Researchers at Argonne National Labs have developed a $10-30 set of parts that can be inserted into a Diebold voting machine and used to alter votes. The machine can be opened by using a standard hotel minibar key, or a similar, easily copied key, and the parts can be inserted in a matter of seconds. Once the parts are inserted, votes can be altered by remote control from a distance of up to 1/2 mile (or I assume the device could be set to do a pre-programmed vote modification).
Researchers didn’t have to alter the machine’s software — in fact, no special knowledge of the machine’s software was required. They didn’t have to solder anything inside the machine, so the devices could be easily removed with little or no signs of tampering. Since machines often sit for weeks in church basements and school storage rooms, it’s easy to imagine a successful hack.
The is just another reminder that the voting machine procurement storm that followed Bush v Gore was mainly a boondoggle. All of the touchscreen-only machines are going to be invalidated by court order someday, and they’ll be thrown away and replaced by a paper-based system that’s counted by machine, or at minimum, a kludged-together touchscreen system that prints a human-readable printed ballot output. In the meantime, we’re just going to have to trust local election boards, which don’t have a lot of money or knowledge of technology.
Ash Can
I have a hard time believing that the Argonne guys are the first to do this. How comforting.
Xboxershorts
There is absolutely no machine counted ballot that can EVER be considered secure and accurate.
Hand marked, Hand counted PUBLIC transparent elections…ONLY.
The GoP would never win another general election.
Xboxershorts
@Ash Can,
They are not. Most of America has just refused to listen to Velvet Revolution or Brad Friedman who’s been screaming at the top of his lungs for a decade now about this fraud.
Every single independent test of Touch Screen, Optical Scan or any other form of electronic tabulation has found them extremely vulnerable to hacks.
This really is our Republic at risk.
arguingwithsignposts
How interesting that this article appears in the NYT today: As scorn for vote grows, protests erupt around the globe.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
No, no, no. Voter fraud can only be perpetrated by hordes of illegal aliens bused in by LIEberuls.
Therefore, everyone must pay to vote by ponying up the fee for a state ID card (+ fees for the documentation required to get a state ID card + transportation to various agencies where documentation can be acquired – time taken off from work to acquire said documentation…)
Democracy – ReaLAMErican(TM)(R)(C) Style.
SiubhanDuinne
I heard a piece recently (NPR I think but cannot swear to) that pointed out that the machines degrade over several years unless they are regularly maintained, and not many states/ municipalities have that kind of money available. So even if there weren’t so much as a hint of fraud or hacking, there’s still some likelihood of corrupted voting results. I agree, paper ballots, hand marked, and publicly counted by hand.
cmorenc
In Wake County, NC, for quite some time now we’ve used paper ballots where you use a black Sharpie to complete a couple-inch arrow next to the name of the candidate you’re voting for. The layout is always clear and unconfusing.
The ballots are then inserted into a machine, which optically scans and instantly tallies your votes, though all that is revealed until the polls closed is the total number of people who have voted using that machine that day.
RESULT: All the benefits of machine voting and counting AND a complete set of paper ballots for verification. The method of marking your paper ballot is so intuitively straightforward that eve a fairly slow-minded six-year old could immediately understand how to vote with it for president of the first-grade class, if they were so used. There’s NO excuse for unverifiable electronic-only voting, except to facilitate boondoggle contracts and facilitating potential undetectable fraud.
WereBear
And considering the hordes of people unemployed… cheaper.
beltane
These are the three pillars of a democracy. Always have been, and they always will.
Murc
This is actually in use in a number of places already. In Nevada (Clark County at least), you work the touchscreen, and it prints out a paper ballot (behind a screen where you can’t get at it but can see it) for you to confirm. Paper ballot wrong? You SEE it get shredded. It looks okay? You watch it go into a secure drum for storage and your vote is tallied.
Frankly I don’t understand the fetishism for voting machines. The only thing they have to recommend themselves is making the count quicker and, if you have ENOUGH of them, making voting itself quicker. I personally don’t mind waiting a couple days, a week tops, to know who won because a hundred million ballots have to be counted by hand.
barath
This is why Debra Bowen is awesome – she was the first one to get actual security experts to analyze all the machines used in California. And when they told her the touchscreen machines were all broken, she decertified all the machines and moved California back to fill-in-the-bubble paper ballots. (I was really hoping Bowen would replace Feinstein in the next election…)
Having worked as a poll worker a few times, I’ve seen how the touchscreen machines are both insecure and clumsy. Paper ballots can be filled out anywhere so a line never builds up, whereas there’s always a limited number of voting machines.
Xboxershorts
The greatest threat to the backbone of a democratic government is not voter fraud from the constituents, it is election fraud carried out by trusted insiders.
Ballot Box Stuffing is NOT actually carried out by dead people, ya know.
beltane
@arguingwithsignposts: Thanks for that link. Too many people think that the triumph of neo-liberalism is eternal, with no hope of ever being challenged just because there currently is not an organized movement to topple it. Those people are wrong. I think we are in the very early stages of a global movement that will eventually pose a serious challenge to the neo-liberal consensus we are stuck with now. The young people give me hope.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
The only accurate way to get a vote is to have every voter publicly state how they are voting for. Then their vote will be based on whoever threatened them the most.
Paper votes are susceptible to election officials handling. “Oops, this heavily Democrat district’s ballots were lost in a fire.” And do you really trust a scanning machine.
All technology, from the club on up, can be corrupted.
Might I suggest a better lock, and getting a better machine than Diebold built ones. Heck, the software for these was a homework assignment in my OS class.
bago
I’m just going to have to say that I am much more comfortable with an RSA Hash than I am with paper. Call me mathematically inclined.
Process-wise, you can’t give me a receipt for my vote? Hot-dogs get more paper…
barath
@bago:
Hmm… So the current emerging consensus among computer science researchers working on voting machines is that usability for the average person (and verifiability) is a major stumbling block of the cryptographic voting machines. (Nerdy nitpick: you’d need a full RSA signature, not just the hash of the signature. Also, an RSA signature is insufficient to prove that your vote was included in the final total; Chaum’s scheme has a way of ensuring this.)
Jim C
I’ve seen people circle the arrow. After they were told how to make the selection by connecting the segments with a line.
Loviatar
You know what I never got about these discussions, everyone pretty much trust ATMs, why not use a variant of an ATM.
.
– Walk up
– Swipe ID (could have person sitting there checking ID)
– Touchscreen
– Generate paper receipt
– Walk away
.
If its costs, while ATMs aren’t an “old” technology they are a settled technology with multiple competitors using similar technology that allows for cross usage of IDs (it couldn’t cost more than the current Diebold cluster fuck). Please explain to me if I’m missing something and should be worried the next time I use an ATM.
kay
HAVA (Help America Vote Act) was a typical bipartisan bill. Democrats got a lot, and Republicans got a lot.
