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November 10, 2004
Could Jury Duty provide a model for Poll Workers?
Some friends and I were just chatting about the mechanics of election polling. There's a persistent fetish in America with automated polling systems, whether touch screen or optical reader, with the apparently mistaken belief that such systems are more efficient. Several countries do just fine with human poll workers who physical sort and count ballots. In Canada, apparently, human poll workers can count or recount every ballot within 24 hours, while we faff about with these broken computers and hanging chads. It seems of course that the primary disadvantage to human poll workers in the US would be the shear manpower to get the job done. You'd need thousands of poll workers, wouldn't you, with a little training.
Why not make election work a legal requirement like jury duty? We pulled people at random to serve on juries all the time. We'd need to work out a compensation scheme, yes, but how much are we paying now for Diebold machines, audits, and expert manpower? We'd need to work out a time, but then many states require employers to grants generous time off for voting to their employees, and certainly jury duty takes longer than a day.
What do you think?
Posted by Chris A at November 10, 2004 03:50 PM