16M Americans will vote on hackable paperless machines

Re:16M Americans will vote on hackable paperless machines by goodcanadian on Wednesday August 21, 2019 @03:10PM (#20760504)

My understanding is that the ballot is more complicated in US elections. You are not voting for a single MP, you are voting for a Representative to the house, and one for the state house. You may be voting for a Senator and a state Governor. You will probably be voting for a host of local officials. In many (most?) states, there are ballot initiatives (sort of like referendums) on various issues. It gets complicated, fast.

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Re:16M Americans will vote on hackable paperless machines by isostatic on Wednesday August 21, 2019 @03:22PM (#20760638)

That's just numbers. You're making say 5 votes rather than 1. In some places in the UK we can have MEP, MP, Borough Council, Local Council and Mayor all elected on the same day, as well as local referendums.

That's not complicated -- just post each vote in a different box (paper can be different colours) and count them separately. OK it may take a day or two to find out who your local parish councillor is. Whoopee.

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Re:16M Americans will vote on hackable paperless machines by ghaff on Wednesday August 21, 2019 @03:42PM (#20760867)

Just numbers. But leaving aside ballot questions (of which there are usually around a half dozen in Massachusetts, more in some places like California), there were 13 state-level elected officials in 2018 plus whatever county-level or local officials there were on the town ballot. So you can be making 20-30 choices. That's a lot of paper shuffling.

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Re:16M Americans will vote on hackable paperless machines by isostatic on Thursday August 22, 2019 @10:00AM (#20768121)

How on earth do you spend time to adequately research so many decisions without overload?

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Re:16M Americans will vote on hackable paperless machines by ghaff on Friday August 23, 2019 @08:48AM (#20776934)

You don't really. There's usually lots of news about most of the ballot questions and the top state level offices. You may or may not be familiar with your local Congressional race and the lower-level state offices.

You probably start to get fuzzy about your state rep/senator. And are pretty much clueless about the county Sheriff, Board of Selectmen, and Register of Deeds.

In practice, a lot of the positions lower down on the list are running unopposed or have been in their position and seemed to have done fine for a while. Of course, this being Massachusetts, a lot of these seats are pretty much Democrat locks anyway.

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Re:16M Americans will vote on hackable paperless machines by 18pfsmt on Wednesday August 21, 2019 @03:43PM (#20760883)

In Colorado, we often often have ~15 ballot initiatives, as well as city, county, and state elections. That's on top of the federal elections. Most of our domestic policy is dictated at the local level rather than the federal level, and it is this decentralized nature which flummoxes our European friends.

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Re:16M Americans will vote on hackable paperless machines by isostatic on Thursday August 22, 2019 @03:58AM (#20765704)

Local referendums rather than representative democracy is odd - don’t you pay your reps to research the options and make the beat descision. I wouldn’t have time to understand 15 options

We tend to have 5 or 6 layers of government too so I don’t see the problem there.

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Re:16M Americans will vote on hackable paperless machines by 18pfsmt on Thursday August 22, 2019 @07:15PM (#20773236)

We do not have a federal sales tax (i.e. VAT). Europe hasn't had yearly GDP growth over 1% in 25 years, and Europe is issuing bonds at negative % rates. The U.S. subsidizes the European military defenses and pharmaceutical prices to boot.

I have no issue with European countries sovereign decisions, but when Europeans project their ideas on Americans I take great offense.

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Re:16M Americans will vote on hackable paperless machines by strictnein on Wednesday August 21, 2019 @04:58PM (#20761761)

Five votes is very low. 15-20 is common.

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