Thread: Obama Claims Landslide

Well, at least in Dixville Notch

Obama Claims Landslide Victory in Earliest Vote in Dixville Notch

4 November 2008, Tuesday

In the first voting of the US election day, Obama defeated his rival by 15 votes to six in Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, BBC reported Tuesday.

The town, which has a 60-year tradition of being first in the nation to vote, opened its polls at midnight, with turnout of 100%.

In a practice that stretched back to 1948, Dixville Notch's 21 registered voters cast their ballots in the 10 minutes after midnight.

The 2008 vote was the first time the town had voted Democrat for 40 years.

George W Bush won there in 2004 on his way to re-election.

Originally Posted by Pragmatist

Well, at least in Dixville Notch

Its a start!

I just got back from the polls. It took me an hour & 30 minutes.
Ours was the biggest precinct in our district with only two machines. Both machines had only calculated 330 votes in 70 minutes. That's pretty sad.
I talked with the mother inlaw who said they had 4 machines at a much smaller precinct. I thought Va. was prepared for this?
I don't quite understand how those machines read a write-in though. Is there text recognition software installed?

Is there a website that tracks real time results?
I can't seem to find one on google.....

Oh gee goody.

My voting center was using the new "darken the circle" paper ballots. We were warned that if you did not darken them properly, the machine would not recognize them. I don't get how this is an improvement over the old, "pull the lever" machines? You would set the tabs and pull the lever. Simple and fast. This new system screams of a "hanging chad" problem waiting to happen. Plus it takes a lot longer......

Originally Posted by kmiller1610

My voting center was using the new "darken the circle" paper ballots. We were warned that if you did not darken them properly, the machine would not recognize them. I don't get how this is an improvement over the old, "pull the lever" machines? You would set the tabs and pull the lever. Simple and fast. This new system screams of a "hanging chad" problem waiting to happen. Plus it takes a lot longer......

i still don't get how in this day and age, where literally the entire world is now being run via the internet, they can't make an online voting system. this idea that its "too dangerous" and "could be hacked" just doesn't make any sense. i mean thats true of ANYTHING: defense secrets, billion dollar transactions, government operations, etc etc. all of that is done through the internet, and no one seems that worried about hackers.

I'd rather go in the other direction, to be honest. I love electronic gadgets, but even I recognize that just because a process can be made to accommodate modern gadgetry, doesn't mean it should.

Look at the old-fashion voting booths; the ones with mechanical levers. They've been in use for well over a half-century. And as far as I can tell, no instance of voting fraud in all that time has ever been traced to the illegal manipulation of a lever-based voting machine.

So why replace them with touchscreens? Yes, touchscreens are less expensive, but don't forget, the voting booths have a serviceable lifespan of over 50 years. Do you really think that the touchscreen you use today will be in service fifty years from now? Or ten years from now?

True, the lever-based machines don't leave a paper trail. Fair enough. So redesign the lever-based machine so that it DOES leave a paper trail. Leave the rest of the mechanics alone.

As far as I can tell, touchscreens offer no major advantage over mechanical machines, and they introduce many disadvantages.

Online voting? That would be a disaster. Online voting systems invite hacking, and should never be used for anything of genuine importance.

Originally Posted by nickcuse

i still don't get how in this day and age, where literally the entire world is now being run via the internet, they can't make an online voting system. this idea that its "too dangerous" and "could be hacked" just doesn't make any sense. i mean thats true of ANYTHING: defense secrets, billion dollar transactions, government operations, etc etc. all of that is done through the internet, and no one seems that worried about hackers.

There are plenty of people worried about hackers, even in those operations you mentioned. The flipside is there is plenty of security needed to properly conduct online voting. Many Americans have no issue sending their banking information across secure internet connections so I'd assume they'd have slightly less apprehension in sending a vote.

Problem is, no one can seem to write a solid voting code interface that works perfectly all the time and/or we'd be trusting some developer... like Diebold.

Has anyone ever been to the booming metropolis Dixville Notch? It's over off Bob's Road, you know?