free government ID card (it's like a drivers license, without the license part), a drivers license, a health card, etc.

Ah, I assume free ID cards for you are like passports for us. A passport, though, doesn't mean over here that you are free to leave/enter the country - you can't do it without a passport, of course, but you still need to match other criteria. Then again, it's as easy as the border guard checking you when you cross the border, which doesn't seem to be problematic.

Driving license won't get you very far here. Many people don't have those anyway. You need a passport to open a bank account, to enter a university, to buy a house, to get married, etc. This makes me wonder - if you are buying something for 18+, any ID with your age will suffice, but I'm wondering if the law doesn't specifically require that the ID be a passport, and just that everyone ignores it... hmm.

[Pekka]

SOlver, other criteria? Wow... please explain more.. ?

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by Pekka
I just don't see what the problem with paper and pen is. It is safer, cheaper and leaves a trail. And most people know how to use it.

The problem is that if someone really wanted to rig an election, it wouldn't matter if the ballots were electronic or paper. You can hack into a machine, and you can stuff a box with fake ballots. With paper, there's an additional potential source of fraud in the counting - you could bribe the vote counters to give false results.

It's not necessarily cheaper, either, in large countries. In India, back when we used paper, vote counting used to take weeks, and there'd always be stories of the odd ballot box going missing from storage, or being lost while being taken from the remote polling stations to the central repository, etc. Not to mention the amount of paper it needed.