Ink For Filling Out Ballots?

[Mulrich]

I agree with some prior posters, completing a ballot is one of the few times a year I use a ballpointI know one ballot doesnt make much difference but I still want no doubt that my vote will count (my ballot also explicitly states a black ballpoint pen).

[A Smug Dill]

... anyone with access to both the envelopes and the ballots could trace them.

 

I believe, without ever worked for or been engaged by the bodies managing vote handling myself, the policy and processes are that the Electoral Commission agent handling the outer envelope — with identifiable personal information to allow checking a name off against the electoral roll, and keeping in mind that failure to vote in an election carries legislated penalties here in Australia) cannot then open and/or handle the contents in the "anonymous" inner envelope.

 

COVID has turned the world upside-down and changed "everything"; but, until this year, I've always been a staunch supporter of compulsory voting and not allowing Joe Voter to vote (by post, online, etc.) remotely instead of physically turning up on election day at a voting booth in his local area, in the absence of a compelling reason why he can't (other than, "I have better things to do on a Saturday than to attend a designated polling place and queue for half an hour to discharge my civic duty"). On the other hand, I'm never supportive of unduly restrictive regulations on which colours of ink or which writing instruments can be used to mark the ballot papers (especially if it isn't a case of, "if the OCR scanner cannot handle your ballot paper then it is summarily rejected and discarded") just to make things "easy" for a handling process that isn't robust.

 

At the next election, I'll still bring my own pen with blue shimmer ink with red(?) sheen to the polling centre, not because it "expresses" me, but because I want to be compliant and responsible without feeling compelled to be cooperative and make things easy for others beyond what the "rules" stipulate (and such "rules" can be contested in court or otherwise officially if they are made for operational expediency instead of just circumventing technical hurdles and impossibilities). I'm OK about being required to show up physically on election day to cast my vote, as long as the Electoral Commission is required to handle my ballot paper that has been filled within the strict guidelines but in the way I want to within that leeway.

[Honeybadgers]

This election, take absolutely no risks, use a black or blue ballpoint with a reliable ink that won't rinse off if it gets wet, make sure you fairly carefully sign it with the signature that matches your driver's license, and carefully seal it in the security ballot. Don't worry about actual ballot manipulation of your vote itself. Nobody is going to open and alter your ballot after you seal it - It's an absolutely insane felony with a charge that actually stacks with every count, so for someone to commit statistically insignificant voter fraud, they'd be risking dozens to hundreds of years in prison.

 

The republican party and Trump administration has spent upwards of 21 million dollars and counting trying to force states to throw out ballots like mad for meaningless trivialities, or ban them from allowing people to vote at all (sorry, this is a smidge political, but to actual hell with anyone who tries to make it harder for people - particularly minorities - to vote or have their vote counted - there's no corroborated evidence of voter fraud in America, these measures and ID laws are just racist policies of disenfranchisement just like poll taxes or literacy tests) There are estimated to be hundreds and hundreds of thousands of ballots being straight thrown out for signature mismatches (failing to acknowledge that every president in history's signature changed dramatically over their presidency alone,) or in the case of Georgia, throwing out ballots for having "ethnic sounding names" or name misspelling. Pennsylvania is predicted to throw out more than 100k ballots just because the voters forgot to put the ballot in the second inner envelope.

 

So, off my soapbox. We need to be careful to all have our votes counted, no matter who you're voting for,. So just make sure you use a permanent ink ballpoint pen in blue or black and make sure you read and follow the directions on your ballot carefully, and don't forget to make sure the signature matches whatever you scratched onto your driver's license.

 

Living in Washington State, we've been voting by mail for years, and we don't even have to register. every state resident automatically has a ballot just mailed to them with clear instructions and postage paid. The very idea of having to vote in person on a work day blows my damn mind.

 

Also, FYI, but even on ballots that say they have postage required - even though I would add the stated postage just because things are so unbelievably f***** (two forever stamps) legally speaking, in every single state, the postal service must deliver a ballot, even if the postage is insufficient.

