Christian Bau wrote:
> In article <90k3vl$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> (Herman Rubin) wrote:
>
> > >AFAIK there is general agreement that unbiased humans are better at
> > >identifying the difference between unpunched holes and imperfectly
> > >punched holes than current counting machines -- which after all were
> > >only designed to distinguish between unpunched and perfectly punched
> > >holes.
> >
> > UNBIASED humans, yes. There is considerable evidence of bias.
> >
> > Some of this bias is inadvertent, the type of observer bias
> > found in many experimental situations in other fields. This
> > is especially the case if it is not merely a piece of hanging
> > chad, but a dimple. It also occurs if there is a question
> > of multiple voting for an office.
>
> Both the United Kingdom and Germany use the old fashioned
> piece-of-paper-take-a-pencil-mark-your-candidate method, and the papers
> are always handcounted.
So does Canada.
We had municipal elections a few weeks ago; the ballots were paper, with boxes
for making an X with a standard, supplied pencil.. These were then fed into a
machine for automatic counting. Since such optical recognition technology is
several decades old, why not just use it? In our recent Federal election there
was one office to vote for in every polling station, by making an X in a box.
The country-wide counting was finished by early morning. Counting is done by
people, with "scrutineers" from each of the political parties present at the
count.
>
>
> I don't think there is ever any question about "voter intention" unless a
> voter deliberately chooses to make his ballot paper undecidable. Just
> because a system is oldfashioned doesn't mean it can't be better anyway.
--
R. G. Vickson
Department of Management Sciences
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA
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