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Originally posted by LeRoc:
Brazil's system can't prevent the elections from being close, of course. But what it is magically good at is preventing disputes that might arise from this closeness.

Brazil's last elections in some legislatures were very close. But I haven't seen disputes of this kind.

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Originally posted by LeRoc:
They look at the numbers the voting machines give. They see which one is the highest, even if the difference is very small. And whoever got that highest vote won. End of.

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Nick Tamen: And the instance I mentioned was one where it was discovered that the electronic voting machines had failed to record thousands of votes—enough to potentially change the results of an election.

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Originally posted by LeRoc:
(LOL, I just looked it up. There is a case of a municipality in the state of São Paulo, where the difference between the winner and the runner-op was exactly one vote. No-one asked for a recount. That's almost unthinkable; people trust the result of the tally. The reaction of the winner? "It's a good thing that I didn't argue with my wife today, because that would have tipped the balance.")

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Nick Tamen: But I think anyone would agree that the stakes are different when it's a close presidential election rather than a close municipal election. I doubt the losing candidate would just shrug and walk away.

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Originally posted by LeRoc:
But I don't think Brazilian law gives him the possibility of a lengthy recount.

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• Trump 17
• Cruz 11
• Rubio 10
• Kasich 5
• Bush 4
• Carson 3
• Fiorina 1
  
• Paul 1
• Huckabee 1

• Sanders 36 (+14)
• Clinton 32 (+344)
  
• O'Malley 0 (+2)

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Nick Tamen: Then if that's the case, one could argue that Brazilian law fails to adequately protect the integrity of the vote by favoring speedy resolution over accuracy and establishing what vote actually was.

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Nick Tamen: And of course, one could certainly argue the opposite. But that's what I'm talking about, though, with the problems with saying one system is "better" than another. Different systems establish different priorities.

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Originally posted by LeRoc:
Sorry for continuing to beat this hammer, but looking at Florida 2000, the argument "we may be slower but that's because we prioritise accuracy" isn't very strong. After 15 years, do we accurately *know* how many people voted for Bush and how many voted for Gore?

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cliffdweller: Again, there is so much to fault in the US electoral system-- or even with the 2000 election-- but the fact that the result wasn't "speedy" wasn't one of them.

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Originally posted by LeRoc:

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Nick Tamen: Then if that's the case, one could argue that Brazilian law fails to adequately protect the integrity of the vote by favoring speedy resolution over accuracy and establishing what vote actually was.

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But the Brazilian system is accurate.

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Dave W.: What gives you such confidence that this is so?

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• Many ballots were confusing, causing people to vote wrongly, especially less litterate people.
• Millimeter fights over whether a chad was punched or not.
• Confusion about which tribunal gets to decide about these things.
• Lots of room for parties to try and manipulate this.
• As a consequence, a long recounting process, and after this the result was still dubious.

• The whole country uses the same voting system. It was designed to be easy to understand, especially by the illiterate. A lot of work was done on television and by other means to explain the system, so that everyone understood it.
• It isn't possible to have an argument over whether someone has voted or not. They either punched a button and confirmed or not. Later checks have shown that this tally was accurate.
• It is very clear who gets to decide, in case there would be ambiguities: the Supreme Electoral Court.
• Political parties don't have this kind of way to try to rig the system.
• We had a result the very same evening, and it was later confirmed to be accurate.

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Golden Key: I did a search on "Brazil election tampering", and found this, from 2014:

Fraud possible in Brazil's e-voting system: Vulnerabilities found in the pioneering electronic voting system could lead to tampering in the country's upcoming general elections.

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It is good that people continue to cast a critical eye on Brazil's voting system, of course. There are a number of groups and websites looking at potential fraud, and obviously they formulate their conclusions in a slightly harsh way as if the fraud is already happening. It is a good thing that these groups exist, and they should continue doing exactly that. What's important is that the Brazilian system takes these views into account when they continually recheck their systems. But AFAICS, after rechecks, no actual cases of voting machine fraud have happened.

