I have used one. A voting machine was favorable to the write in process. I wonder if my write in even got through. He was a local libertarian, my type in.
I trust real people to count the votes. I favor public exhibition, of the electoral procedure. Yes, I want to whatch on a feed, folks countin' peices of paper.
I will go back to what I first did when I encountered them, ask for a paper ballot. I'm glad we don't have to punch holes anymore, but I was hoping to leave in the essential human element of voting, which has been striped away by the overlords. If not a foul majority, a parisitic political class. How badly power corupts.
This year I will go in and be very difficult at the voting place. "Vote by paper or be subjugated by totalitarianism". I hope I don't get arrested.
I am not against using machines to record the process. I am against the potential that exists when they can really only be judicated by a fewer number of individuals.
Democracy sucks, but a psuedo-democracy sucks more foul entities.
I know y'all can elaborate on ever more reasons why voting machines are an inherent fraud. If so please do. I am short and value any commentary.
Individualism Rocks
Tallying votes is a job for computers, period. The ideal solution would probably be an ASP (HTML interface) system accessed by terminals, with each and every vote recorded for public viewing so that everyone could verify their vote. The software could be open-source and journaled, so anyone could feed the recorded data through a test rig to check the results (or just paste it into Excel). Allegations of fraud could be easily tested by nearly anyone. You could even store a video of each person voting (to verify how they voted) with a cheap web camera, and make this available to anyone who cared to look.
Naturally, the US government has screwed this up. No surprise there.
Perhaps the question is not whether voting machines are more efficient than paper ballots. Efficiency is a problem of individual valuation, after all.
The right question should be, why are democratic governments, in the 21st century, still running electoral systems designed for agrarian societies?
The fallacies of intellectual communism, a compilation - On the nature of power
Grant,
Your idea could never get taken up you have not left any room for cheating! How would politicians cope?
Ampers
Thankyou Grant: Make a test rig and post the link, please. I propose The Real Election.com/org/net
I don't think it's about the farmers. The shell game is all about, power over the people. They will bribe any group in return for bribes. Tools of nationalism, corporatism, centrel banks, and collectivism, simply create the illusion of the people's state. The king by his great benevolence allows you to think it is your fault that he is such a bad ruler.
It raises the question of should it not be the case that, the Man could do so little I really wouldn't care who it is.
I like machines, they enable production. They serve men. I don't like it when men use machines to subjugate.