 

And lastly, your ballot has a tracking code on it. USE IT AND MAKE SURE YOUR BALLOT WAS RECEIVED.

Edited October 22, 2020 by Honeybadgers

[wallylynn]

So... What technique do you use to fill out the bubbles? Do you shade from one side to the other? Spiral inwards? Spiral out? Other? Do you stay within the line, or are they mere guidance?

[XYZZY]

There are estimated to be hundreds and hundreds of thousands of ballots being straight thrown out for signature mismatches (failing to acknowledge that every president in history's signature changed dramatically over their presidency alone,)

 

Would love a reference for that estimate, but it wouldn't surprise me. Certainly my signature has changed over time. I follow up after each election to verify that my ballot was counted, mostly out of fear of signature mismatches. It's been counted for the time when I have thought to check, but there are older records that show no vote which I'm pretty sure are wrong. But I'm not going to try to pursue that for ancient elections.

 

I prefer this system over something entirely electronic, though. Elections are a big enough target that it won't take long to get hacked, and the last thing we need is somebody wrapping the hack in a for-loop to submit millions of votes in seconds.

Edited October 22, 2020 by XYZZY

[Mulrich]

So... What technique do you use to fill out the bubbles? Do you shade from one side to the other? Spiral inwards? Spiral out? Other? Do you stay within the line, or are they mere guidance?

Growing up, I took a lot of standardized tests using scantrons and had it drilled into me to always stay within the lines or my answer wouldn't count. I usually start in the middle of a bubble and spiral out.

[XYZZY]

Growing up, I took a lot of standardized tests using scantrons and had it drilled into me to always stay within the lines or my answer wouldn't count. I usually start in the middle of a bubble and spiral out.

 

I never thought about that. I start at the edge and spiral in.

[inkstainedruth]

 

Would love a reference for that estimate, but it wouldn't surprise me. Certainly my signature has changed over time. I follow up after each election to verify that my ballot was counted, mostly out of fear of signature mismatches. It's been counted for the time when I have thought to check, but there are older records that show no vote which I'm pretty sure are wrong. But I'm not going to try to pursue that for ancient elections.

 

I prefer this system over something entirely electronic, though. Elections are a big enough target that it won't take long to get hacked, and the last thing we need is somebody wrapping the hack in a for-loop to submit millions of votes in seconds.

My husband got into trouble with a company he used to work for -- he just makes a scrawl for a signature, and the company lawyers found that he'd signed a contract three *different* ways at different points (it was a multipage document). Since NOBODY signs exactly the same way every time (we're not automatons, after all), if they were that het up about it, they *could* have sent him to a notary to witness that he signed all three places and nobody else did....

I was looking online yesterday to see where drop-off boxes were near me, and discovered that my ballot MIGHT be the correct one after all (I also checked the old card clipped to my fridge, when our polling location changed in 2006 and I never bothered to take the address change card down -- I am many things, but a "domestic goddess" is NOT one of them.... ). So I've got yet another email letter off to the head of the Board of Elections asking for verification (and NOT to get another blather response from the County Director of Communications, because I'm not sure now whether this ISN'T the correct ballot after all -- and that every time I try calling the phone number I'm supposed to, it's either busy or I'm "#33 in the wait line".... ).

I sent it fairly late yesterday evening, so I haven't gotten a response yet (it's almost a quarter after 3 in the afternoon, as of now). But I did also say that there were issues during the primary and I ended up having a zoom interview with an investigative reporter on one of the Pittsburgh channels over having -- at that point -- not received my ballot (the interview aired a day or two later) -- and that I'd be more than happy to ping her AGAIN.

Especially given that the company hired to print the ballots in the first place (all appearances of their political affiliation aside) has a somewhat dubious track record -- which makes one wonder how they were chosen in the first place, and what sort of due-diligence (if ANY) was was brought to bear.... Some people claim that even bad publicity is "good" -- but in this instance, I can't see how, given the misprinted ballots in at least 3 counties in PA ALONE, is going to make anyone want to hire the company, for ANY reason other than "they're cheap" in the future....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Mercian]

The more that I read about the idiotic, failure-prone, potentially-defraudable (& multifarious) voting processes involved in US elections, the gladder I am that I live & vote in the UK.

