It never ceases to amaze me how manual and error prone the election system is. Now i know you can check your electoral information on the internet, and they definatly store it in a database cause they sent us a nice mail merge letter with our electorate and locations etc. but on election day, it’s all paperbased.
So i rock up to one of 10 or so polling booths available to me. I give my name, no identification. The nice lady behind the desk opens one of 3 books in this booth (so there must be over 30 books printed for my electorate). She askes if i’ve already voted, and runs her finger across the page a few times (assuming to make sure she’ll put a tick next to the correct name), hands me a piece of paper and it’s all over.
Nothing need to prove who i am, or stopping people from voting multiple times, or someone making a mistake and checking off the incorrect name. Not sure about anyone else but this is CRYING out for a computer system. Maybe not vote online, but at least use a computer to record who has or hasn’t voted.
I don’t even want to imagine the job of collating back all those books to work out who didn’t vote so they can get sent a fine in the mail. And what happens if they find someone’s name ticked off twice.
With the number of pamplets handed out at each booth, I’m surprised there isn’t some one at the entrance picking up the “used” ones to re-use them, or at least a big paper recycle bin to put them in.