Sort of 'evolution in action'.;)

Points to anyone who can name the sci-fi story that used that phrase (I can't remember the title).

Oath Of Fealty, by Niven & Pournelle. "Think of it as evolution in action," as a graffito near a ledge popular with jumpers in the arcology.

It's gotta be twenty years at least since I read it, and I had to google.

Examples of why voters make vote counting so difficult - from The Economist:

Where is the difficulty?

Completely fill in the bubble, do not use checks, x's, and do not make any other marks in other boxes.

It must be the North Dakota immigrants...

I got that PH, but seriously - is there ANY DOUBT about the intent of either of those ballots. I'm sure there are much better examples of confusion, but those two appear very clear.

That's why that dude only got a 2 on his SAT...bubble filling challenged. ;)

Of course they are both voters for Franken -no wonder they couldn't follow the directions....


JUST KIDDING

These were the best examples of how messed up the ballots can get.

There is no doubt for anyone with common sense. There is doubt for politicians that are trying to win an election.

The ones in tw's link are quite clear - Those in the other link are pretty obvious too, for the most part. This seems like a bunch of BS to me.

Clearly you've never dealt with the general public in matters of forms and publications...you'd be amazed!

If the machine cannot read it, then it is not obvious and must be reviewed.

Better voting machines read your ballot, tell you what it could not read, and ask you if that mistake is OK.

Obviously, MN has better voting machines than those bought by bean counter intelligence who saw the word 'computer' and then knew it must be better (ie customers of Diebold).

But do MN voting machines ask the voter if that is what he intended? If yes, then the reason to accept or reject a paper ballot completely changes. It has a check mark. The voting machine says that entry for Senator is empty. The voter says yes. Then the check mark is a blank - voter voted for nobody. If the machine sees he voted, then says nothing - machine accepts the check mark as a vote. No problem. No challenge.

We don't know if voting machines read and asked the voter about vague intents. Therefore we don't know the criteria used to recount those votes. Not at all obvious until we first know if machines asked voters about vague intents.

Still, you can't un-stupidfy people.

There is an edit when filling out the fafsa when the student enters taxes paid as equal to adjusted gross income (say they made 25000, and they enter that they paid 25000 in taxes.) A box pops up and says "dude, you just said you paid out your entire income in taxes. Are you really sure?" More often than not, they will say "yes, I'm sure...hmph." Then again "are you surely sure?" "YES I'm surely sure you damn computer." Then they bitch when selected by the feds for verification. :D

I can't imagine voters are a smarter population, on the average, than students.

We are way past the machines - we are at the review stage. So we have a bunch of people looking at these things and trying to determine if the intent was for candidate (A) or (B) or unknown. It is that simple. They are making a mountain out of this. Oh and somewhere somehow a mountain of money too.