I am not the first to raise the possibility that if their wrongdoing is substantial, that there could be significant penalties. I refer you to our SoS who spoke to that issue on Dec 16th:
Now the audit is not complete. We don't have all the findings as yet, and we don't know what's occurred comprehensively. I would hope that the end result sanction that we suggested we might make today, pursuant to this hearing taking place, won't be the suggestion of de-certification of Diebold systems. I would hope that won't be the case. I certainly hope that won't be the case with other vendors as well. But if we find that there are gross discrepancies and violations, I am prepared to go down that road, and so this needs to be taken very, very seriously.
And later in the meeting, Asst. SoS Carrel discussed referring this to the AG and District Attorneys. If they take it that seriously, why should we not support them?
I spent too many hours reading the famous Diebold e-mails, and am far too suspicious of their ethics, to simply "pat them on the head and say don't do it again." http://diebold.f-451.net/
http://www.verifiedvoting.org/kevinshelley2003dec16.asp
I want a printer that spits out a copy of the ballot, clearly marking my choices so I can make sure that they match with my intentions, and I want a box where that print out goes into that will count as my vote. Does this match the goals of your organization?
Unequivocably, yes.
We have a "Resolution On Electronic Voting" on our site that was written a year ago, and resulted from discussions including the computer science community. It acknowledged the possibility that future technologies could introduce the use of a TRUSTED technology (which may not be defined or available as we talk today - maybe a write-only CD, DVD or similar) in the future. However, in today's environment, we recognize the reality that the only TRUSTED solution for this is paper.
There have been discussions, in which concerns were expressed that allowing the voter to touch the ballot could facilitate vote selling. So to defend against that, some proposals were offered.
Scenario 1 - Prevent the voter from physically touching the ballot. Show it to them "under glass" and spoil ballots that are not accepted as final. In this scenario, it sounds like we use the voting system to tally the vote, and only use the paper for "mandatory random recounts for system validation" and "recounts in the case of a close or challenged election".
This introduces paper jam and other prospective issues, so it may not be the optimal solutions.
Scenario 2 - Allow the voter to handle the final printed ballot, but they must surrender that document which is then scanned (for tallying votes) and retained for recounting purposes.
There may be other examples, and approaches, but the concept is we don't want the voter marching down the street (having turned in a counterfit ballot) and exchanging the real one for payment (vote selling.)
So correct me if I am wrong, but I do believe we are in agreement on your point.