http://jacksonville.com/breaking-news/2016-03-15/story/duval-county-supervisor-elections-all-locations-moving-paper-check
Discuss
One aspect (don't know if there are others) is that the process of getting a ballot is a slow PITA. Not only does the electronic system identify that you're registered, but what ballot you get (REP or DEM).
I've not heard of any suspicion of anything other than purely a technical problem.
I have no special insights and though I've heard some conspiracy theories I am more embarrassed that, with the eyes of the nation on Florida, Duval SOE office has not got its act together. WJXT was saying that people turning up in some precincts before work were sent away to come back after work.... That is unacceptable.
Quote from: simonsays on March 15, 2016, 12:00:04 PM
I have no special insights and though I've heard some conspiracy theories I am more embarrassed that, with the eyes of the nation on Florida, Duval SOE office has not got its act together. WJXT was saying that people turning up in some precincts before work were sent away to come back after work.... That is unacceptable.
http://www.news4jax.com/web/wjxt/news/elections/software-glitch-slows-duval-county-voting
WJXT is say that no one has been turned away. Many of the locations are up and running now. Still, it's a black eye.
Not as much of a black eye as some may think. :) Something similar also happened when Jerry Holland was the SOE a few years back and he was as careful as they come about elections and the process. A technical malfunction under his tenure had Dems making a big stink about it but in the end the election process was not impared. It's important to note also that there are several polling places in Duval that still use paper ballots all of the time which are fed into automatic counting devices which quickly counts all the votes. The only slow down came when polling volunteers were forced to look at the paper registers to check folks in and verify party affiliation, again a practice that is still used in multiple polling places. :)
Quote from: Murder_me_Rachel on March 16, 2016, 10:02:27 PM
I'll take slow, paper ballots over an electronic system that can be hacked and messed with.
Sometimes the problem isn't even that sinister (hacking / manipulation) but results can be falsified due to poor build quality / design of the machines (i.e. interference due to insufficient EM shielding, not properly calibrated touch screens, software bugs...).
But yes, I, too still prefer the paper ballots over electronic systems that can easily be hacked without any chance of ever verifying the actual votes (which is possible for paper).
I think the time and effort to count paper ballots should be taken for a democracy.
^This had nothing to do with the votes themselves. It was simply the "lookup" to determine if you were eligible to vote (registered, hadn't voted already, etc) and what ballot you got (in this case, Republican or Democrat).