My Freemasonry | Freemason Information and Discussion Forum

Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

"WE WILL BE BALLOT ING WITH THE USE OF ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINE"

Bloke

Premium Member
So I was just looking at http://princehallny.org/ and noticed a enticing "Proclamation Issued March 1, 2018" so naturally had to look at it :) No, there was no succession or exclusion or withdrawn of amity notice, but the summons to the "One Hundred and Seventy Third (173rd), ANNUAL GRAND LODGE COMMUNICATION. It will commence on Thursday June14th, 2018..."

But something did catch my eye:

On page 3 "
WE WILL BE BALLOT
ING WITH THE USE OF ELECTRONIC
VOTING MACHINE"

We often talk about this over a beer, especially using online voting, but here voting is by those present by show of hands or by secret ballot (latter being rare), although we do paper vote for exec positions, like the Board of General Purposes of Grand Lodge and (Dept) Grand Master Selection Panel via paper at lodge collected by officers and delivered to Sec who them posts them in.

I would assume the above "electronic voting machine" is used on site and on site only, but are electronic forms of voting usual in the States or something new ? Is PH the only group using this tool ?
 

dfreybur

Premium Member
For voting at Annual Communication, California has used punch cards for mechanical tabulation as far back as I can remember. That detail has meant that the results all come out at once all together as the cards are punched at the end of each discussion but all cards are counted together for all issues.

Switching to an anonymized vote per issue isn't that large a change.

In the US electronic voting machines are extremely common in civil elections. Touch screens menus with a printed receipt. Working in the computer industry I know far too much about the vulnerabilities of such devices to being hacked. Attending some political committee meet ups in my county I know far too much about instances of specific offices showing return data that has been clearly hacked.

The only interesting part I noticed was the use of the word BALLOTING where I would have said voting. I tend to restrict the word ballot to balloting for degrees, affiliation, restoration and such.
 

Bloke

Premium Member
We had a show of hands a few years ago with about 600 there and separated by a small margin, I think 14 votes, they were counted by Deacons by voters standing... Its interesting to hear voting is electronic - we don't use that for elections here (Fed, State & local gov) but use paper ballots..
 
Top