I voted yesterday on new voting machines, and I liked them

[Liberal In Texas]

Dallas County has new machines and we're in the early voting stages of an election for constitutional propositions and some Lege replacement candidates.

Anyway, a paper ballot is generated when you arrive tailored to your specific precinct, it is then fed into one of the new machines. You then use the touch screen to select your votes. When done, the machine prints out the paper ballot previously inserted and you can double check to make sure everything you wanted is correct.



Then you take it over to a reader that compiles the votes and stores the paper ballots.



As far as I'm concerned, this is the best thing I've seen for ease of electronic voting and the security of having paper ballots if they ever needed to be recounted or audited.

[ramblin_dave]

1. What happens if you see an error on the paper printout?

[Liberal In Texas]

5. I guess you could alert a poll worker and let them investigate what happened.

Which might prevent more mistakes on a particular machine going forward.

[TreasonousBastard]

6. Presumably, you just start over. Nothing is counted until a ballot is scanned.

[diva77]

19. If you see an error, unfortunately it is your word against "the machine" and

the reality is is that the corporate owned machine will prevail.

These companies do not staff elections with "maintenance" crews to rush to the polling place to look into errors.

[Hortensis]

31. No. Come on.

You know, we can always read more about almost everything.

[Liberal In Texas]

35. Your checking BEFORE the scan.

BEFORE the vote. So there is a chance for the election worker to give the voter a new ballot on a different machine and to take the suspicious machine out of service.

[Blue_true]

36. Conspiracy theories that involve a hidden hand are more fun than

just asking questions, I guess.

[diva77]

37. doesn't matter - once you feed the "ballot" back into the machine it can change your vote after the

fact

[Liberal In Texas]

40. FACT: There is still a paper ballot for an audit or a recount!

[diva77]

41. it does NOT show voter intent. the paper you submitted might not be the one that ends up being

saved in the event of a recount

[Liberal In Texas]

43. Which is pretty much no different than ballot box stuffing with paper ballots.

The reader puts the ballot in a locked box. The security of the box of course is where vote tampering can happen.

Just like with paper ballots.

[diva77]

52. It is waaay different -- the difference between changing a spreadsheet with an algorithm

and/or the bar code once you place the paper into the machine after voting and physically having to appear where physical ballots are to stuff and unstuff ballot boxes in credible numbers spread out over many precincts.

[questionseverything]

57. no the vote tampering happens in the counting software

without physically counting the ballots no one would ever know

since you have to have some evidence before you get a recount it is nearly impossible, besides the fact that it is expense and if the posted "results" aren't close enough ,you have to pay for it

when hc "lost" Michigan 2/3 of the ballots could not be counted because more votes than voters were reported in so many precincts..so according Michigan law meant the election night totals had to stand even tho they were physically impossible;

any paper is better than no paper but if the paper is not openly, transparently counted and reported it is still a trust me system

[Liberal In Texas]

60. I would prefer pure paper ballots hand counted that would take days and be a physical record of

the vote.

Unfortunately, that's is just going to happen in the present political climate. This new machine where we at least have a physical record of paper ballots available if there is a questionable result is a step in the right direction.

I understand any machine can be hacked and this isn't the point of the OP. This is a kind of hybrid which I think is better than no paper trail at all.

[questionseverything]

62. any paper is better than no paper,that is true

I am old enough to remember my parents going to the gym after elections to help hand count ballots

the kids ran and played in the hallways, the adults sorted and stacked the paper ballots out on the long lunch tables

yes it took a few hours but open honest elections are what democracy demands

it certainly didn't take days

[Ms. Toad]

44. No. If you see an error,

You fix it. Any error you can see is before you cast your ballot. It doesn't matter whether the machine printed what you selected or not. If it's wrong, don't send it through the reader - reprint it, and keep reprinting it until it is right.

[diva77]

47. I don't have link on hand, but a study found that vast majority do not check their votes

when using this device

[Ms. Toad]

50. And whose fault is that?

If we can't even be bothered to check our vote, we deserve Trump.

[diva77]

51. Getting ballot at the end makes it difficult to check votes

Do you blame the butterfly ballot difficulties on voters too?

I'm done with this exchange. Best wishes.

[Ms. Toad]

53. Don't be silly.

The most significant butterfly ballot difficulties arose because improperly trained precinct workers did not realize that ballots were voting-booth-specific and sent voters to the wrong voting booth. There are no markings on the butterfly ballots or the stations that would ahve alerted voters to the critical error.

As for Express Vote layout - it looks pretty clear to me:



You initially said voters didn't check. Now you content the printout was difficult to check - it is not.

Voters have to care enough to take the simple step of checking the ballot before submitting it (a step not possible with the butterfly ballot).

