Hi-tech voting?

[100%JR]

I just walked down to our voting station without my polling card. They just asked for name and address and gave me a voting slip. No ID checks at all.

Ditto.

[merseymouth]

HiTangled Metal, Your ballot paper is already traceable under the current system? Did you notice the Polling Station Staff noting down the paper number on the electoral roll?? That number links both parts of the process, whereby any paper can be identified!
Not readily available, nor is it normally allowable, but that link does exist.
As for using thumb prints? How would Abu Hamza have got a vote . TTFN MM

[Tangled Metal]

So many failure modes in electronic voting that need sorting to make it Something even remotely suitable for elections.

The software needs to be debugged for anything they might cause a false vote. Open source software could do that but then you need to verify it as safe, I. E. without any bugs on the malware kind. Verification software? That needs verifying. Anyone thinking up ways to keep it safe will be outnumbered by those trying to break it. Who? Criminals, political parties, foreign actors (spies for enemy or friendly states), big business, political activists, unions, right back to the guy in his backroom doing it for lolz or for the challenge.

So votes made? Ship votes out sealed in unit or over a third party wifi network? Can you see any issues there? How to count? Software programme? Bugs, hacking and ignorance of operator?

There's so much to go wrong there that those experts don't even know where they all are. Trial the system? How? Carry out a fake election? Only real test is a national ballot which happens once every 5 years right?

Then will the public trust it? I bet most would not.

Then compare with what we've got. A system which has centuries of error proofing. Any dodge, trick or cheat to the system has probably been tried, detected and systems in place to prevent it. It works and everyone involved knows the system. There's checks and balances. Each party has people monitoring the count. Eyes on which is impossible with electronic voting.

[Tangled Metal]

I would have thought a thumb print on the paper might be an improvement, then could easily detect fraudulent votes?

And identify voters with votes which is against the principle of secret ballot. Not a good idea!

Every voting slip has your voter number on it.
Easy process to tally the number with the name and address ............. though I doubt anyone would bother.

Yes, true but it's set up with controls that are restricted to the input end of the electoral n system I believe.

You could do that with biometrics too but then you're into a lot of other databases with this information. For example I used to work with a company that used a fingerprint clocking on system which stores fingerprint with identity. Just one example. Police might have your prints. It's probably my paranoia though. Just don't suggest dna being used, You'll get my full on paranoia!

[Tangled Metal]

Reminds me of last election I voted in. First that I went there with my other half (son was with grandparents). I took a pen for some reason not knowing about the pencil thing somehow. The polling staff spotted the ink and said it wasn't allowed. They took it and destroyed it so everyone could see (me and other polling staff). Then gave me another voting sheet without any reference on it that's linked to me. They didn't record the polling sheet number against my name.

Was that correct according to procedures. No way of knowing whether the vote got counted.

[mercalia]

I just walked down to our voting station without my polling card. They just asked for name and address and gave me a voting slip. No ID checks at all.

Ditto.

they are trying out the ID thing in only selected areas as an experiment?

[661-Pete]

I just walked down to our voting station without my polling card. They just asked for name and address and gave me a voting slip. No ID checks at all.

Ditto.

they are trying out the ID thing in only selected areas as an experiment?

That is correct. We are in one of the areas being 'experimented' on.

[PH]

Had my ID checked when I voted, but no tech. I hear some polling stations have been using touch screens.

[Cyril Haearn]

Reminds me of last election I voted in. First that I went there with my other half (son was with grandparents). I took a pen for some reason not knowing about the pencil thing somehow. The polling staff spotted the ink and said it wasn't allowed. They took it and destroyed
..

Obviously pencil is used so votes can be changed/corrected
Any other reason?

[NUKe]

Had my ID checked when I voted, but no tech. I hear some polling stations have been using touch screens.

Can I ask what was acceptable as I’d, many people do not have photographic id. This is not acceptable if it stops people legitimately voting.

[[XAP]Bob]

Reminds me of last election I voted in. First that I went there with my other half (son was with grandparents). I took a pen for some reason not knowing about the pencil thing somehow. The polling staff spotted the ink and said it wasn't allowed. They took it and destroyed
..

Obviously pencil is used so votes can be changed/corrected
Any other reason?

Because it's harder to erase a pencil mark than to switch out the pen in a voting booth to one containing disappearing ink...

Seriously - go and watch the video linked on the third or feather reply of this thread.

[PH]

Had my ID checked when I voted, but no tech. I hear some polling stations have been using touch screens.

Can I ask what was acceptable as I’d, many people do not have photographic id. This is not acceptable if it stops people legitimately voting.

Apparently different areas have trailed different options. In Derby it was one piece of photo ID or two none photo. The polling card counted as one form of non photo ID, the full details here
https://www.derby.gov.uk/media/derbycit ... eaflet.pdf

[PH]

Reminds me of last election I voted in. First that I went there with my other half (son was with grandparents). I took a pen for some reason not knowing about the pencil thing somehow. The polling staff spotted the ink and said it wasn't allowed. They took it and destroyed it so everyone could see (me and other polling staff). Then gave me another voting sheet without any reference on it that's linked to me. They didn't record the polling sheet number against my name.

Was that correct according to procedures. No way of knowing whether the vote got counted.

The requirement is for you to mark the paper, there is no restriction on how you do that, the polling station should have been closed down, firstly for getting that so wrong, secondly for even looking at what you were doing in the booth, thirdly for giving you an unrecorded slip - it takes a court order to link them but there's a requirement that it's possible.
https://fullfact.org/europe/it-safe-vote-pencil/
The only reason the use of pencils is encouraged is the thick easy to read mark they leave and that they don't smudge.

[Tangled Metal]

Reminds me of last election I voted in. First that I went there with my other half (son was with grandparents). I took a pen for some reason not knowing about the pencil thing somehow. The polling staff spotted the ink and said it wasn't allowed. They took it and destroyed
..

Obviously pencil is used so votes can be changed/corrected
Any other reason?

I just had a nice pen on me and didn't want to use the argos sized pencil.

I must admit I never knew about the pencil thing. It wasn't about the changing votes thing. Can you remember your first vote? How did you find out how to vote? Where did you find out about the details? Are you sure you know them all? There was never any teaching of matters at the sharp end of democracy at our school despite it being a very good one. Assumption must have been your parents taught you that in a full and open political / democracy discussion I guess.

[661-Pete]

Had my ID checked when I voted, but no tech. I hear some polling stations have been using touch screens.

Can I ask what was acceptable as I’d, many people do not have photographic id. This is not acceptable if it stops people legitimately voting.

Apparently different areas have trailed different options. In Derby it was one piece of photo ID or two none photo. The polling card counted as one form of non photo ID, the full details here
https://www.derby.gov.uk/media/derbycit ... eaflet.pdf

In our district, the requirement was to bring either your polling card, which alone would be sufficient (that's what I did), or a form of photo ID - a long list of options was specified.

Apparently there's already been at least one case of a voter being turned away for having neither. There may be others, not reported. This is very unfortunate and I hope something is done to avoid these situations.