A really bad idea in the history of bad ideas

I feel the title of this post is unwarranted.

Number recognition is pretty simple from a computer scanning point of view. And pretty reliable. Potentially *more* reliable than hand data-entry, which is the alternative (since you pretty much have to use a computer to tally the results in our complex system).

So, bad idea? not so much.

And as for handwriting recognition from a bunch of numbers? A, the software isn’t designed to do that. B, even a human handwriting expert couldn’t do it. And C, why in the hell would anyone outside of a police-state want to do it?

Worst idea in the history of bad ideas? maybe something like ‘Communism’, or ‘using mercury to treat headaches’ might better fit the bill.

Jonathon Reynolds said :

Computer Says no….

ROFL!

priceless…

Computer Says no….

Jonathon Reynolds said :

With electronic counting there is at least a fall back position whereby a manual count of the physical ballot papers can still be undertaken.

Agreed JR.

But I still prefer scrutinised double manual entry with cross checking. To “Computer says…”

johnboy said :

To put it more technically.

As a preliminary sorting method OCR is probably very efficient for the postal service, but they have multiple levels of checking thereafter right down to the postie sticking it in your letterbox.

What’s being proposed here on face value is a much greater reliance on accuracy, and for something rather more important than a parcel taking an extra day to get to its destination.

the accuracy would be down to the type of scan. maybe the voting public need to get rid of this idea, removing the glorious leader into the bargain.

@johnboy:

With electronic voting there is no audit trail and no fallback position as there is no proof other than blind trust that the votes being counted were actually the actual votes that were cast.

With electronic counting there is at least a fall back position whereby a manual count of the physical ballot papers can still be undertaken.

To put it more technically.

As a preliminary sorting method OCR is probably very efficient for the postal service, but they have multiple levels of checking thereafter right down to the postie sticking it in your letterbox.

What’s being proposed here on face value is a much greater reliance on accuracy, and for something rather more important than a parcel taking an extra day to get to its destination.

Auspost can afford to get 30% failure on postcodes and still reap a benefit from automated scanning.

“There’s no 22 Acacia Avenue in the 2614 postcode? Hmm, maybe that’s a 7. Etc.

Also four digits with limited permutations are orders of magnitudes less complex than an ACT ballot.

I’m pretty sceptical of this stuff too (there’s no way I’ll be voting electronically for the forseeable future), but the handwriting recognition problem is considerably reduced when it’s just numbers you’re talking about – Australia Post has been doing this with the “postcode squares” for more than a decade now. Anyone know what their failure rate is like? Presumably there is still a role for the scrutineers to check OCR’d ballots, too?

@Johnboy:

The CT article appears contradictory..

In the 2004 election, 28,169 votes were recorded electronically. This year Mr Green is expecting 30,000.
Twenty machines at five pre-polling stations in Belconnen, Gungahlin, Civic, Woden and Tuggeranong will record electronic votes from September 29.
”Last time we put all the pre-polling votes on to the website at 10 [minutes] past six on election night.”
Mr Green said 16 of the 17 winning candidates were correctly identified.
There will be no electronic voting on polling day.

When I rang the electoral commission this morning, and yes I am anally retentive and perverse enough to do such a thing to confirm details before posting a comment, I was told categorically that the voting machines would be used in five pre-poll stations then also used on election day.

If we are referring to ABC 666, I heard that too. I have more faith in a system that provides the mechanism to be able to go back and manually count the hand scrawled votes than that of a totally electronic system. A candidate/party involved in the election can always request a recount which can be highly manually (human eye visually) scrutinised.

Harold Hird countenanced that option in 2001:
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/local/news/general/hird-to-ask-court-for-recount/342173.aspx

Jonathon Reynolds said :

Oh and in regard to your conspiracy theory… I’d make sure you are wearing thick rubber gloves when you mark your ballot paper… you don’t want those nasty political parties working out who you are and how you voted. It is all too easy to use fingerprints from the ballot paper and track traces of your DNA these days 😛

When the taxpayers is footing the bill for the gathering of that information you’ll have a valid comparison JR.

The article clearly states that they’re withdrawing them, the EC has still made no public statement on exactly what they’re doing. Perhaps they’d like to do so.

When interviewed this morning they were talking about spitting results back to manual intervention where the OCR software was uncertain.

This still leaves the many cases where OCR is absolutely certain and completely wrong.

@iohnboy:

Remember this is a fall-back after they arsed up electronic voting, which has now been withdrawn despite no public admission of what went wrong.

You are totally incorrect – electronic voting will be used again at the upcoming election. Give Elections ACT a call yourself on (02) 6205 0033 to confirm.

The electronic voting system remains susceptible to manipulation of votes either during the casting of an actual vote or after a vote has been cast. This is because the system continues to lack a voter verifiable paper audit trail (something that we could go back to to scrutinise the electronic vote against). You have to have blind faith that what you intended to lodge as your vote is actually what gets recorded electronically.

I have more confidence in a system that is scanning and recognising data from ballot papers as there is still the ability to scrutinise the original hard copy, manually marked ballot paper.

Oh and in regard to your conspiracy theory… I’d make sure you are wearing thick rubber gloves when you mark your ballot paper… you don’t want those nasty political parties working out who you are and how you voted. It is all too easy to use fingerprints from the ballot paper and track traces of your DNA these days 😛

Security through obscurity is bad as just because something is very unlikely to happen doesn’t mean it will never happen.

In some instances security through obscurity actually works against you. When evaluating new cryptographic algorithms the security community around the world is often invited to review and attack the algorithm. In such instances, the strength of the security is in it’s genuine effectiveness, thus removing reliance on maintaining secrecy.

Different country, different voting system….& I don’t think the AEC really had much to do with it.

Leave that to the AEC, they do a stand-up job.

Because blind faith in electoral commission’s decisions without public investigation into the counting machine has never caused problems or controversy in the past.

Common though people….handwriting recognition? Identify 20% of voters? How exactly? Where are the handwriting samples to compare with for that 20% of voters? It’s not up to me (or any of you) to minimise potential exposure. Leave that to the AEC, they do a stand-up job.

Security through obscurity is bad as just because something is very unlikely to happen doesn’t mean it will never happen.
It should still be a part of somebody’s risk matrices, and potential exposure to it should be minimised.

Always glad to give them a giggle.

> Have you met many party hacks?

Plenty. I married one even. I guarantee that they’d be laughing heartily at your paranoia.

Have you met many party hacks?

I guarantee there are sad enough people who will be using this data if they get the chance.

Now if you’re cool with that then that’s great, but such a major change to the mechanism of vote counting, for mine, should not have been sprung on us so late in the day.

Security by obscurity. Who gives a flying F*&% how people who write with loopy twos vote? Just because you could in theory find such obscure things out, it doesn’t mean anybody would actually be interested enough to bother.

I’m still not sure I want anyone with the dataset on a portable HD being about to figure out the voting trends of people who write with loopy twos.

Graphology has some benefits, but it is too broadly inaccurate to be of any real use to the Government. So you can all settle down and take the Alfoil of your heads now.

oh, good.

hand writing??

after doing a count one election, hand writing is a bit of a stretch. perhaps they should give out crayons – fill in the blanks with your numbers, people – they might just keep in the squares….

seriously, though, if they are going to use the ICR technology to pick up votes, the system better be tested a few hundred times. The form scans are ok, but if they have someone who has botched the form, is too embarrassed to ask for another, and has written the info beside the boxes, it won’t get picked up by a traditional form process scan.

why don’t they just put in a series of coloured handles – push em down in sequence of your vote, punch card gets punched with the sequence, very old computer records your vote.