We turn up at the Polling Station, and tell the clerks on duty our name & address. We are each given a numbered ballot paper, and the clerk writes that number against our names on a list of the electorate in the constituency, and crosses-out our name on the list in pencil.

 

We make a cross inside the box next to the candidate for whom we wish to vote. Using the pencil that is provided in the voting booth.

We put our own completed ballot in to a box at the Polling Station.

I’ve never exercised my right to a postal vote, but I believe that one fills-in the ballot paper in the same way, and then posts it back to the local Returning Officer (the official in charge of counting the votes) using the pre-paid envelope provided.

The ballot box in each Polling Station (one per Civil Parish) is sealed at the end of voting, and all the sealed boxes are taken to a single counting centre for each constituency.

Each political Party has observers at the count, to ensure that electoral fraud cannot take place. E.g. that votes for their candidate are not being incorrectly/fraudulently rejected or counted as ‘spoiled ballots’.

 

In theory, one can (because of the numbered ballot-papers) check that one’s own vote has been recorded in the way that one cast it. But it would be a labour-intensive task (the officials would have to hunt through ALL the ballots in order to find one’s own). And faking an electorally-significant number of votes would be impossible.

 

Our process does not require electricity, internet-connection, or the presence of a good-quality telephone signal.

It cannot be hacked by foreign powers or criminals, and its result can not be sold to the highest-bidder, or fixed in any way by the company that has the contract to ‘provide’ electronic-‘democracy’.

 

In addition to the cost of printing the ballots, it costs us some overtime for the public sector (usually Local Authority) employees who staff the polling stations and the count.

[Estycollector]

At least we are not debating hanging chads.....lol!!

[XYZZY]

@Mercian: the ballot process you describe sounds like how it worked when I was in Texas. Well, not the multi-party oversight part. But the show up in person, yadda yadda.

 

I think the current systems here work well usually, but there are so many people highly motivated to find problems that they seem to be big news. Couple that with states feeling that they need to change due to Covid-19, and they haven't had time to work out their processes for what they're changing to.

 

How to run elections is left to each state. In 1787 that made sense: communication technology and former colonies not entirely sure what to make of this new federal government. I think that system needs to be revised, but I seriously doubt that a constitutional amendment for that (or for anything, really) could would go through right now.

[Mercian]

How to run elections is left to each state. In 1787 that made sense: communication technology and former colonies not entirely sure what to make of this new federal government. I think that system needs to be revised, but I seriously doubt that a constitutional amendment for that (or for anything, really) could would go through right now.

That’s very sad - and, very sadly, undoubtedly true.

 

I still haven’t heard of a system that is more-secure than ours, or is as-easy to implement.

I suspect that its main ‘demerit’ in our modern world is the lack of a chance for the Party (of whatever nominal leaning) to gift a massively-rewarding public contract to its friends, perhaps in exchange for the ability to order the result that it wants (whether through spurious disqualification of votes for its opponents, or through outright false-reporting of the votes cast).

[Astronymus]

This election, take absolutely no risks, use a black or blue ballpo

 

Living in Washington State, we've been voting by mail for years, and we don't even have to register. every state resident automatically has a ballot just mailed to them with clear instructions and postage paid. The very idea of having to vote in person on a work day blows my damn mind.

This is the weirdest thing. As if they don't want the working masses to vote. We all know you can lose your job in the U.S. if you take a leave to vote.

In Austria and Germany elections are held on sundays. So it's garanteed most people have the opportunity to make their cross. The traditional cliché is the whole family going to church and after that to the local voting place. The term for such days is just "Wahlsonntag" - "election sunday".

Also votes count directly. No strange electoral college.

The votes are counted under the eyes of representatives of several parties. So everyone is having an eye on each other.

Edited October 22, 2020 by Astron

[Mercian]

The votes are counted under the eyes of representatives of several parties. So everyone is having an eye on each other.

