I have been a computer programmer for over 26 years. I don’t know of any computer programmer, liberal or conservative, who thinks electronic voting is a good idea. We all know how easy it would be to skew the elections, either on purpose or by accident.
Sometimes paper is the right technology, and this is one of those times. What difference does it make if we don’t know the results of an election for a week or two? One of the lessons we should have taken away from the 2000 election is that we can go on quite well without knowing the outcome for several weeks. Another lesson is that electronic voting just exacerbates the problem of voter fraud. It does nothing to stop or minimize it.
Also, there should be an enforced chain of custody for these machines. Have the company certify that the machines were without error and zeroed when they left the factory, and each person who is in possession of the machine would have to sign the chain of custody until the audit has been completed.
Then, have draconian penalties for precincts that have errors greater than a reasonable cut-off level (say 0.0 to 0.1% of the total votes) for those who signed off on the chain of custody.
Exactly! The way the media “calls” the elections before all the polls are closed I think skews the results as well.
How true AbeLincoln. In most states the count is tabulated by SEIU employees, not that it means anything, since there is no transparency to the data acquisition process. Only paper ballots where the first count is performed at the local precinct with representatives of each party present retains any protection from fraud. Then, if the published tabulations don't agree with the local count the ballots can be retrieved from secure storage for a recount. Without that, or some similar very expensive alternative to protect the secrecy of ballots is expensive because issuing intelligent receipts is complex. Counting a thousand or so ballots by hand will hardly slow the reporting of decisions. Computerized counting was once said to have been for the convenience of the major media. Media was once claimed to actually own the agency, a private corporation, which did the counting - Voter News Service, if I recall correctly.
California will probably have a referendum based entirely upon mail=in ballots. With the jobs and retirement of SEIU employees at stake, and SEIU counting the ballots how trustworthy do we think that vote will be. It is blatant theft. They will steal the productivity of the working class until there is no productivity left, destroying their host.
California and Nevada have had enormous numbers of people all voting from the same house, all of whose ballots were in the same hand. They have decided election after election. It is part of how Harry Reid got elected, the comedian in Minnesota, the Governor of Washington State.
As Limbaugh pointed out there are now about 15 million government employees and 7 million in the manufacturing and farming sector. With the government counting votes we are losing our productivity and our freedoms. We are no longer a representative republic.
It needs to be a dual system that produces a paper trail, but the paper receipt needs to be dropped into a locked box before the voter leaves the poll to protect the voter against UNION thuggery if they had to show the receipt for who they voted for.
The receipt card could be made so that it could be quickly electronically scanned for recounting to make sure the electronic and hard trail match up.