A big driver for Democrats was to get rid of punch card balloting (almost 2 million votes were thrown out in the 2000 election, due to punch card voter-error-under votes or over votes or no votes). There were always huge problems with punch card balloting, but ballot issues don’t come to the fore until and unless it’s a close election. Florida had been throwing out votes for years on punch card balloting problems, as had everywhere else.
Another big issue in HAVA was compliance with the ADA (Americans With Disabilities Act).
I don’t think a focus on machine tampering is the way to go for liberals, Democrats and voting enthusiasts, because there are plenty of legal ways for Republicans to swing an election. The DNC commissioned a study after the 2004 Ohio (Prez) election, and they determined that 3% of eligible voters left the line and did not vote because of long lines in heavily Democratic areas.
Now, there’s a good faith reason those long lines might have happened: Kerry did enormous outreach to new (young) voters, and it worked, and first-time voters take longer to process in Ohio. They came out. Local bds of election in those areas can (rightfully) claim that turn-out was “unprecedented”. That we can fix.
I think unsubstantiated claims of “voter fraud” by Democrats muddle the issue, and put us on equal footing with the whole “ACORN-voter fraud” contingent in the GOP and punditry. It’s tailor-made for “both sides do it” idiotic reporting. It’s a trap.
I can document voter caging and purging in Florida. I can document how many voters are disenfranchised by second class (provisional) ballots and restrictive ID laws. It’s a better argument, because it’s not hypothetical: it happened, and it’s happening.
I read the widely-disseminated RFK piece in Rolling Stone on machine balloting, and, IMO, it hurt us.
I think a paper ballot marked by hand and counted by machine or by hand is the superior system, but if the GOP steals an election, they’re going to do it lawfully. I understand the concern, but, to me, we’re looking for zebras while the GOP run a whole herd of horses past us. If we want to say we can do two things at once, protect voters from lawful disenfranchisement tactics while looking at machine tampering, well, I disagree. We fail, all the time, at the most elementary and practical voter protection. We can’t even get them voted.
barath
@Loviatar:
Oddly enough, that’s what they did. Diebold is a major manufacturer of ATMs, and a lot of their touchscreen machines are poor imitations of their touchscreen ATMs. But that wasn’t enough, because unlike with an ATM, there’s no log you can look at later to see if the wrong amount was deducted. The main issue with touchscreen voting machines isn’t usability – it’s security.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@barath: I don’t think Loviator was talking about usability. There is an ATM in the hallway at my company, nowhere near a bank, yet you can use just about any ATM card at the machine. Seems those are pretty secure. Maybe there should be a voting room at various places where people vote, and we could have permanent voting machines. And, a little time before the election, the major parties and independent groups could coordinate an inspection to make sure that they are in the right order. And the design for the machines and the software could be made public.
kay
The worst trade Democrats made in HAVA was to give provisional balloting the federal law seal of approval. They tried to improve the provisional balloting process, but Republicans used that tinkering to prove that it was valid. It’s not.
Nationally, only 65% of provisional ballots are counted, but voters think they are voting. If we were refusing to allow people to vote, instead of handing them a second-class ballot that may or may not be counted, it would focus voter’s attention and there would be a huge outcry.
Yes or no. First class ballot or no ballot. There would be a national outcry in one election cycle if we were refusing ballots to all of the people that GOP-drafted laws are shunting to second-class ballots. Instead, we’re patting them on the head and sending them off to fill out a ballot that may or may not be counted, leaving them (somewhat) satisfied that they haven’t been outright disenfranchised, and they kinda sorta voted.
Napoleon
@barath:
Actually Diebold acquired some company in order to get some product that company sold (which may or may not have been ATMs or related to ATMs, I don’t recall). That company happen to have a division that made the voting machines. That is how they got into the business, by, in a sense, accident or inheridence.
Steve
@Loviatar: A paper receipt really isn’t worth much if the software can’t be trusted. Your receipt says you voted for Mondale, but the machine actually counted your vote for Reagan. You’ll never know.
The reason your ATM receipt works is that you get a bank statement in the mail that shows your deposits and transactions. So if one of your deposits or withdrawals is incorrect, you have the receipt to prove what really happened.
When you vote with paper ballots, even if the ballots are tabulated by machine, someone can audit the results later by hand-counting the ballots. But with the ATM method, an audit is impossible because all the hard evidence is out there in the hands of individual voters and there’s no way to gather and count them all.
barath
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
The thing is the security of a voting machine is about verifying several things, including:
1. That the voter’s intent was expressed on the ballot
2. That the ballot was counted in the subtotal for the precinct
3. That the precinct subtotals are counted in the total
Since there’s no record of any of the steps with electronic voting machines, their security is suspect. The reason ATMs work is that a) banks are responsible for errors and b) you as the customer can look at the record. (Ross Anderson wrote a classic paper that discusses what happened in the UK when banks weren’t responsible for ATM errors.)
barath
@Steve:
This is another reason Bowen is awesome – she not only mandated paper ballots, but a mandatory randomly-sampled 1% hand count, and if a discrepancy was found beyond some threshold, then a 5% hand count, and so on.
Exurban Mom
My precinct also has the “vote by touchscreen, confirm the paper readout of the vote, press VOTE to confirm it all” method. You watch the paper readout to ensure that it accurately reflects the votes you made. Of course, that would mean that someone could hack the count, and unless a paper recount was ordered, easily get away with it.
danimal
I propose that these cheap parts that can steal votes be called Acorn Kits.
Maybe that will get the attention of conservatives (assuming they care about the integrity of voting, an iffy proposition).
sam ayam
You want to help prevent voting machine fraud? Volunteer to work at the polls next year. Most precincts are shorthanded and could use folks with at least a passing understanding of computers. My wife and I both work the polls. We’re in our mid-50s and we’re the youngsters in the group. Plus you actually get paid for your time.
ellenelle
having followed this “boondoggle” since 2000, i cannot tell you how gratifying it is to be validated over and over and over again. tho of course the damn truth of it is the intention behind all these various election manipulations is becoming increasingly clear, even conspiratorial.
which is why, when everyone else has forgotten all about 2004 and allowed themselves to blame kerry for losing to bush, i still follow the ongoing lawsuit against kenneth blackwell like a hawk.
Steve
Honestly, if it’s so easy to rig an election, the easiest way to dramatize the problem is to rig an election. Surely there is some hacker out there willing to risk jail time for the cause.
All it would take is one blatantly false result to ensure that no one ever uses that type of voting machine again.
Ex Regis
The problem with paper ballots that are NOT checked by a machine is voter error in filling out the ballot. It seems that ballots submitted to optical scanners, which check for user mistakes as mine does, is the best way to minimize errors and provide an excellent paper trail.
