Possible use of Python for a voting machine demo project -- your feedback requested

[Paul Rubin]

Marc Wilson <marc at cleopatra.co.uk> writes:
> FWIW, in the UK, the ballots are normally done by the lowest-tech method:
> you're given a ballot, and a pencil, and you put an "X" in a box next to the
> one you like.  We don't have problems with chads, etc.

In the US you have the inalienable right to vote for anyone you want
for office, including for yourself, your girlfriend, your
mother-in-law, or whatever.  So for example, the optical scan ballots
for the presidential election in Volusia County, Florida in 2000
looked something like this:

  ( ) Bush
  ( ) Gore
  ( ) Buchanan
  ( ) Nader
  ( ) Other (write in): ___________________________

If you wanted to vote for your mother-in-law for President, you'd
check "Other" and write her name there.  If enough other people did
that everywhere in the US, hey, your mother-in-law could become
president!  (Don't hold your breath though).

Trouble starts when you ask what happens if more than one box is checked.
If you check both "Bush" and "Nader", there's no way to tell what candidate
you wanted, so your ballot is declared invalid.  Fine.  If you check
"Bush" and also check "Other" and write your mother-in-law's name in
the blank, same thing.  So the company that programmed the scanning
machines thought this issue easy to deal with: if more than one box
is checked, the ballot is labeled as an "overvote" and is invalid.

But what if you check "Bush" and also check "Other", and in the blank
you write "Bush"?  Then there's no ambiguity, it's clear who you want,
so it's a legal vote and it must be counted (and Florida law requires
that it be counted, though establishing that takes some careful
reading).  But the machines make no attempt to read the write-in
blank.  They just don't count those votes despite what the law
requires.

And who would be dumb enough to mark their ballot like that?  It turns
out that 488 people in Volusia County alone (some for Bush and some
for Gore), and more in other counties, did so.  Whether this happened
because of some confusion in the printed voting instructions, or bad
instructions given verbally to voters, or some other reason, is
unknown.  It was not discovered until after the state totals had
already been reported, because the lawyers busy fighting over the
ballot counts in other parts of the state didn't realize that so many
such "overvoted" legal ballots existed and didn't go looking for them.
Had they figured it out and noticed, that could have forced deeper
examination of a number of other results in the state, and a different
guy might have ended up in the White House than the guy who's there now.

There are a lot of not-so-obvious possibilities that any counting
scheme has to take into account.  Getting anything wrong can have
potentially far-reaching consequences.

> We've also started, in some areas, voting by phone or internet.
> Very simple system- you get a polling card with a number and a PIN,
> you go to a HTTPS website, log in and vote.  Has to be done *before*
> the "manual" ballot opens, so the returning officer knows who's
> already voted.

That doesn't sound like a great idea.  Suppose you cast that vote
a week before the normal election day.  Then two days before election
day, it comes out that the leading candidate committed a number of
murders that got covered up til then.  You voted with less information
than the other voters had.  In fact, that candidate, fearful that
the news might come out at any moment, may have encouraged all his
supporters to vote early.  For a fair election, all voting should be
done on the same day.  This is another reason mail-in absentee voting
should be curtailed.