I'm beginning to sound like a PR person from the Brazilian government. I can assure you that I'm not. The Brazilian electoral system is far from free of other forms of fraud. Fraud happens, on a rather large scale. The easiest way is for candidates to give these metal bottles of cooking gas to poor families in order to buy their votes. These cost around 30 €, and for many families that's a large monthly expense.

But we are talking about the system of registering voters and tallying votes here. The consensus of people who know about these things internationally is that on these accounts, the Brazilian system, if not perfect, is among the best. Many Latin American and African countries come to Brazil to get inspiration for their voting systems. Countries wanting to copy the US system?


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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)

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Originally posted by LeRoc:
PS I also find it interesting that whenever I say "I think the Brazilian system is better than the US one", people seem to hear "I think the Brazilian system is perfect".

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Nick Tamen: What I, at least, am reacting to is the "that could never happen here" attitude generally, and the idea that electronic voting is a magical way to avoid close, contested elections specifically.

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I don't have a "that could never happen here" attitude. I do think that electronic voting can help prevent some problems. I mean, you just need to look at these images of people trying to decide whether a chad was still fixed at one corner or not … to decide "there must be a better way".

I also think that electronic voting can help under certain circumstances. The whole country having the same voting booths and software is a big help (avoiding some of the problems Carex talked about, related to San Francisco). Checking the results after the election day is another. Listening to people who warn about potential for hacking and trying to do something about it, continually improving your systems, is a third. Even then, no system can ever be perfect. But you can make it pretty good in this way.

I read a lot about politics in the US; my personal opinion about its voting system? It's rubbish. I don't need to turn to Brazil for that: my native country the Netherlands also does it better. But in this case, one could retort that the Netherlands is a smaller country, making it easier. I took Brazil as an example, not only because it's a country I know well, but because it has roughly the same size. It is about simple common sense. When it comes to voting systems, dozens of countries do it better than the US.

Since some particular failings of the voting system were being discussed on this thread, I just wanted to add that

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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)

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Originally posted by LeRoc:

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Nick Tamen: What I, at least, am reacting to is the "that could never happen here" attitude generally, and the idea that electronic voting is a magical way to avoid close, contested elections specifically.

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I don't have a "that could never happen here" attitude.

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cliffdweller: Unless you have some magical way to prevent [close, contested elections] from happening I don't see how it would be any different in Brazil.

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There is such a magical way. It is called electronic voting.

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Nick Tamen: Thanks for clarifying that, since that's not the message I was picking up from your posts, particularly this one:

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cliffdweller: Unless you have some magical way to prevent [close, contested elections] from happening I don't see how it would be any different in Brazil.

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There is such a magical way. It is called electronic voting.

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Originally posted by LeRoc:

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Dave W.: What gives you such confidence that this is so?

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Because they perform checks afterwards.
[...]
But the election officials don't abandon the voting machines and join the party. Various checks are performed after Election Day (I think this already starts in the evening), to ensure that the voting record is accurate. They perform the same kind of checks they would do if they had something like a recount. These checks have always shown that the election results were accurate.

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Dave W.: If you happen to have a reference that supplies more details, I'd be interested in taking a look at it. [...] And who are "they", and how do they ensure that the software on each machine did exactly and only what the law requires?

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Originally posted by LeRoc:
(I do think that what you put in brackets in cliffdweller's post isn't what she intended, but that's another thing.)

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The problem in 2000 is that the results were so incredibly close as to be in dispute by both sides. Unless you have some magical way to prevent that from happening I don't see how it would be any different in Brazil.

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Originally posted by LeRoc:

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Nick Tamen: Thanks for clarifying that, since that's not the message I was picking up from your posts, particularly this one:

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cliffdweller: Unless you have some magical way to prevent [close, contested elections] from happening I don't see how it would be any different in Brazil.

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There is such a magical way. It is called electronic voting.

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Uhm yes, this is how we post on the Ship sometimes.


(I do think that what you put in brackets in cliffdweller's post isn't what she intended, but that's another thing.)

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Originally posted by LeRoc:
Why would anyone want to prevent close elections from happening?

