Voter privacy failure
Feb. 27th, 2025 04:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunsen_hI just voted in the provincial election. There was a concerning incident.
The way it's supposed to work is that one brings one's marked ballot in a privacy sleeve to the person who's running the ballot scanner. That person inserts the ballot-in-sleeve part way into a slot in the scanner. The scanner plucks the ballot out of the sleeve. The operator then puts the sleeve away, I assume for reuse.
The operator was having trouble getting the scanner to take in the ballots. It looked like an alignment problem: the ballot-in-sleeve had to be inserted quite precisely, or the scanner would pull the ballot in part way, then go into reverse and push the ballot out again. The operator knew that this was a recurring problem. But she took the sleeve away before the ballot had been processed, so when the scanner went into reverse, my ballot was almost completely exposed to view. My vote was visible to the operator. She put the ballot back into the sleeve and went through the process again, and after a couple more tries, the job was completed.
I reported the problem to the polling-place supervisor. She said that she would make an incident report. She assured me that only the person who'd issued the ballot to me knew my name, and that the machine operator had no way to connect my identity with my vote. I pointed out that if she'd already known me personally, that wouldn't help. The problem wouldn't have occurred at all if only she'd waited to take the sleeve away until the ballot had been fully processed. It was while I was walking home that it occurred to me that I am, in my own way, fairly distinctive. People tend to remember me. There aren't a lot of really short men walking around wearing octopus hats.
The way it's supposed to work is that one brings one's marked ballot in a privacy sleeve to the person who's running the ballot scanner. That person inserts the ballot-in-sleeve part way into a slot in the scanner. The scanner plucks the ballot out of the sleeve. The operator then puts the sleeve away, I assume for reuse.
The operator was having trouble getting the scanner to take in the ballots. It looked like an alignment problem: the ballot-in-sleeve had to be inserted quite precisely, or the scanner would pull the ballot in part way, then go into reverse and push the ballot out again. The operator knew that this was a recurring problem. But she took the sleeve away before the ballot had been processed, so when the scanner went into reverse, my ballot was almost completely exposed to view. My vote was visible to the operator. She put the ballot back into the sleeve and went through the process again, and after a couple more tries, the job was completed.
I reported the problem to the polling-place supervisor. She said that she would make an incident report. She assured me that only the person who'd issued the ballot to me knew my name, and that the machine operator had no way to connect my identity with my vote. I pointed out that if she'd already known me personally, that wouldn't help. The problem wouldn't have occurred at all if only she'd waited to take the sleeve away until the ballot had been fully processed. It was while I was walking home that it occurred to me that I am, in my own way, fairly distinctive. People tend to remember me. There aren't a lot of really short men walking around wearing octopus hats.
no subject
Date: 2025-02-28 12:42 am (UTC)