When I lived in Germany, they took the vote the same way most of the world does – people fill in hand-marked ballots, which are hand-counted by civil servants taking a week off from their regular jobs, watched over by volunteer representatives of the political parties. It's totally clean, and easily audited. And even though it takes a week or more to count the vote (and costs nothing more than a bit of overtime pay for civil servants), the German people know the election results the night the polls close because the news media's exit polls, for two generations, have never been more than a tenth of a percent off.
Friday, November 05, 2004
Those efficient Germans
Someone just brought a fine story to my attention, and I simply must share one paragraph (emphasis added):
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4 comments:
In Canada, we still use a simple and proven method for our elections: each of us marks an “X” beside a candidate’s name on a piece of paper. That’s right. And we use a government-supplied pencil to do it. There are no dangling chads after the fact. Ballots do not disappear into the ether (as they do with some digital contraption). None of us yanks a giant lever as though playing in a charity casino or imitating the Wizard of Oz. Real people sit down after the polls have closed and count the pieces of paper. It usually takes no more than a few hours. The person with the most votes wins. Imagine that.
The Canada Elections Act sets out a number of unobtrusive checks and balances to protect the integrity of the voting process, our ballots, and our trust in the system. There have been few occasions when wrongdoing has been suspected—-a fact that might be attributed to the system we use rather than our reputation for civility.
My Canadian firend: Would your nation be interested in acquiring a few extra states? The one I live in is quite prosperous, when run properly. At present we are best with an Austrian clown, but you may find him amusing.
I meant: "At present we are BESET..."
Mostly I agree with your posts, but comparison of US with Germany is not entirely valid. Their population is only one quarter of the US population. Hand counting ballots here would be a much more intensive effort (and hand counting is also prone to error). Also, Germany is a much more homogenous population which would make it much simpler to design valid exit polls.
An Oregon Fan
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