Letting the Voter Count

[tw]

This election will be very close. Integrity of polls (the system and the equipment) has been a major discussion among science publications. Like it or not, many jurisdictions are still using suspect systems. Some having installed new systems that were worse than the old. But its new and high tech - therefore it must be better. Top of the suspect list are these electronic systems that violate basic voting security.

The voting system must meet two 'criteria'. First, the vote must be written to (stored on) a 'write once' media. Paper does this. Paper votes cannot be modified without detection. Most electronic systems violate this principle.

Second, the voter must be able to confirm his vote is as he intended. Again paper does this.

The problem with paper has been how the paper system worked. For example, those butterfly ballots that earned a bad reputation is directly traceable to how that equipment was setup and how it was maintained by voting officials. For example, those plastic holes that channel the punch into a butterfly ballot must be periodically replaced so that punching is clean and sharp. Maintenance that must be conducted before voting booths are delivered to polls. Poll official must periodically clean out paper punches so that the 'punched out' paper does not clog punch holes. Both problems are said to have existed in FL. Both require human training which is often not done - the bean counter mentality.

IOW the real problem was humans, including a FL Sec of State who was clearly partisan. It was not the machines so much as it was top management - the people who install, train, and conduct the voting. We did not go after the people and their failure to establish standards. Instead we hoped to solve problems with different equipment. We went after the symptoms rather than the reason for voting problems - top voting officials (ie FL Sec of State who did not do her job even years before the election).

Using conventional paper ballots creates secondary problems. A long, painful vote counting takes time. Other corrupting factors occur with too many hands on the ballots. So conventional paper does have serious drawbacks.

Lever voting is an old and expensive method that is often being replaced by electronics. And then the electronics which is often nothing more than an embedded PC - with all the problems created a system created to be cheap rather than secure. Greatest weakness in electronic voting is firmware. Diebold voting machines characterize the electronic machine problem where even source code was leaked. If their hardware is anything like their other secure electronic systems, then engineering is by people still 'wet behind the ears' - questionable. I have very little confidence with anything by Diebold because I have seen previous designs.

Most people really don't know how voting is accomplished even in adjacent counties. For example, NJ once used lever voting in all counties. Today, most of NJ uses electronic voting except in some sothern most counties, in a county adjacent to PA, and a spot near NYC. PA still uses punch ballots in at least eight counties. Other voting methods in PA include lever type, optical, and even one PA county will use electronic. Maybe 12 counties in Ohio use punch card ballots. Almost 40% of IL uses same as well as almost all of Utah. FL uses a combination of electronic and optical. More than half the counties in western TX use old fashion paper ballots. GA is 100% electronic. Optical appears to be the most common choice in western states including all voting in OK. I will be voting on a butterfly ballot.

With so many voting methods, many don't meet the two 'criteria'. One method is to vote, then physically carry that ballot to a confirmation machine. If that vote does not read as intended, the voter requests a new ballot and starts all over again. Few systems, short of paper ballots, meet both 'criteria'.

Do we store counts on a disk drive? Major violation. Completely unacceptable. Disk drives are not a write once media - easily corrupted without any indication of that corruption.

Four years since the 'powers that be' subverted the people and decided a president by political 'confrontation'. Jimmy Carter's organization (that monitors voting overseas) says FL is again ripe for another fiasco. Why? 85% of all problems are directly traceable to top management. That top management (be it the presidency, Congress, Supreme Court, and both political parties) did insufficient to solve these problems. Step one would have been to demand the two 'criteria' up front be required in every poll. It is not. Instead, all four were happy to do nothing - not establish minimal standards in part "because it is hard" - which always gives ultimate power to the political party power brokers.

[Griff]

One of the better arguments I've heard against voting is that if the election is close enough for your vote to count the election will be won by other means. Sus. Co. Lever Action Voter

[Griff]

Originally Posted by tw

Why? 85% of all problems are directly traceable to top management.

I love your style man.

Originally Posted by Griff

One of the better arguments I've heard against voting is that if the election is close enough for your vote to count the election will be won by other means. Sus. Co. Lever Action Voter

Sounds like a great argument in favor of voter apathy to me. "Don't bother folks, the election is being fixed, anyhow." Yet one more way to take the power out of the hands of the people.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Last time it was decided by the Supremes, this time, the blue screen of death?

That top management (be it the presidency, Congress, Supreme Court, and both political parties) did insufficient to solve these problems.

Well, of course. They won, so why would they change a system that's served them so well and could be manipulated to do so again, if need be? That would be dumb.
The responsibility to see things are fixed, lies with the fuckee, not the fucker. Not Gore, the voters, we the people.
The ones that should have been raising a stink for the last four years, were too busy trading the future away to China, through WalMart, for shiny beads and trinkets. After you spend billions of your kids money and thousands of your kids, to keep the oil market open, China will outbid you with the money you gave them at WalMart. Come to think of it, you're too stupid to vote. Go away.


Disclaimer-Of course those remarks were not directed at any of the esteemed members or lurkers of this board.

[Undertoad]

The ability to get the vote precisely right is up to the taxpayers' will to do so. No system that includes human counting will ever be completely accurate. All you can do is the best you can do.

Electronic machines in Montgomery Cty PA are very reliable and they post the count from each machine at the end of the night. My ex was an election official so I've seen it. This is a pretty good system. It is pretty hard to massively fraud these things as far as I can see. The human counts of the past are much more likely to be inaccurate.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Electronic machines in Montgomery Cty PA are very reliable and they post the count from each machine at the end of the night. My ex was an election official so I've seen it. This is a pretty good system. It is pretty hard to massively fraud these things as far as I can see. The human counts of the past are much more likely to be inaccurate.