[questionseverything]

56. trusting the software to count takes the check away from citizens

the vote count does not have to match the actual count with a vote stealing software...saying we can check it later is not transparent or good enough

GET IT RIGHT ELECTION NIGHT

Volkswagen had a mileage software on some cars to report better mileage why don't folks realize the same thing can happen with votes

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. Out here in California, we're going to do something very similar.

I don't remember the exact details, but it looks a lot like yours.

It gives me hope.

[Liberal In Texas]

7. Getting the entire country to vote this way is probably a bit

too optimistic.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

10. Alas, probably. But maybe someday!

[Blue_true]

38. Florida already uses optical scanners, but unfortunately there is no statewide

standard for crafting ballots and some big counties that tend to put too much on a ballot often screw up and become the center of recounts and court fights.

In Florida I would like to see a statewide law that no municipal issues, municipal office races or county issues or county offices can be on a ballot that has statewide, State Rep and State Senate, and US Congressional races on it. The law would clean up ballots that people get during statewide and national races. In my city and county, city and county races and ballot issues are done on dates other than when statewide races are done, I wish every county in the state followed that rule.

[California_Republic]

14. Some counties are further ahead than others

Some counties are further ahead than others

Some print off a tag that lets you go online and validate your vote

[TreasonousBastard]

3. Looks good. Ours you have to fill out by hand and put in the scanner...

I have no real idea if one is better, but yours seems to have some advantages over ours.

[lunatica]

8. Scanners are good and have been used for years

When I worked at UC Berkeley they used scanners for teacher evaluations, exams and anything where you filled out bubbles. They’ve been around for decades and they will tally up all kinds of data such as percentages, actual count, medians, etc., within one document or among various documents.

[TreasonousBastard]

9. Of course, faster than and and none of the error problems with hand counting...

Before scanners, I remember tests where the proctor had an overlay of the bubbles that had the correct answers cut out. Made it ridiculously easy to mark multiple choice or T/F exams.

[csziggy]

11. Scanners can be hacked

In a series of four tests conducted in Feb., May, and Dec. 2005, Ion Sancho invited Black Box Voting to Tallahassee after an invitation to check the Diebold machines. Black Box Voting engaged the services of Dr. Herbert Hugh Thompson and Harri Hursti.[1] Dr. Thompson and Hursti believed they could change or hack vote totals without the system detecting entry. The first two projects targeted the computer program that adds up all the voting machine results and produces the final report. On Feb. 14 and again on May 2, Thompson successfully hacked the Diebold GEMS central tabulator and bypassed all passwords by using a Visual Basic script. This, however, would be detected in a vigilant environment if the supervisor of elections checks the poll tapes (voting machine results) against the central tabulator report.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hursti_Hack#Hacking_a_Diebold_machine

Maybe the new scanners are more secure, but until they can be audited by third parties, we will never know.

[lunatica]

12. That's why the paper ballots need to be kept.

There should always be paper ballots, no matter what is used. It should actually be a law.

[diva77]

16. They need to be HAND-MARKED paper ballots!!!

please see post #15 on this thread

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100212610089#post15

[csziggy]

21. Yes, in the 2000 election, Ion Sancho put up images of all the questioned ballots

To show why they were not a clear indication of the voter's choice, as required by state law. All the ballots had been kept, but only the unclear ones were posted to show why they were not counted.

This is one reason that Sancho wanted to know if the scanners used to tally the totals were accurate or if they could be made to show inaccurate results. His original election to Supervisor of Elections in Leon County was won because he promised clean and accurate elections. (The previous supervisor won because his mother didn't announce her retirement until the last day of qualifying so only her son who worked in her office knew that there would be an opening. Then his first election, the old lever machines were not set up properly and it was hard to figure out who you were voting for or if your vote was counted - some names were opposite lines rather than levers. The next election, Ion Sancho ran and won.)

Unfortunately, Ion Sancho has now retired, after thirty years of giving Leon County elections we did not ever question. One of the workers in his office has now won the job and I hope he is as good at running the elections as Ion Sancho was.

[questionseverything]

24. paper ballots should be counted by hand openly and transparently

anything else is smoke and mirrors

GET IT RIGHT ELECTION NIGHT

otherwise the chain of custody is broken

[fierywoman]

33. +1,000,000,000...

[Blue_true]

42. Hand-marked or machine-marked paper ballots (that the voter checks before getting the vote tallied,

are stored in the machine after the vote tally. If there is a challenge, the ballots are first re-tallied by machine with the machine verified with all parties having representatives present. If the machine recount doesn't settle the issue, then the ballots are hand-counted, with all parties in the election present.

Our side seems to have fallen in love with the notion that an invisible-hand can over-come our vote. In fact a larger issue is that not all of us get off our asses to participate in issues of governance when decisions are being made. We can rather easily defeat election cheating, we just need to give enough of a damn to put in the time required to accomplish that goal.