Then sampling can be used at summary time to increase confidence in the results. The sample can be automatically separated by the scanner at scan time. E.g., every fiftieth ballot.
Humans make mistakes counting votes and the mistake rate for repetitive activities is surprisingly high. So multiple counters need to be employed. This gets to be expensive and time-consuming, especially when trying to decipher the “intent” of the voter in an ambiguous ballot.
CarolDuhart
Vote by mail. It works for Oregon/Washington/California and many Western states. No long lines, people can vote at home with leisure, there’s a running tally of who’s moved or not from whether or not ballots can get to the proper people.
The people who handle the ballots are postal workers who are officially non-partisan-the mail has to be delivered to who it’s addressed to, and no one wants to commit that felony just to skew votes that may or may not go to someone you don’t like.
The votes are scanned, and the vote-counters are centralized where party officials can watch the counting with ease.
Rand Careaga
Some years ago I wondered idly whether Diebold might be better off marketing the susceptibility of its technology to manipulation with the approach of “It’s a feature, not a flaw.” The result was…The Diebold Variations.
gex
It is at this point in the discussion that I like to point out that ES&S set up headquarters on John Galt Blvd. (or more likely got the street named that after the fact). Totally impartial vendor there…
jwest
By all means, let’s vote by mail.
That way, everyone can bring their ballots to the union hall and fill them out with the help of the Local’s thugs. Non-union voters can take their ballots to the community organizer for guidance and receive a few packs of cigarettes and a pint of cheap wine for voting “correctly”.
schrodinger's cat
It is ridiculous for every state to have its own set of voting procedures. India has a much bigger population, a significant proportion of it illiterate and overall does a better job with its elections. They have a federal level body called the Election Commission to oversee the general elections. Its top official is a career bureaucrat not a political appointee.
Stefan
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
How do you know? Sure, you know you always get your money, and you know that when you put money in it appears in your account, but you really have no independent way of verifying whether it actually is or is not secure.
bkny
read about mike connell sometime…
Judas Escargot
@Steve:
Solution: Tally the paper receipts in a separate vote-count (different teams). When the machine count vs. paper count error exceeds some threshold, you know there’s a problem.
BTW, most of the touch-screen voting machines are built on Windows XP, perhaps the least secure and easily hacked operating system ever devised. But I doubt that any truly technical person is involved in voting machine selection these days.
gex
@Loviatar: Awesome. Then close down the ID issuing authorities in Democratic districts while expanding their hours in Republican districts ala Wisconsin! What could be simpler or fairer than *requiring* a specific identification card? /snark
gex
@Loviatar: Awesome. Then close down the ID issuing authorities in Democratic districts while expanding their hours in Republican districts ala Wisconsin! What could be simpler or fairer than *requiring* a specific identification card? /snark
Not everyone has an ATM card or even a bank account. What is common place and easy for people of reasonable means isn’t necessarily common place or easy for the poor.
gex
Not everyone has an ATM card or even a bank account. We already know that banks are reluctant to set up shop in certain areas. What’s common place and easy for people of reasonable means isn’t necessarily so for the poor.
Steve
@Judas Escargot: Huh? How do you plan to tally the paper receipts after everyone takes them home with them?
Stefan
A paper receipt really isn’t worth much if the software can’t be trusted. Your receipt says you voted for Mondale, but the machine actually counted your vote for Reagan. You’ll never know.
And paper receipts are only worthwhile if they’re all immediately collected from the voters and then hand-counted, with their total checked against the machine. If you give the receipt to to the voter, half of them will wind up in the trash a block from the polling place.
Stefan
@Steve:
All it would take is one blatantly false result to ensure that no one ever uses that type of voting machine again.
Just as all it would take to eliminate the Electoral College is one blatant example of the Supreme Court overturning the popular vote by awarding the election to the man who actually received less votes…
Ash Can
@Rand Careaga: THOSE ARE BRILLIANT! I love them!
Stefan
Humans make mistakes counting votes and the mistake rate for repetitive activities is surprisingly high. So multiple counters need to be employed. This gets to be expensive and time-consuming,
Two things we have a lot of: money and people available and willing to perform these tasks. So what if its expensive and time-consuming? So is a ten year occupation of Afghanistan, and we seem perfectly willing treasure and time on that. This just has to be part of the cost of doing business of having a democracy.
Villago Delenda Est
@danimal:
If a Democrat wins, that’s evidence of electoral fraud, right there.
The vile disciple of Sith Lord Cheney, Mary Matalin, came out and SAID, on election night 2000, that a projection of Gore winning Florida was “wrong”. Because she knew that the fix was on and it shouldn’t have been that way.
Stefan
Vote by mail. It works for Oregon/Washington/California and many Western states. No long lines, people can vote at home with leisure, there’s a running tally of who’s moved or not from whether or not ballots can get to the proper people.
Except vote by mail endangers the secret ballot. One can easily imagine cases of a boss, abusive husband, boyfriend, father, etc., standing over someone’s shoulder while they fill in the ballot at home, or of unscrupulous Republicans paying people for their ballots.
Yutsano
@jwest: And yet…this has never happened. Except in your fevered imagination. I love it when you just phone it in.
Villago Delenda Est
@Stefan:
Sure. Right. That’s been brought up, repeatedly, as a concern. Turns out that there’s nothing but anecdotal handwaving going on, not a scintilla of hard data to support it.
Of course, vote by mail takes place is in a few enlightened states, not vile protofascist shitholes like Arizona, Texas, and South Caroline.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
The thing about voting is that no method is both perfectly secure and private. You cannot be sure that your vote was counted correctly and added to the total correctly unless you follow your vote to the place that makes the final decision. And, by definition, you have lost your privacy. Otherwise, you let people know how you are going to vote, which means that you are open to intimidation.
What we are trying to find is a way to balance security and privacy to ensure that the vote at the end represents the will of the people, even if the final count does not have any errors.
FollowtheDough
Well, Well, where to start? How about the fact that Brad Blog has given more than enough suspicion never to trust ANY of these companies ever again. The fact that democrats still think these machines are a “non effin factor” (as some might say) is probability that the GOP will engage in hacking these machines over and over again. Why? Because there is still disbelief that this would be going on. These people haven’t joined us in the 21st century.
The democrats have become such a gullible party that the leaders honestly think that the GOP is going to give up their corrupt district seats in a fair fight w/ touch screen technology.
I know that hurts a few who can’t imagine that their chosen political party is naive. But you can’t play chess when the board squares keep moving around and there are endless pieces. It’s way past over due for tough measures on these private corporations who make shoddy technology for our country on purpose. Yet we still have fools who think this is fantasy. You know what is fantasy? To trust any corporation who is invested in their best interest to build monopolies in this country. Yet that is what the democratic party has done.
