A question from up North about black box

Up here we just simply mark an x on a piece of paper and then a machine counts them, like those bubble tests in high school. I don't understand what this "black box" thing is all about. I've heard about levers or something that you pull. Is that true? ANd why does "Black box" suck so much?

With the monopoly that Microshaft has in our economy, their security holes and the problems that we've had in Florida in getting Dimbo selected....

I don't feel it should be in the best interests of anyone to allow a hacker to decide the results of our election...especially the "monied" interests who have a lot to gain or lose by a process they shouldn't control in theory.

Maybe you could give us more details on how voting works in Canada. I was under the impression that your ballots were in booklets and that they were counted by people, not machines. Is there a uniform system throughout Canada or is each province different?

As for your questions:

I've heard about levers or something that you pull. Is that true?

Some counties still use mechanical voting booths. You go in, pull a big lever and a curtain closes behind you. Then you operate tiny levers next to your choices to vote. When done, you turn the big lever again to open the curtain which also records your votes on mechanical counters and in some cases also on a paper tape. Very few counties use these systems anymore.

And why does "Black box" suck so much?

"Black box" just means there is some voting device that as far as the voter is concerned is unable to be opened and inspected and you simply have to trust that your votes are being recorded as cast. It's not like a paper ballot where you can actually see your marks on the ballot and that ballot is what actually gets counted either manually or by machine. In some respects the old lever machines were black boxes in that you could not see the mechanism inside and confirm that the right counters were being incremented. Still to rig an election with lever machines requires a lot of effort to open each machine and then go back afterwards and undo the rigging.

Electronic black boxes suck because they enable wholesale rigging without the need to access each machine, and if there is no paper trail such rigging becomes impossible to detect and correct.

We have a system where you vote for the Party rep in your area. So the leader of the winning party becomes Prime Minister. Because of this there is only about 100,000 people per riding. WHat we do is you go to the local station. Go to the table with the first letter of your last name on it. Say your name, they cross you off the list after an ID check and give you a ballot. Then you walk over to a little cubby, mark an x beside your choice. And put it in the slot. Then at the end of the voting, the ballots are run through a machine that picks up the lead traces from you x. And it counts them all. Banda bing bada boom.
We used to count by hand though.

what do you do to check that the counting machines work correctly? Is there some random audit or candidate requested audit? Are there manual recounts for close races?

What should happen is that there should be some audit process required by law. It should be carried out regardless of how close the races are. It should include both random selections of precincts (voting stations) and candidate requested selections. If any of these manual recounts don't match the machine counts within a prescribed margin of error then all the ballots should be manually recounted.

If you don't do this then even your system can be corrupted.

I'm not sure, I know that this year we had a close race and the machine came up with the same number three times. I assume the machine is tended to properly. We do have voting officers who represent each political party, and they are present at every station to ensure things are done fairly.

A rigged machine could produce the same rigged result no matter how many times you run the ballots through it. There has to be an audit process in which a small percentage at least is counted by hand and compared to the machine count. Call your elections office and ask about it.