by Michael Ossipoff

I’ve been making suggestions and comments regarding the choice of voting system, and about how to vote in our current Plurality voting system. But of course none of that really matters unless the count is legitimate. And of course our count isn’t legitimate. The real voting power belongs to whoever counts the votes.

I mentioned that the Republican consistently came in last in Occupy’s 2012 presidential exit-poll. …last with a quite small vote-percent. How does that square with the fact that, we’re told that the official count always shows a near-tie between the Democrat and the Republican, and no more than 1%, if that, for anyone else? We’re always told that it’s a “dead-heat” between the Democrat and the Republican. I’m not making any accusations. There might be a perfectly innocent explanation. But I would suggest that it might be a good idea to try to achieve a verifiable count. Would that be too much to ask?

If you want to see some funny count results, then read about the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. In particular, there was a Harper’s article just after the 2004 election that gave lots of details of ridiculous anomalies, such as precincts where the number of Bush votes was 4 times the number of registered Republicans, or maybe more than the number of voters registered there. In 2000 &/or 2004, there were extraordinary differences between exit polls and official count results.

Improbably, in every instance, where the exit poll was “wrong”, it was always wrong in such a way that the official count differed strongly in Bush’s favor. Someone calculated that the probability of the observed results occurring innocently or coincidentally was a small fraction of a millionth.

I was at a meeting of a progressive community organization, right after the 2004 election, and the topic was “What should we do now?” The facilitator was writing suggestions on the blackboard, for various progressive political projects. One woman spoke up to say that the only relevant political fact at that moment was the phony election, and that the only worthwhile activity was to protest it. She was ignored.

In some countries, people go out into the streets to protest a phony election. They deserve democracy, and maybe they’ll get it. But that doesn’t happen here. We get what we deserve too. Incredibly, astoundingly, people often said that we can’t be sure that the count wasn’t legitimate. What?? If a count is unverifiable, that, by itself, is enough to make it illegitimate and not valid. The suggestion of having to take someone’s word for it that the count isn’t fraudulent is ridiculous and astonishing.

As long as the count is illegitimate, it’s entirely irrelevant how we vote, or what the voting system is. So here’s a suggested order of what to do:

1. Insist on and get a legitimate, verified count for subsequent elections.
2. Vote honestly, for what you want. Make good use of Plurality to elect someone better. I’ve discussed that in detail.
3. When GPUS (the Green Party) is in office, we’ll have a new and better voting system, and there will be opportunity for the public to choose whatever other voting system they want, via initiative or referendum

Of course there’s no reason to believe that #1 or #2 is going to happen. And without #1, nothing will happen. One way for the count to be verifiable would be to conduct a traditional, publicly-observed hand-count, with observers from various political parties across the political spectrum. For rank methods, the use of a voting machine, and a computerized count is probably desirable. But there’s no reason why that couldn’t be secure against fraud. Here is a procedure for a fraud-free machine-count:

The voter indicates his ranking via a machine, maybe a touch-screen. The machine prints out a paper ballot showing his ranking. He looks at it to make sure that it’s as he intends it. He deposits it in the ballot-box. Of course the ballot boxes are securely stored until the public imaging. At the time of the official public imaging, in each precinct, each ballot from the ballot-box, one at a time, is laid face-up on a table.

Mounted above the table are digital cameras belonging to various political parties, and one belonging to the elections department. Each camera simultaneously images that ballot. Each camera is controlled by its owner(s) and can’t be tampered by anyone else. So then, the elections department, and each of various political parties, across the political spectrum, has a digital image of that ballot. Each ballot is publicly imaged in that manner, simultaneously by each of those cameras. Therefore, each party has its own complete ballot set. The official election system, too, has its complete ballot set. The various ballot sets should agree. If one of them disagrees with the others, then that one that disagrees is wrong. It would be vanishingly improbable for two parties to have the same incorrect ballot-set.

The official election agency, and each party, can do their own computer-count, based on their digital ballot-set. They can compare results. Any individual could request and get any party’s digital ballot-set, to do his own computer-count. The ballot-sets and count results could be shared freely, and compared with eachother. Because of the high improbability of two versions of the ballot set being incorrect in the same way, a dispute about which ballot set is correct is highly improbable. But if it happened, of course there could be a re-imaging of the original paper ballots.

It goes without saying that the paper ballots would be securely stored, in a room guarded by cameras and locks belonging to various political parties, across the political spectrum. So there’s no reason why a machine-balloting and computer-count couldn’t be done securely. That means that a rank method can be counted securely too.

But of course there’s one thing missing: Public insistence on a legitimate count. Without that, we can forget all about having legitimate democracy.

Our country’s serious count-fraud problem, the illegitimacy of our elections, is discussed well in this Harpers article that was published just before the 2012 presidential election. Below follows a brief quote from the article (its last paragraph):

In preparation for the 2014 election, we must demand that our representatives pass comprehensive election reform, including publicly financed races and a secure, transparent vote count. A privatized, secret ballot count must be viewed as a violation of our civil rights. Once that principle is clear, as it is now in Germany and Ireland, the rest will naturally follow. If we the people do not feel the outrage, or lack the courage to fight for this most basic right of American self-governance, who will?