Obama is going to lose so many votes to these machines from state to state. The 11-D chess wizard (As some call him) probably doesn’t have the faintest clue because he’s in bubblevania. A place where you blame “Professional Left” for not showing up in elections. Here’s a start for the Obama administration: Try investigating the biggest possible theft in all of history. You scared? Man up.
All of these companies are shoddy for a reason. And no, it’s not because the machines deteriorate. These machines glitch right off the assembly line. It’s likely the sketchy characters involved in this business who deliberately make a inferior product have a role in the defective nature of this technology. The research is there and it’s time to bring the battering ram and shut these companies one by one.
Ash Can
@Yutsano: I still think “jwest” is a DougJ persona. Has he ever said anything at all that wasn’t just over-the-top wacko? I call spoof; the material is just too fucking silly.
Stefan
Turns out that there’s nothing but anecdotal handwaving going on, not a scintilla of hard data to support it.
Yes, but the fact that this is a crime that by its nature would take place entirely in private, at home, by two people who’d both be in legal jeopardy if it came out, means that there wouldn’t necessarily be that much hard data. But if you can imagine someone doing it, be certain that they are.
Villago Delenda Est
@Stefan:
I can imagine quite a lot. People imagine there is a supreme being who controls the weather. Texas is still on fire.
Your concern has been noted, and dealt with in a manner worthy of it.
wrb
@jwest:
That is a great idea.
Here we have mail-in ballots and we get Kudu-Crawlin’ Red, Abyssinian Ned , Fats and Washboard Sam, Butcher Knife Totin’ Annie, Fast Talking Fanny and a lot of other Republicans to switch ’cause down at the Union Hall we pitch a ball and they can romp and tromp till midnight, fuss and fight till daylight
We pitch a wang dang doodle all night long.
Combine mail-in ballots with wang-dang-doodle and the Republican party has no hope.
CarolDuhart
@Stefan: Would something like this stay under the radar long? Somebody would brag about the stuff they got for their vote, and indeed in order to get enough votes to make such an attempt worthwhile, word would have to get around. In a close race, it would be enough to trigger an investigation and quite a few prosecutions and a recount for certain. And with vote by mail, anyone who doesn’t want that sort of thing can easily outvote the incentive people. Not that many people want to sell their vote to the highest bidder, or Republicans would simply hand out cash to win impoverished districts.
deep cap
@arguingwithsignposts: The NEETs will change this world.
wrb
@Stefan:
Having lived with vote-by-mail years, none of those seem remotely likely on any scale that could approach the problems with outer methods.
Buying ballots sounds good, but
a) they check signatures (a county commissioner went to jail because his wife voted for him when he was in the hospital)
b) It is a major crime, and anyone doing it would have to do it somewhat publicly in order to attract sellers.
Too risky.
A benefit is that you don’t get swamped with so many calls and ads in the last days of the election because most people have already voted.
fasteddie9318
If we would only return to the tried and tested system where the franchise is only given to white male property owners, jwest could sleep much better at night. Why do you commie scum hate jwest so much?
singfoom
I’ve always voted on the paper ballots that you feed to the machine, except once when I voted early in downtown Chicago. Then it was a touchscreen, but there was a receipt (behind plastic) where I could see my vote before I was done. At least that would be better.
But yeah, the whole network in some places was set up as a man in the middle. Network architects smarter than me have been saying that for a long time…
This is just one plank of the bullshit money party. You think it’ll stop if we all switch back to paper ballots? If you honestly think that your vote, or the vote of any one citizen matters more than that of a large corporation or a real citizen (read wealthy donor), then I have a bridge to sell you.
CarolDuhart
@jwest: No need. The union can simply mail their list of recommended candidates to their members, along with websites of same, and call back to remind people to vote, and maybe even for whom to vote. Indeed, in a vote by mail state (I studied this, I live in a hybrid state) everybody probably sends out reams of voter guides and dozens of calls. Once a person has said they voted, that ends it-the calls, the rushed knocks at the door.
From someone who studied it in college, I can see this method enhancing democracy. Time for voters to inform themselves, no more elections influenced by weather, a clear paper trail. No more voter caging, long lines for an inadequate amount of machines-and speaking of the machines, what about the fact you only need a few of them, and that just for counting? The concern is about the machines casting the vote for you, and how hard it is to detect. The mailed votes are already cast, just need to be counted. Central balloting can be easily monitored by dedicated party members, and the staffing can be made non-partisan by design.
BigHank53
Your faith in our court system is touching.
singfoom
Also, apologies to peeps if I’m harping on this, but why in this fucking day and age are federal elections not a real federal holiday like Christmas or Thanksgiving. Ostensibly, that day is MORE important than those secular holidays, yet, no one gets it off.
I’ve gotta write my senators/congresscritters and see if they can get behind making federal elections a federal holiday, to help get out the vote, ALL the votes, regardless of partisan side…
Sloegin
The only way we’ll ever get rid of these stupid voting machines is when there’s a clearly rigged election voting in a Democrat. All the winger media will go apes**t, and we’ll be back to paper ballot faster than you can say November.
Judas Escargot
@Steve:
Sorry, unclear use of the word ‘receipt’ on my part. The idea is that you look at the slip of paper, read it, verify your vote, then place that in a container.
You don’t really need to take a paper copy home, do you?
Stefan
I can imagine quite a lot. People imagine there is a supreme being who controls the weather.
Yes, because imagining that there is a god is in exactly the same category of probability as imagining that if a wealthy Republican was presented with an opportunity for stealthy vote-buying, he might do it. Obviously we have no real-life examples of god, just as we have no real-life examples of Republicans engaging in extensive voting fraud. One is as likely as the other.
MattR
@singfoom: I have suggested combining election day with veteran’s day and making it a full federal holiday. I can’t think of a better way to honor those who fought for our freedoms than to exercise the right to vote.
(EDIT: After further review, there are actually several other ways we could better honor our veterans, including properly taking care of their medical needs when they return from action. But I still think using that day to vote would be a good idea)
henrythefifth
Clearly the answer to this is to arrest those pesky scientists for tampering with vote machines and to shut down that soshulist Argonne lab!
Kola Noscopy
Reason # 13,759 why I don’t trust the Democratic Party establishment: Almost twelve years after Bush v. Gore, they’ve done zilch to guarantee the integrity of an individual vote.
I wonder why that might be?
Also, too, reason #4,279 why registering to vote is a joke: There is no guarantee your vote will be counted as cast.
As a resident voter in Broward County, Florida in 2,000 I know this to be a fact.
Stefan
@singfoom:
Seconded. It’s absurd. If we can get Columbus Day off, surely we should get Election Day off.
catclub
@Steve: “All it would take is one blatantly false result to ensure that no one ever uses that type of voting machine again.”
