Electronic voting systems flawed, expert says

Associated Press ^ | May 5, 2004

[ovrtaxt]

Plenty was said at the time by us regular folks out here. Nobody who means anything, mind you, just regular old AMERICAN CITIZENS WHO VOTE!!!

The politicians ignored us up until now. Floridians were calling talk radio and posting on the internet about this very issue ever since the 2000 election system was scrapped.

Unbeleivably, one of the critics of a paper trail record, (a bureaucrat, of course) actually said that one of the reasons they didn't want a paper trail was that in the event of a close or disputed election, THE RESULTS COULD ACTUALLY BE CHECKED.

IMHO, if everyone got a receipt of their vote, the voters would actually have more control over the process than even a punch card system. The punch cards are collected from the voter, tabulated, and then discarded after a while. With a receipt, the citizens of any particular precinct could run a check on the results to check the politicians. They could be kept indefinitely.

Surely they don't want that.

[dvwjr]

No to the voter receipt idea. The paper validation of the computer vote for a state election offical recount is fine, but I have no desire to let the politicians have access to proof of HOW you voted outside of the voting booth. That would return us to the days when voters had to present "proof" of their vote to some political party functionary in return for services/favors/jobs. The secret ballot is a relatively recent innovation that most folks seem to forget...


dvwjr

[B4Ranch]

Electronic Voting Co. ^

[DBrow]

"IMHO, if everyone got a receipt of their vote, the voters would actually have more control over the process than even a punch card system."

And every union boss or college professor could be assured of the votes of the people under them.

A validated reciept is as good as cash in a corrupt system.

[ovrtaxt]

Good points that I hadn't thought of. So, what's the solution?

The butterfly ballot 'crisis' was a media manufactured hysteria. Punchcards worked just fine, except for the fact that results couls not be easily checked by the voting public.

Ever read "votescam"? Voter fraud in Miami under Janet Reno in the 80's. Freaky book, and still available, I think.

[DBrow]

My solution? Well, I'd use paper ballots, with either X in the box or machine readable dots. A machine count could then be verified manually. Time consuming and not perfect since people do the counting. It requires lots of honest people who are not intimidated into silence if they observe irregularities (which is what all mass fraud operations rely on imho).

The big problem is not technology it is instead corruption.

Currently a boiler room operation can generate a box of bogus ballots with the "correct" votes. Then, a corrupt voting official calls in with the ballot count in a box of real ballots- then they are switched after correcting the count in the bogus box.

Remember in 2000, when an election official got caught with a voting machine and boxes of ballots? That's what was going on.

If an electronic machine had a paper tape backup that was tamper proof then I'd go for it- the tally in the harddrive must match the paper tape. The tape records all keyboard events in a machine and people readable format. But how to make it really tamper proof? The tape must be internal and have multiple locks so one person alone has trouble accessing it. It must be 100%, aerospace grade, reliable, must not jam or skip and must be 100% accurate too. Then if someone demands a recount there is a way to verify what's on the machine memory. AFAIK no system built today does that.

It scares me that Kerry wants to pre-challenge any precinct using electronic voting. If anyone complains the media will jump ugly all over the person who dares to challenge Kerry.