[lunatica]

45. From my experience I've come to the conclusion

that only a handful of Americans actually listen to the news. I worked in a decidedly left leaning, liberal, progressive UC Berkeley where liberal ideas have traditionally gone to be born. A definite hot bed of liberal thinking if there ever was one. I worked in Administration and my experience of working there for 20 years and in various departments is that the only people who are current on politics are the Faculty and some Graduate students. Very few undergrads were able to take the time to do anything but study, and as for the thousands of staff people, it was even fewer who kept up with politics.

I considered the staff to be a pretty accurate cross cut example of the general population, so they were examples of people In my neighborhoods. Their knowledge of what goes on in politics is as superficial as it comes. They read the headlines and that was it. And when things started trending badly with Bush they pretty much exhibited an attitude of defeatism and claimed there was nothing anyone could do about it.

All I can think is that in regular places all over this country it’s even worse. There is a class based defeatism that believe that those with power always win. And in a strange way they also believe that this is as it’s always been and always will be. That the rich and the privileged always win.

[Blue_true]

48. If we are going to permanently change things for the better, we need to

start attending city council meetings and voting in every election. The saying "the sqeeky wheel gets the grease" when applied to public affairs didn't just pop into someone's head, people observed actions and outcomes and concluded that those that made their voice heard got their way.

[bearsfootball516]

4. We recently got those in Elkhart County, Indiana

I used one to vote in the municipal primary in May. It was fantastic.

[diva77]

17. Sorry you are misinformed. It is not fantastic at all. Please refer to post #15

on this thread.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100212610089#post15

[LAS14]

13. Glad to hear about another tiny step in the INCREDIBLY SLOW march forward. nt

[diva77]

18. it is a leap BACKWARDS. Please see post #15 on this thread

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100212610089#post15

[diva77]

15. You like having a private corporation come between you & your vote?

A corporation, ES&S, originally financed by the wing-nut evangelical Ahmansons and owned and run by rethugs? Do you expect them to run fair, clean, transparent elections?

Don't drink the koolaid. Lots of people have spoken out about these diabolical devices, but the "mainstream" media has failed to report on this. Here are some links to visit so that you are not duped into thinking that these ballot marking devices are "good."

------------------
Important info:

Ballot-marking devices (BMDs) are not secure election technology

Barcoded BMD Ballot Battle in GA as Legislative Session Nears End: 'BradCast' 3/27/2018
https://bradblog.com/?p=12525
SNIP Longtime election integrity expert MARILYN MARKS, whose nonpartisan Coalition for Good Governance is suing the Peach State to force them to do away with their unverifiable Director Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines, joins us to warn about the proposed new scheme to replace them with similarly unverifiable touch-screen Ballot Marking Devices (BMDs) and why she sees that as "going from bad to worse."

"People today at least understand that their system is unverifiable, unauditable, and really a lot of guesswork," she tells me. "Unfortunately, this new system that they are so determined to find a way to put in, kind of has the look, from a distance, of a paper system. But it really is just as unverifiable."

Marks explains that the new legislation introduces computer-printed ballots with barcodes on them, which cannot be read by humans. Deceptively, the paper ballots produced by the new touch-screen systems also include a summary of the voters' votes in human-readable form. But, it is the unreadable and impossible to verify barcodes --- rather than the human-readable voter selections --- which are used by the system's computer optical-scanners to tally results. "What can be embedded in those bar codes may be very different from the human-readable list that is printed out," she says.

Even if the barcodes weren't printed on the paper ballots, Marks explains, the computer-marked ballots would still be unacceptable and unverifiable as reflecting any voter's intent after polls close on Election Night, as Jennifer Cohn recently detailed in a must-read article at The BRAD BLOG. Marks offers action items for preventing the passage of the bill, for those both in and out of the state of Georgia (as summarized here in this Twitter Moment.) SNIP

Most recent items:

Link to tweet

?s=20
Read column & listen to podcast here: https://bradblog.com/?p=13169

There is a lot more out there about Ballot Marking Devices (BMDs) and/or election integrity.
3 sites to visit & explore:
coalitionforgoodgovernance.org
bradblog.com
fairfight.com

[Liberal In Texas]

25. Not happy we have private companies making these machines

and the software should at least not be proprietary. ES&S has been one of the suspicious companies.

The paper ballot I cast had the votes written out in easily readable English. The barcodes are most likely for the machine to read.

Any system can be set up to be abused. Even purely paper ballots can be "stuffed" and be dishonestly counted.

However, I agree this isn't perfect or all it should be but it's a step in the right direction.

[diva77]

26. I don't see how you can conclude it's a step in the right direction if you read up on these

devices. I hope you'll have a chance to check out links I posted above.