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Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
The great thing that Nixon did when in his race was to simply concede when it was very close. If he had fought it out it would have been very destructive.

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Originally posted by LeRoc:
Why would anyone want to prevent close elections from happening?

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Originally posted by LeRoc:

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Dave W.: If you happen to have a reference that supplies more details, I'd be interested in taking a look at it. [...] And who are "they", and how do they ensure that the software on each machine did exactly and only what the law requires?

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"They" are the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE). There are independent checks as well. I can find plenty of references, but they're mostly in Portuguese.

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Originally posted by simontoad:
Great post on the DNC Croesus, thanks. I'm presently in denial about the Republican race.

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Originally posted by cliffdweller:

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Originally posted by LeRoc:
Why would anyone want to prevent close elections from happening?

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The bracketed remark said close and contested.

Which was in response to your claim that Brazil has a magical way to prevent that. As I've said many times, it's not the closeness nor the "contested" part that concerns me, it is the lack of a clear process in handling the recount that was problematic in 2000. You seem to be inordinately fixated on getting a speedy count. I believe that goal is diametrically opposed to my goal of an accurate count, and in fact was the reason the 2000 election continues to be a source of controversy in the US.

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Originally posted by Nick Tamen:
But when the margin is very close, the possibility that even a small problem affected the outcome goes way, way up. It's a matter of adequate checks within the system to deal with that.

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cliffdweller: You seem to be inordinately fixated on getting a speedy count.

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cliffdweller: I believe that goal is diametrically opposed to my goal of an accurate count

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Dave W.: Independent checks like what, if you don't mind my asking?

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I don't mind at all

According to the article I just read, some of the institutions that execute independent checks are the Brazilian Order of Lawyers (OAB) and Public Persecutions (MP). There may be more; I'd have to dig deeper. I appreciate what you said about Petrobras above, but in all this turmoil, institutions like the OAB and the MP have a high standing with the Brazilian public. They are the ones who bring corruption scandals like this to the limelight.

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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)

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Originally posted by LeRoc:

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Dave W.: Independent checks like what, if you don't mind my asking?

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I don't mind at all

According to the article I just read, some of the institutions that execute independent checks are the Brazilian Order of Lawyers (OAB) and Public Persecutions (MP). There may be more; I'd have to dig deeper. I appreciate what you said about Petrobras above, but in all this turmoil, institutions like the OAB and the MP have a high standing with the Brazilian public. They are the ones who bring corruption scandals like this to the limelight.

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Originally posted by Augustine the Aleut:
The challenge Cliffdweller faces with this is that there was not a single election in 2000 -- nor will there be for 2016. One has fifty-plus elections for presidential and vice-presidential electors, all governed and managed by state officials and agencies. There continue to be grave problems of efficiency (see recent press coverage on Florida, Texas, and Missouri) and, in a few places, theoretically impartial agencies and officers are in reality, not so much. While I can see an argument for the Electoral College, I do not know if we can any longer smile upon a lack of national standards for their election.

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Dave W.: Did that article provide any information at all about what the "checks" actually consist of? I can easily understand what's involved in a recount of paper ballots; what exactly are they supposed to be checking in the Brazilian electronic system?

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cliffdweller: I'm just disputing the fact that Brazil has some magically way to provide both fast and accurate-to-the-point of indisputable results in a close election such as we had in 2000.

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orfeo: Just saying. No system is perfect.

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Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:

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Originally posted by Nick Tamen:
But when the margin is very close, the possibility that even a small problem affected the outcome goes way, way up. It's a matter of adequate checks within the system to deal with that.

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When the margin is very close, one could argue that it was a statistical tie, and so the statement that the electorate preferred one candidate over the other isn't accurate.

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Originally posted by LeRoc:
According to the article I just read, some of the institutions that execute independent checks are the Brazilian Order of Lawyers (OAB) and Public Persecutions (MP).

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The first thing God says to Moses is, "Take off your shoes." We are on holy ground. Hard to believe, but the truest thing I know. — Anne Lamott