Given that Austria and Germany and the UK all do this, I am genuinely surprised when I read that other democracies don’t do it.

 

As a Party, one needs to be able to rustle-up one representative for one’s Party/candidate at each count. How is that ‘difficult’? You’ve got people distributing flyers, you’ve got people running for office. The persons in the latter group at least, surely, can be expected to be willing to attend the count of the votes in the election in which they’re a candidate, no?

 

For a continent-wide election for a single-representative position (such as POTUS) I can see that minor ‘outsider’ candidates may have difficulties getting somebody present at every count across the entire country. But the two largest & most-organised (& massively-funded) major Parties?

It doesn’t even cost ‘the taxpayer’ anything at all.

 

Does anyone know why the US doesn’t have observers from the Parties/candidates at the counts?

[Mysterious Mose]

How to run elections is left to each state. In 1787 that made sense: communication technology and former colonies not entirely sure what to make of this new federal government. I think that system needs to be revised, but I seriously doubt that a constitutional amendment for that (or for anything, really) could would go through right now.

Not exactly true. Some aspects of running elections are up to the states, but the federal government has a lot of say, especially in presidential contests. For example, the following Amendments to the Constitution provide that the right to vote shall not be denied because of race: XV (15), gender: XIX (19), poll tax XXIV (24) and age if over 18: XXVI (26). Also, the Constitution leaves it up to each state to decide how to choose (not necessarily elect) senators. However, the 17th Amendment (XVII) requires that senators be elected by the people.

 

In 1979 or so, a federal law required that states provide for absentee ballots in presidential contests. My first assignment as a summer intern for the Massachusetts Attorney General was evaluating whether a Massachusetts law complied with that requirement.

 

There was the Voting Rights Act, which alas, was struck down recently by the Supreme Court. That law provided civil rights applied to ALL elections in certain select jurisdictions.

 

I'm sure there are many other federal laws and Executive Orders which affect the way elections are run.

[Mysterious Mose]

Astron: "In Austria and Germany elections are held on sundays."

 

In this country, elections are usually held on Tuesdays. I think that's to permit farmers and others in rural areas time to get to the polling place. Transportation was not available on weekends, so they couldn't get to a polling place on a sunday..

[XYZZY]

Not exactly true. Some aspects of running elections are up to the states, but the federal government has a lot of say, especially in presidential contests. For example, the following Amendments to the Constitution provide that the right to vote shall not be denied because of race: XV (15), gender: XIX (19), poll tax XXIV (24) and age if over 18: XXVI (26). Also, the Constitution leaves it up to each state to decide how to choose (not necessarily elect) senators. However, the 17th Amendment (XVII) requires that senators be elected by the people.

 

 

Yes, I simplified. But as for how to cast a vote, or how to count a vote, it is up to each state. The "restrictions" on how it should be done are not very restrictive.

[Mysterious Mose]

 

Yes, I simplified. But as for how to cast a vote, or how to count a vote, it is up to each state. The "restrictions" on how it should be done are not very restrictive.

Read my next paragraph. By federal law, states must provide for absentee ballots in presidential contests. I'm sure there are many other examples.

[Mercian]

Astron: "In Austria and Germany elections are held on sundays."

 

In this country, elections are usually held on Tuesdays. I think that's to permit farmers and others in rural areas time to get to the polling place. Transportation was not available on weekends, so they couldn't get to a polling place on a sunday..

 

Ours are on Thursdays.

This may be to allow time for re-counts in tight elections, and for the winners to meet the monarch & cobble-together a government over the weekend, in time to take office on Monday.

 

Or, knowing my countrymen, it could be to allow all the candidates & Party workers involved in the election to head off for a three-day drinking-binge after the election

[XYZZY]

Each political Party has observers at the count, to ensure that electoral fraud cannot take place. E.g. that votes for their candidate are not being incorrectly/fraudulently rejected or counted as ‘spoiled ballots’.

 

 

I'm curious about that part. I frequently get the impression that the UK has many parties. Do they each get a seat at the counting table?

 

Also, what sort of oversight is there when the ballots are being transported from the polling places to the counting places?