[geeks] I just saw...

[Phil Stracchino]

Lionel Peterson wrote:
> Folks shouldn'thave reciepts (which are distinct from an audit trail). If the electronic system can't be trusted, but paper can - why are we pushing electronic?

"Oooh. SHINY!!!!"


...Seriously though, mainly Direct Recording Electronic is being pushed
because the promise is that totally electronic vote counting is faster
and less error-prone.  The problem is that the solutions they're
shipping, while faster, are untrustworthy, unverifiable, and non-auditable.


> Either you trust electonic voting or not, and if you feel you need the paper audit trail, I argue you don't really trust it.

I most certainly don't trust the Diebold DRE voting systems.  There are
so many trivially easy ways they can be compromised, I'm amazed anyone
trusts them.  A friend of mine made the comment that he doesn't know who
or what he voted for -- he knows who and what he INTENDED to vote for,
but the actual recording of his vote is dependent upon who hacked his
precinct's Diebold voting machines *LAST*.

> Tamper with one machine (mechanical or electronic), and you can impact many ballots.
> 
> Tamper with a paper ballot, and you can impact one ballot.

Very true.  Which begs the question of why we're not putting more money
and effort into making tamper-proof, or at least tamper-resistant,
voting machines.  Maybe the answer is that it's "election theater"?

The weakness of the punch-card or ScanTron ballots is that people can
incompletely mark or punch them, or change their minds with one entry
partly marked or punched, or vote for multiple candidates, or otherwise
spoil the ballot.  Personally, I think the obvious solution is perfectly
simple:  Have an "error-resistant" touchscreen voting machine that
prints a ScanTron-type ballot, which the voter verifies represents their
intended vote and then deposits into a ScanTron vote-registering
machine.  The possibility of voter error is all but eliminated, the
voter can verify that their ballot was printed correctly, and the paper
ballots can be easily recounted, either via ScanTron again, or by hand
as a check.  It's also trivial to do "spot checks" by picking a random
machine from each precinct, hand-counting the ballots from its bin, and
verifying that they match the vote totals it recorded.


-- 
 Same geek, same site, new location
 Phil Stracchino                     Landline: 603-429-0220
 phil.stracchino at speakeasy.net         Mobile: 603-216-7037
 Renaissance Man, Unix generalist, Perl hacker, Free Stater