True, but I have heard that recruiting suicide bombers is not very easy, also.
catclub
@singfoom: Easy peasy.
Becuase then more people would vote, silly.
Kola Noscopy
@kay:
So, Kay, what has your Democratic party been doing on this issue for oh, the last twelve years? I mean, in the way of actual nationwide results? Jayzus, all this supposed confusion over voting appears to me a feature, not a bug of the U.S. system.
Kola Noscopy
@ellenelle:
Thank you for your very rational observation. However, the word “conspiracy” is not allowed at BJ Establishment Politics Central. NO ONE in the U.S. system would EVER conspire with anyone else to steal an election here, don’t you know that, silly?
Villago Delenda Est
@singfoom:
In civilized countries, they hold elections on weekends, when they know they’ll have the maximum number of eligible voters free of work related obligations.
Vote by mail solves this problem also. It’s worked very well in Oregon, despite concerns about “fraud”…there was an attempt by the winger rag American Spectator to djin up “voter fraud” in the 90’s in Oregon that no one in the counties cited by the rag had ever heard of.
One thing that drives this desire to “instantly know” is the swine of the media who need results, now. Purely electronic voting caters to this ridiculous demand.
FollowtheDough
There should be a thread every week by BradBlog on this blog rather than talk about why someone on the left has wronged the democrats. You might begin to see that the research that is constantly ignored by the majority of progressive bloggers is beginning to pile up.
You should see the diagrams/schematics for some of these machines. If this was any other business, you would get sued. Your corporation would go up in Flames. But for some reason the US Govt trusts e-vote charlatans with our elections. I think the new mascot for democrats should officially be charlie brown when he misses the football.
FollowtheDough
One other thing I’d like to point out of those who are confident on voting on Paper Ballot. You still are getting duped. Because that paper ballot is going to be a counted by an optical scanner owned by who? You guessed it. 5 4..3..2..1 Now you can scream.
Kola Noscopy
@singfoom:
Yet ANOTHER feature, not a bug of the American political system. You think they want the riff raff who have to fucking work for a living to vote?
kay
@Kola Noscopy:
That made me laugh it’s so belligerent, so I’m going to answer. You could just ask nicely, you know. It wouldn’t kill you. You don’t get “extra points” for being confrontational.
Anyway. I don’t know where you want me to start.
What’s your specific complaint/issue with or around voting? Is this it?
What does that mean, either in terms of your experience as a Florida voter in 2000 or generally? By “integrity” do you mean “gets counted and then recorded properly”?
singfoom
@Villago Delenda Est: @catclub: @Kola Noscopy:
Well, then, I think it’s time to get off our asses and do something about that. I’ve got to figure out the details of what I want to do, but this should be an easy fucking thing to get supported.
I dunno, I’ve got to think through some ideas, but a site to agitate for that and to help people write letters to their congress person / senators shouldn’t be that hard to put together.
Kola Noscopy
@kay:
Basically, yes.
My belligerence stems from voting in 2,000 down there, and watching the results be manipulated by the Repubs with weak to no response from the Dems, watching Katherine Harris pre-steal the election down there via expunging the voter rolls with weak to no Dem response, watching more shenanigans in Broward and Ohio and elsewhere in 2004 with weak to no response from Dems (and watching Kerry concede and fly off to vacation like he couldn’t care less); and of course 8 years of Bushism insanity with weak to no Dem response, and on and on…my “beligerence” stems from watching you and others act as cogs in the obviously corrupt and/or inept Democratic party, which lends validity to what I believe is a deeply rotten organization and system. How’s that? :D
You’re always advocating voting registration and voter outreach, yet here we are almost twelve years later discussing how the votes your voters cast are in no way guaranteed to be counted as cast.
Does something not smell rotten to you?
Kola Noscopy
@singfoom:
That is ADORABLE.
Bruce Webb
The funniest (as in ‘not funny at all’) thing about the whole Diebold boondoggle was their bare faced claim that there just didn’t exist technology to provide a paper backup.
Which must have come as a surprise the guys at the factory given that Diebold is and always has been one of the largest makers of ATMs in the world. And from Day One ATMs were able to give you a printed receipt and so obviously have the ability to print and retain one.
Couple this with the fact that the Chairman of Diebold was some top official in the Bush Ohio Re-election campaign and publicly ‘promised’ that Bush would in fact win Ohio and you didn’t have to be the brightest bulb to start shining at about 1000 watts worth. Of course the integrity of the vote was guaranteed by the Secretary of State. OOOPS, Ken Blackwell was also State Co-Chair for Bush.
The only thing more outrageous was the 2002 Max Cleland election that had him way out ahead in polling immediately before the election only to have the machines report a stunning loss. After which someone discovered a somehow made publicly accessible file on the company server with the name ‘Rob Georgia’. Which was explained as just being some file related to Georgia owned by a staffer named Rob and obviously couldn’t have any relation to any attempt to rob the Georgia election. Well alrighty then. I guess the press was too busy writing stories about Iraqi Balsa Wood Drones and Bio-Weapons Trucks and Yellow-Cake to actually ask questions.
Man that was a shitty decade. And doesn’t seem to have actually ended.
Kola Noscopy
@Bruce Webb:
But what’s really awesome is the way the Democratic party has reacted to all of what you listed with a take no prisoners, kick ass onslaught of public relations/publicity/legislation/followup to guarantee that none of that will ever happen again.
Oh, wait…
catclub
@Bruce Webb: This is starting to sound like Zinn’s People’s History, really depressing.
kay
@Kola Noscopy:
I actually don’t advocate voter registration (per se) and outreach. I feel strongly that administering elections is a bed-rock responsibility of the state, so not up to political operations or activists. I simply ask that it be done competently, according to the rules, and with a practical eye towards the reality of people’s lives.
What I do advocate is vigorous opposition to Republicans changing state law to disenfranchise people, including challenging their disenfranchisement laws by referendum, if they manage to slip one by. I also advocate that voters be aware of the rules and insist they be followed, exactly.
In terms of changing the rules, your question has about 50 parts, so I’ll address this:
Harris, who is a crook, was able to purge voter rolls (partly) because the registration data was maintained in an archaic, fragmented manner:
HAVA is the law that came about as a result of the 2000 election. It’s a typical piece of bipartisan election legislation, because it has compromises and trade-offs. This is one of the better parts:
HAVA requires states develop a single, uniform, official, centralized, interactive computerized statewide voter registration list defined, maintained, and administered at the State level. (Previously, voter registration lists were maintained by local officials.) HAVA requires the statewide list be coordinated with other agency databases within the state. HAVA also requires regular “maintenance” of the statewide list including removing ineligible voters and duplicate names are eliminated in accordance with the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA).
