On Sat, May 27, 2006 at 03:41:58PM -0700, Paul Johnson wrote: > On Saturday 27 May 2006 14:12, Steinar H. Gunderson wrote: > > On Sat, May 27, 2006 at 01:54:03PM -0700, Paul Johnson wrote: > > >>> Oregon abolished the voting booth in 2000 > > >> Oh, so they get better counts and less fraud by doing away with ballot > > >> secrecy. How wonderful. > > > No, that's not how it works, your ballot is still secret. Think about it > > > for a minute. You sign the mailing envelope, your ballot goes in a > > > secrecy envelope. Elections compares signatures, opens the mailing > > > envelope and saves it for the voter rolls, sends the secrecy envelope > > > down the line off to the counting machines to be opened separately in > > > some other room. > > That is secrecy only to the government; not in general. For instance, > > someone can easily pressure you into voting for party or candidate X, > > _since they can verify it_ (just watch as you put the ballot in the > > envelope, and make sure you post it). With a voting booth, nobody can > > effectively pressure you, as your vote is secret from everybody. > Nobody can effectively pressure you, except everyone else in line, campaigners > trolling the polling place, and the inability to get the day off to vote > because polling places are only open 4-6 hours on election day. None of these people are in the voting booth with you and they are therefore not in a position to verify the vote you cast and punish you for it. > If you want to ignore that vote by mail is more secure than the voting > booth, that's fine. Don't move to Oregon. If you want to make facile arguments, that's fine. But don't do it on debian-devel. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. vorlon@debian.org http://www.debian.org/
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