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That's right.

During my campaign experience I have learned of some sophisticated algorithms used by the automatic counting machines that count punch ballots.

That software is ALWAYS kept highly secret and "company proprietary".

All of the code must be publicly available and audited, with multi-party verification of the s/w versions loaded in each machine.

Without hard and fast, public, scrutiny these WILL be abused.

It is impossible to place the greatest power known to mankind in the hands of a few secretive s/w engineers, without it being corrupted by powerful folks.

I absolutely agree. I have been a programmer for 25 years and I gurantee that any test they do are not sufficient. I can turn code on and off at will. Do a test and it works but on election day well that is a different thing. If the machine malfunctions all votes are lost. That could be 500 votes. If in key prestincts that could eaisly effect the election. No paper trail means no verification and is inexcuseable unless fraud is the agenda.

Papper is one of the cheepest things in America. Put a piece of plastic so a person can actually see their votes. Number them as necessary 50 of five lines collumns should cover it. However if not a second etc. set could be used. One would need help to verify other than party line votes but could still do so. Thus no chance of fraud as recountability is easy. This I would support. A poll watcher could ask a friend to confirm every so ofter that their votes were tallied correctly. This would gurantee no tricks. The paper could go from one roll to another or one box to another. OCR cound read the marks in case of a recount.

The counts should also be posted at each prestinct as well. That way people could add them all up and make sure the final tally agrees.

so... how do you verify that the source code you so painstakingly examined and certified is the actual madhinc code that is executing? Hmm? are you gonna go through several hundred thousand lines of 1's and 0's and decipher each instruction?

if I can design and code the application, I can retire a very rich camle. And my guys will win each and every election and you won't ever find out how.