My previous message to Link seems to have gotten lost. I write it this way:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/10/turnbull_floats_evote_compulsory_id/ Turnbull was running off at the mouth in the original interview, really. He's got this fixation, common on Australia's right, that we have a dreadfully corrupt electoral system. As Antony Green told me for the story, the verified level of voter fraud in Australia is tiny. When I got the "you must correct" call from Turnbull's office today, I conceded a factual error, and stood my ground on inference. I think he was winding up to give me a lecture, but I talk faster, louder, and I was having a bucket of fun. In my opinion, even if he backtracked in later interviews, Turnbull was clearly suggesting that voters should have to carry a formal ID to the polling station. And I'll leave that particular can of worms for others to unpick! RC On 10/09/13 5:18 PM, Roger Clarke wrote: >> On 10/09/2013 4:28 PM, Jan Whitaker quoted The Age: >> >>> Mr Turnbull, who was easily elected to his Sydney seat of Wentworth >>> on Saturday, said he thought there was also a large number of people >>> who voted fraudulently, "in the sense that they go to the polling >>> place and say they're someone else". >>> >>> He said he thought many people who did so were voting for a friend or >>> relative who was away or sick - and that this was based on anecdotal >>> evidence he had received since first running for Parliament in 2004. >>> >>> Impersonating another voter in a polling place is a serious offence >>> and carries a jail term of 6 months. > At 16:47 +1000 10/9/13, Bernard Robertson-Dunn wrote: >> And how does e-voting fix this? >> Or is he conflating e-voting with a national ID system? > Possibly. > > However the report continues: >> Mr Turnbull said that electronic voting could be done in a closed > network in the polling booth so that it could not be hacked from the > internet. ... >> He suggested that an electronic system could point out to voters if > they were about to cast an informal vote and give them the > opportunity to correct it. > > So he could be proposing no change to the elector-authentication > process, and only a change to the means whereby the elector's vote is > recorded. > > It would presumably cost quite a bit to kit a very large number of > locations, once every 1-3 years, with kit that's > certified-hardware-secure, and runs software that is effective, > sufficiently flexible, and certified-software-secure (whatever that > means) and certified-data-secure (which isn't easy to spec). > > And maybe the hardware would have to have a screen 2 metres wide ... > > It would be interesting to know how much lower the informal vote > would be if a user-friendly application were in place. > > A quick stab in the dark is below. Sensitivity testing is always fun. > > ________________________________________________________________________ > > > Blank 28.9 No effect? Or would that be rejected?? > Protest 16.9 No effect? > Just 1 27.8 Some effect? Say 20% > Ticks 11.8 Some effect, perhaps considerable? Say 50% > Non-seq 9.2 Some effect, perhaps considerable? Say 50% > > TOTAL 94.6 (I wonder what the 5.4% do) > > So maybe 17% would become formal, of 6% of 15 million = 153,000 > Across 150 electorates, that's 1,000 votes per electorate. > > If the votes are distributed much the same as the already-formal > votes, then there's no change in the outcomes. There might be some > bias towards Labor, if error-making is correlated with lower-socio-ec > demographics, and if people in that demographic still think Labor is > what it's name suggests. > > But even if the difference in distribution were considerable, very > few seats would change hands as a result of the investment. > > So don't look for payback from that quarter. > > _______________________________________________ Link mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