That’s important to Democrats, because it’s a fail-safe. If Republicans want to purge voters, they aren’t going to be able to rely on a county or state-wide voter list. They have to cross-check it with other databases. No more imaginary felons.
Notice “in accordance with NVRA” for removing voters. That means Republicans have to comply with federal law when removing voters.
I’m not a fan of post-election challenges as a strategy. The idea is to get the process right before the election, and put some federal law in so crooks can’t rely on (and manipulate) state law. A lot less dramatic, but more effective, and “fairer”, actually. If it’s done right we don’t have to rely on Justice Scalia being a “good person”, or someone or other making a compelling argument. The process can be the protection.
kay
@Kola Noscopy:
I disagree with (almost) all Democrats on Al Gore. I think once we were in court, rather than in another forum (like the House) he had to accept the Supreme Court decision. There’s no appeal.
That’s Rule ‘O Law that we’re all so fond of here. If you’re going to tell me conservatives wouldn’t have accepted it, well, I know that.
catclub
@FollowtheDough: The joys of the low bidder, combined with cronyism.
Catsy
@jwest:
Once again, conservative projection at its finest.
Not sure why you bother here, troll. No one takes your bad faith garbage seriously.
les
@wrb:
My dog, I’m not the only Savoy Brown fan around?
LanceThruster
Move along, nothing to see here.
wrb
@les:
Savoy did it good but song belongs to The Mighty Wolf
Studio Release
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEjUfu9-W-w
London Session w white guys (Clapton etc):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEUEx8olggw
You tube doesn’t seem to have any of the romp & stomp live versions.
The Wolf had a presence.
Built for comfort
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlBqo8Pco_A
wrb
••• Your comment is awaiting moderation •••
@les:
Savoy did it great (just listening, thanks for the reminder) but song belongs to The Mighty Wolf
Studio Release
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEjUfu9-W-w
London Session w white guys (Clapton etc):
[link deleted to escape moderation]
You tube doesn’t seem to have any of the romp & stomp live versions.
The Wolf had a presence like no other.
And was built for comfort
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlBqo8Pco_A
moderateindy
I work as an election judge in suburban Chicago. You have the choice of taking a paper ballot that gets recorded by an optical scanner, or a touchscreen. The touchscreen gives a printed confirmation ballot that is kept behind a screen, but allows you to review what votes you cast. This way, as long as people review the paper ballot for accuracy, there is an official, easily reviewable and accurate paper trail. There are other advantages to using the touchscreen, the type tends to be larger and easier to read, There are multiple languages that can be accessed, it gives you many chances to review your vote before “casting your ballot” it won’t let you accidentally over-vote, it tells you if you did not vote for a particular office, and you can’t accidentally spoil your ballot by marking your ballot incorrectly. You would be surprised by how many people over-vote for a race on the paper ballots which is detected by the optical scanner, which spits the ballot back out, then; when they are told of the mistake, instead of going back and filling out a new ballot, they just say forget it and have you enter the ballot as is.
With any form there is a way to cheat. The key is to have a verifiable paper trail, which is how the touch screens that we use work. Software can be hacked at any number of points along the way, from the election site to government computers that record and compile the results. The touchscreens are actually more reliable than optical scanners or straight hand counted ballots. Realize that unscrupulous people can easily negate any vote on a paper ballot by simply over-voting on any race where they don’t like the result. The scanner only keeps a running total of how many people have voted on the counter visible to the public. If the machine can be easily hacked, it wouldn’t be that difficult to mess with the paper ballot. While you couldn’t add votes that would pass an audit, you could easily take away votes from a candidate you didn’t like. If you want to take an easy check for fraud, just look at the overall results. If there are more votes cast for down the line races, than for the big ticket races, there’s a good chance of shenanigans.
The paper trail left by the touchscreen is much tougher to screw with. Of course, if audits aren’t done, it doesn’t matter if an accurate record exists.
FollowtheDough
@moderateindy:
This is my point. There are progressives who constantly spout use a paper ballot. Democratic politicians especially love saying this. “You can use a paper ballot” But they don’t pay attention to the investigative research on Optical Scanners. This equipment is all in collusion of being inferior/flimsy or sabotaged on purpose. It’s been proven countless times.
The optical scanners have probably lost as many votes as the touch screens. But the difference of past election theft is they can multiply the theft many times over then ever before. This would all be cleared up though if we could see the source code in these machines to see if it was designed to sabotage/infiltrate/hack. I’m guessing………It starts w/ a “Y”
Here’s a little reminder for everyone why we probably have won more elections in the past decade then we care to think:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dV67u370Pg
Brad Friedman
@kay: Don’t know who you are, kay, but I’ll go on the premise that you actually believe the excuses you just posted concerning what happened in 2004.
It seems you left the part out about there being fewer machines in minority precincts than there were even in the primary election.
As to the DNC “study” you site, I have spoken with, let’s say, high ranking officials involved in that study. It was bullshit, meant to, largely, let Kerry off the hook for not having challenged that election.
To suggest that verifiable concerns about e-voting, as demonstrated time and again by world class independent scientists around the globe, are the equivalent of the GOP screaming “ACORN voter fraud!” is to insult a whole bunch of computer science and security experts who actually know what they’re talking about (unlike in the case of GOP “voter fraud” rhetoric), who can actually demonstrate the dangers discussed (unlike in the case of GOP “voter fraud” rhetoric) and ultimate serve only to damage your own self-interests.
As someone said near the top of this thread, I’ve been covering this stuff for nearly a decade now. I’ll keep at it for another decade if I have to. But one of the reasons I have to, is thanks to folks like you who forward unsubstantiated nonsense meant to play into Democratic Party fears, while the real concerns about election fraud are then not dealt with, in election after election after election (in which your party tends to get hurt by these problems…over and over and over again.)
Brad Friedman
@moderateindy said:
Here’s what they likely haven’t told you when you go to work as a pollworker in Chicago (and thank you for that, btw). Most folks don’t review their paper ballots (as MIT/Caltech told us), of those who do, some two-thirds don’t notice vote flips by the computer (as Rice U. told us), and either way, those “paper trails” are not actually counted, the internal electric numbers are. The “paper trail” is a chimera.
Now, in the event someone does bother to count those “paper trails” (they don’t), and presuming most check their “paper trails” (they don’t), and presuming most catch vote-flipping on those “paper trails” (they don’t), there is still no way for any of us to know after an election that any of that occurred. It is still 100% unverifiable faith-based voting.
It is strictly impossible to prove that any vote ever cast on a touch-screen (DRE) during any election has ever been recorded accurately for any candidate or initiative on any ballot in any election, as per any voter’s intent.
That should concern you.
