Posted on 09/24/2003 10:28:36 AM PDT by bedolido
If about 75% of the cards have a hole punched in a particular column, the needle trick can turn that into 100%. If not enough people voted for Gore to start with, however, then punching through the stack becomes much harder.
In DuPage County (IL) they do it by equipping voting booths with pens.
Electronic audit trails are good if there are multiple cross-checks, enough of which are under the control of trusted people.
When someone makes a withdrawal from the ATM, he gets a record of the withdrawal; at the end of the month, he get a bank statement showing the withdrawal. The person can check the bank statement for consistency with the transactions he made, and can check to ensure that the change in his account balance is consistent with his transactions.
Meanwhile the machine can be audited to ensure that the amount of currency dispensed is consistent with the amount of money wired to it, and that all the money wired to it is traceable to someone's account.
Even if only a small fraction of people check their bank statements, large-scale systemic fraud is unlikely to escape unnoticed for long.
Unfortunately, secret ballots make this sort of cross-check auditing impossible. For various reasons, it is important that voters not be able to prove how they voted. Consequently, all evidence of how a person voted must be left with potentially-untrusted people. It is thus necessary to provide physical protections beyond those required for most financial transactions.
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