[ExI] voting machines again

[Emlyn]

On 20/01/2008, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
> And this jewel, which made my day:
>
> ...voters in the affected precincts used paper ballots and any scrap of
> paper available to cast their votes...
>
> Any scrap of paper?  Any scrap of paper, to help determine who will control
> a terrifying nuclear arsenal?

Any scrap of paper! That's very weird. In Australia, your vote has to
be made in a very strict way or it is declared informal (and thus not
counted). Because we have compulsory voting, informal votes are a way
that people abstain from voting when they don't wish to vote. The
other famed method is the Donkey Vote, a random allocation of
preferences or else a top-down numbering of the ballot paper. There's
a lot of heartache around who appears at the top of ballot papers
because of this.

Informal voting info from the Australian Electoral Commission website:

"A House of Representatives ballot paper is informal if:

it is unmarked
it has not received the official mark of the presiding officer and is
not considered authentic
ticks or crosses have been used
it has writing on it which identifies the voter
a number is repeated
the voter's intention is not clear "

Australian compulsory voting:
http://geography.about.com/od/politicalgeography/a/compulsoryvote.htm

Australian Electoral Commission (heaps of cool stats here, Spike will
like this site):
http://www.aec.gov.au/Voting/

Some stuff about the draw for order of candidates on the ballot paper:
http://www.aec.gov.au/Voting/draw_for_position_Senate.htm

-- 
Emlyn

http://emlynoregan.com