While it’s true that any form can be defrauded, potentially, there is one form of voting that is extraordinarily difficult to defraud — at least without a high probability of getting caught, and a low probability of being able to carry out enough fraud to affect an election. That is hand-marked, hand-counted paper ballots, tallied publicly at the polling place, on Election Night, in front of all parties (and all video cameras, if you like) with results posted decentrally at the polling place before ballots are ever moved anywhere.
Good luck trying to defraud that system.
You disinformed fantasies about touch-screen voting being, somehow, a safer or better form of voting are exactly that: a fantasy, without a shred of evidence to support it.
And yes, the other commenter is correct, optically-scanned paper ballots can be similarly gamed when they are counted, in secret, by the optical-scanner. (See HBO’s 2006 Emmy-nominated documentary “Hacking Democracy” for more info on that, if you’d actually like to educate yourself on these points, rather than pass off scurrilous, long-ago debunked nonsense. Thanks!)
uptown
All mail-in ballots. It’s really that simple. Works fine in the great state of WA.
FollowtheDough
@Brad Friedman:
We have to say it over and over ,Brad. Because this meme is everywhere. “IF you don’t trust the voting machines, you can use a paper ballot” The Paper Ballot is connected to the ELECTRONIC VOTING debacle. It’s all under the same private umbrella of votes that can be lost in the ether instantly.
There is no pen/pencil/marker/paper , that is what we are getting at. And that should be your moment of revelation in Black Box voting. It’s not a game any of us want to play. The evidence is there,ladies and gentlemen. The consensus is clear. From Stanford to MIT to Princeton, the studies have more than enough to take these allegations seriously. These companies are defective and they should all be fired from any election. I wouldn’t have them be in charge of a 4th grade classroom monitor election in Wallawalla Washington
And yes, we will continue to lose elections due to this problem for one simple reason. The public participation in voting is going to go in the toilet in the near future. And this is KEY: That thin line margin is a doorway for the GOP to bring in the E-Voting to theft wins for their side. And if you don’t think they will do it, you are a sucker.
moderateindy
@Brad Friedman:
Seriously, you think that counting ballots in front of everyone is foolproof? Then you are high. Do You Think there is some great vetting process to become a judge? It would take nothing to either bribe a set of judges or have partisan judges infiltrate the other side. Every time I judge they ask me whether I want to be a D or R judge. I say whichever, because I’m just there to make sure people get to vote. But you could easily be a partisan R and go through the training representing yourself as a D. There aren’t enough party officials to cover a small percentage of voting places. So you could easily have 4 right wingers as judges screwing with the paper ballots any time they felt like it. I now for a fact that Dems in the city use to cheat all the time back in the butterfly ballot days by punching an extra hole and over-voting races in which they didn’t like the outcome
Also, a hand count might be easily done in rural Iowa, but in the last Presidential Election we had an entire sheet front and back of judges that had to be voted on for retention. So you are gonna ask an election judge that is already working at least a 15 hour day to work a 17 or 18 hour day? Good luck with that! Especially considering the average age of an election judge has to be near 60. Even in a crappy economy Cook County had trouble finding enough judges in the last midterm.
Your argument is that people don’t review their paper ballot on the touch screens? Didn’t I say that it only works if they do, and if there are audits? And by the way, people do review their ballots on the big races, and no one has ever detected their vote being flipped. And I’ve never even heard of such a thing. So my guess is your MIT/Rice studies are worthless, because even if a small percentage reviewed it and only a third caught the flipping that would still leave a statistical impossibility that catching such vote flipping would go unnoticed. Plus, consider the ridiculousness of how they tested their theory. People do review the races they care about. People wisely don’t trust touchscreens, and constantly check to make sure that the tape recorded their vote correctly. Of course, I’m not some grad student at MIT administering some silly lab test, I only have the anecdotal evidence of a dozen or so elections in a multiple precinct polling place to go by.
Oh and if you wish,I can give you more than one anecdote about people going ape-shit believing their vote was being stolen because the tape ran out before recording their entire vote, and them thinking that we were cheating by opening the box to replace the tape so it could finish printing, but yeah you’re right you read a study somewhere so people must not review their votes on the paper.
Ask yourself, do you really trust that the hyper partisan red states will have election judges that are Democrats? Chicago has the same problem finding Republican judges. I’m in a suburban region that has everything from working class to CEOs, so our judges are pretty evenly split politically. But I guarantee you that such is not the case in places like Texas or Kansas etc. Your hand count is just as easily compromised as any other form. Cameras or not.
Brad Friedman
@uptown, who said:
Hate to spoil the day here too. But, “Why ‘Vote-by-Mail’ Elections are a Terrible Idea for Democracy”
Brad Friedman
@moderateindy:
“Foolproof”? Nothing is foolproof. By far the most difficult system to game without getting caught and/or affecting the results of an election, absolutely. The most transparent way to count? Absolutely. In the bargain offering the most confidence in our democracy? Without a doubt.
If you don’t understand that, you either haven’t studied the issue, or know nothing about precinct-based hand-counting, or are a bad guy. I’ll presume the latter isn’t the case.
Really? That’d be kinda tough to get away with in a real hand-count system, where teams are randomly compiled, where the public and all parties (and video cameras) are all rolling, and where everything is double-checked multiple times by multiple people.
You may wish to educate yourself. I’d strongly recommend Nancy Tobi’s: Hands-On Elections: An Informational Handbook for Running Real Elections, Using Real Paper Ballots, Counted by Real People
And what jurisdiction is that? Because whoever does that ought to be reported and/or fired. Have you contacted anybody to complain? Have you told the local Ds or Rs about it? I suspect they’d not like it and would make sure that doesn’t happen again.
True. Which is why precinct-based hand-counting doesn’t rely on “trust” of any one party or person, or even group of people.
Not if you know how precinct-based hand-counting is supposed to work. (And yes, there seem to be plenty of folks in the 40% of NH towns, and elsewhere, that count by hand at the precinct to make sure nobody screws with anything.)
In the meantime, it takes just ONE insider on an electronic system to flip an entire race with almost no possible of detection. Ever.
Really? Did you report them? Of course, they’d not be able to do that with a full transparent hand-marked paper ballot system, hand-counted at the precinct in front of everyone on election night.
Nope. Now we see that you have no clue what you’re talking about here. Fresh counting crews come in at close of polls (and it’s much easier to find ’em, because it’s after business day is over. Again, see NH, see that book I linked to above. Educate yourself.)
When they are paid crap, asked to work impossibly long hours, and it’s during a work day, what do you expect? Counters brought in after work (with all the money one could save from ditching the e-voting garbage, as well!) is an entirely different story.
Well they don’t and they don’t. Got a Plan B?
Um. You really need to do a bit of studying up on the issue, amigo. Try searching for “vote flip BRAD BLOG” and see what you mind find out there.