Whose machine are they using? And how does that machine make a recount or some other confirmation method possible?

[tw]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Electronic machines in Montgomery Cty PA are very reliable and they post the count from each machine at the end of the night. My ex was an election official so I've seen it. This is a pretty good system. It is pretty hard to massively fraud these things as far as I can see. The human counts of the past are much more likely to be inaccurate.

Whose machine are they using? And how does that machine make a recount or some other confirmation method possible?

[tw]

New Jersey Lawsuit Challenges Electronic Voting
More than three million registered voters in 15 of New Jersey's 21 counties are scheduled to use the electronic voting machines, which have been dogged nationwide by concerns over their reliability and fairness. Five New Jersey counties use the old mechanical lever machines, like the ones in use in New York and Connecticut. One New Jersey county uses optically scanned ballots. Most counties also have optical scan machines in place for handling absentee ballots, and the draft lawsuit suggests the expanded use of these in lieu of the electronic machines.

A large turnout in any precinct followed by unconfirmed voting recounts may create problems on the scale of the FL fiasco. Much of this is traceable to voting officials (political appointees) who have as much technical knowledge as women do about skin creams. The fate of a country does not depend on half truths and outright lies from the Pond's Institute. But it does depend on machines that can produce verifiable confirmation - ie a paper record - for the recount. Unfortunately, many voting machines that meet the 'paper record' requirement do not produce paper records that can be used for a recount. Still waiting, for example, is the manufacturer of those voting machines in Montgomery County PA that were reported to be

very reliable and they post the count from each machine at the end of the night. My ex was an election official so I've seen it. This is a pretty good system. It is pretty hard to massively fraud these things as far as I can see.

This is just the reasoning that scares me - decisions made without machines even conforming to a standard. A visual examination deemed sufficient to declare reliability. Exactly the mental attitude of politically appointed voting officials that would be symptoms of the problem. That problem begins with political parties who control the elections.

from IEEE Spectrum of Oct 2004
Officials are knowingly giving up the ability to perform an independent recount - a fundamental requirement for ensuring the integrity of the votes recorded by a voting machine, and for reconstructing the tally if an electrion is contested. People using these direct-recording systems will have no assurance that their ballots were cast at all, let alone as inteneded. And it's likely that some machines will fail, if the record of recent local and other elections is any guide. ...

One logical legislative oppurtunity was in the language of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002, which fueled the rush to electronic voting throughout the United States, with more than $3billion to be used by state and local governments to replace their old punch card and lever systems. And additional $30 million of HAVA money was suppose to have been allocated to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD to support the development of more stringent election system examination criteria than those develeoped by the Federal Election Commission in 1990 and 2002.

Unfortunately, the NIST funding was not distributed, and technical commission appointments were stalled. Even if a more timely standard had been produced, the cart was put before the horse: receipt of HAVA monies for equipment purcahses was not linked to compliance with any new HAVA requirements. As a consequence, no machine currently in use has HAVA certification, since no certification actually exists, nor, once it does exist, is it likely to be enforceable by 2006, the deadline set by HAVA for all new systems to be in place.

Although HAVA requires that newly purcahsed voting units "produce a permanent paper record with a manual audit capacity for such system," electrion officials and vendors have let this clause be satiffied by just a paper strip on which vote totals are printed at the end of the election. That strip would be useless if a real recount were required. US Representative Robert Wexler of election-impaired Palm Beach FL refers to this printed summary as a "reprint" rather than a "recount".

[Clodfobble]

Much of this is traceable to voting officials (political appointees) who have as much technical knowledge as women do about skin creams.

Please, please, please make this one of your standard repeated phrases! That's awesome--WAY better than "mental midget" or "god's chosen president" or even "85% of all problems are directly traceable to top management."

[Undertoad]

I don't remember who produced the machines (not Diebold), but all election officials in Pennsylvania are elected, not appointed.

[Griff]

= Using conventional paper ballots creates secondary problems. A long, painful vote counting takes time. Other corrupting factors occur with too many hands on the ballots. So conventional paper does have serious drawbacks.

I just remembered we use paper ballots and optical readers here, we used levers in upstate NY.

[CzinZumerzet]

We use paper and pencil and every town count is rigourously observed throughout. A re-count is easy although clearly here in the UK the numbers are a great deal smaller than in the US so it might take longer. So what? How long did your last one take to reach a final number few people actually believed in?

[glatt]

I would feel much more confident in a paper ballot where I fill in the ovals with a number two pencil. You can run it through the scanners as many times as you want, and the "chad" won't fall out. You can have a permanant record that you can go back to as many times as you want. You can even count them manually if you want to double-check the results of the scanners. Also, before I turn it in, I can visually see that my vote has been cast the way I want it to.

I have almost no faith in the electronic machines that my county has switched to in the last two years. (Not Deibold.) I trust my county officials are honest and mean well, but that's the only faith I have in the whole system. The technology is unproven. In fact, all the evidence points to the possibility of flaws in the technology.

[Undertoad]

The problem with paper ballots is that they encourage more human error. A machine only does what you tell it to do, but it does it accurately if you tell it the right things; a human is guaranteed to make mistakes.

As we have become a 50-50 nation, and demand even more accuracy in counts, the only way we can be assured of an accurate count is through machines.

You can't convince me that a paper system can't be "gamed" in just as many ways as a machine system. Or that a box full of paper ballots isn't as subject to gaming as a sealed electronic machine.