See above. You’re WAY in over your head.
And yet, in studies, when they are specifically told to review every race at the end, two-thirds of them don’t notice their vote has flipped. Weird, huh?
But if you’re not a big believer in science, and peer-reviewed studies and such, you may have your own “evidence”.
And your evidence for that would be?
And, btw, presuming, as you say, “the tape recorded their vote correctly,” who counts the tapes? I know election officials don’t. They use the (invisible) electronic numbers.
I know. Those high-falootin’ elitist in the ivory halls don’t know nothin’ about nothin’! Your anecdotal best guesses are much more valuable. Sorry I wasted 10 years of my life! I shoulda just come to you in the first place for the real facts!
Actually, it’s much more than just studies. Perhaps you’ll wish to review the couple thousand pages of minutes and evidence from the recounts of the recent Supreme Court election in Wisconsin, where it was discovered that DRE “paper trails” didn’t exist at all in many places, because poll workers had put the tapes in backwards and — wait for it — nobody noticed during the entire election because nobody complained!
Wonder how that could happen?! Weird, eh?
I true no one. The best election officials in the word (look up Ion Sancho of Leon County, FL, for example), will tell you, “Trust nobody” in an election. And yet, with electronic voting, we have no choice but to “trust” in officials and in completely secret vote counting. When it comes to DRE (touch-screens) you are casting a 100% unverifiable vote. If that’s your choice, sorry, it ain’t mine, and it’s antethetical to the citizens oversight required for government of the people, by the people and for the people.
Are you in DuPage County, IL by any chance? Let me know.
Until then, amigo, I strongly recommend you get out there and actually educate yourself about your own democracy. Before it’s even more lost than it already is.
moderateindy
And yet, in studies, when they are specifically told to review every race at the end, two-thirds of them don’t notice their vote has flipped. Weird, huh?
So that leaves 1/3 of people in a study that they could care less about and have no motivation to be sure it’s accurate, that do notice. So tell me how it is that there aren’t a crapload of instances, of people complaining about their vote being flipped?
Putting tapes in backwards? Urban myth, or about as likely as the ridiculous voter fraud charges the Repubs chuck around. You can’t put a tape in backwards,it prints on either side and you have to thread it through the bottom reel or else the machine won’t let people cast a vote. Also, you have to keep a count for the records which prints out on the new tape just to be sure the tape is printing. Not to mention people aren’t all morons, somebody is going to bring it to your attention if nothing’s printing. Hell, pretty much every time the red end of tape lines show up we are told by some voter that the tape is running out.
As far as your so called studies are concerned. They are useless. Who’s participating in them? They have to be classroom based, because no one would let someone flip votes in a real world situation. They also wouldn’t allow anyone to sit there and check if people were reviewing their votes.
So your great study is having some college kid, or guy looking for 10 bucks to participate, vote like it’s the real thing. They have no skin in the game, are picking randomly from names they may not recognize, and couldn’t care less about. Then they flip the vote on random races, where the so-called voter couldn’t tell you who he voted for in the first place, and you think that is proof? Yikes. The same type of study is done using the same type of people and they don’t review the paper even though they are told to. And you think this is also the way it works in the real world. Because a bunch of disinterested subjects that couldn’t give a rat’s ass about the study act like exactly what they are, you are willing to make a monumental leap and say that the results have any integrity. And even with these ridiculous parameters people still noticed it 33 percent of the time.
If they tried to cheat on a race that mattered lots of people would notice.
How am I sure that people review the races they care about? First, I usually get 20 + requests each time, mostly by first time users, to show them where and how they can review their vote. Second, I sit and watch the folks all the time as the paper trail prints out, so they don’t accidentally walk away with the card or pull it out too fast. So I actually see people looking at the tape as each section prints out.
And, btw, presuming, as you say, “the tape recorded their vote correctly,” who counts the tapes? I know election officials don’t. They use the (invisible) electronic numbers.
Actually, Tapes are run for each machine including op scanners and the individual, as well as cumulative returns are printed and posted at the polling place for anyone to see.
Yes the numbers are compiled ,Invisibly, but all the numbers are publicly available. Also, we only did this at midterms, but for the house and senate races we audited the tapes of one machine and the paper ballots (since there were only fortysome paper) but about 260 + votes cast, And the numbers that were on the tape readouts from the machines matched what was on each tape. My guess is we aren’t the only judges that have ever done this. Although in a high turnout it wouldn’t be very easy since it took 2 people a good 30 minutes to get through a tape that only had a moderate amount of races, and not many votes because of low turnout.
By the way I know for a fact that Cook County has people that are supposed to do hand audits of precincts after the elections, as to whether or not it is actually done I can’t say, but the fact is that there is a paper trail and it can be done.
Counters brought in after work (with all the money one could save from ditching the e-voting garbage, as well!) is an entirely different story.
Wow, can I reside in whatever fairy tale land you’re in? Sure, a country that can’t get half its people to vote will miraculously find craploads of folks to come in for a few hours after a full day’s work to count votes. Because who doesn’t want to be up till midnight or one am on a work night?
And your example of hand counting is NH? Seriously? what are there twelve f-ing people in NH? And NO, paying extra people for counting would not be cheap. That statement shows how little you know about the actual infrastructure behind voting day. Do you have any idea how much it costs just for the recruiting and training alone? You can’t just grab random people that have no idea what they are doing. They will need at least rudimentary training,and probably more because of potential challenges by interested parties, and that costs cash on many different levels, before a single one of them ever even gets a paycheck. And they have to be recruited, trained and payed for every election, including primaries and consolidation elections.
Should we have paper ballots hand counted? maybe in the perfect world, but in a perfect world we wouldn’t need it. For us that live in this reality we understand that there are personnel and financial obstacles that make it unfeasible. Don’t argue with me about the fact that elections are too important not to spend the cash to get them perfect. That argument has already been put to the American people and the result is what it is.
Lastly, did Florida teach you nothing? There won’t be hanging chads, but there will be plenty of other marks not in the box, or slight marks made by folks accidentally that will be challenged. And then you’ll have to have people interpreting what the voter was thinking, or legal challenges. I’m sure that will work out great, cause I can’t tell you how many times, and how many ways people mangle the paper ballot.
Did I wish the machines were unhackable? yes. Do I wish that each individual precinct had the cash to audit the paper print out and make sure they reconciled with the totals, yes. Do I wish that everybody diligently reviewed each vote they cast on the paper print out? yes. I also wish that unicorns existed and they crapped Frango Mints. But you have to be pragmatic. And while I am very leery of how the system is vulnerable, I’m equally cognizant of the fact that paper ballots counted by hand was the standard for many years, in many places in this country and it certainly didn’t eliminate fraud, now did it?