It is detrimental to our democracy (what's left of it) to advocate for these machines; and the problems go much deeper than just "voting" on them.

[Liberal In Texas]

28. I'll stand by what I said.

Any tech can be forged, faked, altered.
In this case at least we have paper ballots to audit.

[EleanorR]

20. Unfortunately hackable

Last edited Tue Oct 22, 2019, 06:20 PM - Edit history (1)

The potential for hybrid systems to add fraudulent votes without detection was identifiedby Professor of Statistics Philip B. Stark of UC Berkeley, an expert in postelection manual audits, in September of last year. At the time, he told TYT Investigates that the ExpressVote hybrid, which Johnson County, Kansas, had purchased a few months before the 2018 gubernatorial primary, could be maliciously programmed or hacked to create an entirely fraudulent machine-marked “paper ballot” because the machine includes an option that allows the voter to “AutoCast” the ballot without first printing and inspecting it.

Moreover, as explained by Stark, the machine does not mark the ballot at all until the voter decides whether to exercise that option, which means that the machine receives advance notice of which ballots are “AutoCast” and thus safe to fraudulently mark.

Another election expert, Computer Science Professor Andrew Appel of Princeton University, subsequently confirmed the existence of this stunning defect and dubbed it “Permission to Cheat.” Appel further reported that the ExpressVote XL and Dominion ImageCast Evolutioninclude the same defect.

Moreover, even if “AutoCast” is disabled so that all voters must print and inspect their ballots before casting them, Appel says these machines could still be programmed or hacked to fraudulently fill in undervotes (races that voters left blank) with no possibility of detection in a manual audit. According to Appel, this is because the machines again route the machine-marked “paper ballots” under the printer head (the part of the machine that marks the ballots) after they’ve been reviewed and cast. This additional defect is called a “Ballot Stuffing” defect and has been confirmed by Professor Richard DeMillo, Georgia Tech’s former Dean of computing and director of its Information Security Center.

https://www.salon.com/2019/03/28/new-hybrid-voting-system-can-change-paper-ballot-after-its-been-cast_partner/

[matt819]

22. I'm glad I live in a small town.

My voting machine is a piece of paper and a pencil. I'm confident that my vote is counted correctly.

[Hoyt]

23. Will be using similar new machines in Georgia next year. Looks like folks got message after 2016.

[Hortensis]

32. I remember reading about Georgia politicians themselves

going to polling places and removing ballots from the boxes while people stood there and watched, unable to take him on. It wasn't that long ago.

After 2016 I'm not sure we'd advanced after all, but new machines that hopefully would need the resources of a nation-state to maybe hack are a very necessary step.

[diva77]

39. The solution to this problem is not to invest hundreds of millions in republican owned

computerized vote grifting machines. Better to invest in video camera security, and screened non-partisan security, amongst other things.

No system is 100% perfect, but the computers can finesse votes on a wholesale level with 1 person-- ie a few here, a few there in different precincts with algorithms and an excel spreadsheet. Ballot box stuffing and unstuffing is more on a retail level -- and, for example, you'd have to deploy people at each precinct to steal an election.

[lapfog_1]

27. The paper backup ballot is useless

unless a set of humans read it and tally by "hand" the results.

Speaking as an original black hat ( I was young, it was a way to prove my chops as a hacker, never caught ) converted to white hat computer hacker.

Just sayin.

[Liberal In Texas]

30. The paper is a backup.

Better than a system with no paper and only electronic totals. I think that is obvious.

[lapfog_1]

46. marginally so...

if someone hacks the voting machines, I would expect they would hack it just enough to be 2 things...

inside the margin of error of the most accurate poll

and

outside the amount that would trigger a paper ballot check.

So if the poll was +/- 4% and 2% was needed for a recount... I would hack enough votes to swing the election by changing just enough votes to make the new "winner" win by something like 3%.

It has been my contention that Repukes, in certain swing states, have been hacking elections since 2000.

By something like 5%.

The only reason Obama won was that he energized so much of our base that we overcame that 5% bias (both by voter machine hacks and by voter suppression of likely Democratic voters).

Same with the midterms last year.

Eventually, even the Repukes know that population trends are against them... which is why I worry about things like Trump losing but refusing to leave.

[JCMach1]

29. We still need paper ballots with Blockchain auditing...

[fierywoman]

34. How hard would it be to program the machine to give the voter his choices in a printed form and

then program the input to the count at the wish of the powers that be?

[BumRushDaShow]

49. If that is the ES&S Express Vote machines, that is what they will have us use here in Philly

https://www.salon.com/2019/08/24/is-a-nationally-widespread-new-voting-system-ready-for-the-2020-elections_partner/

and that has come under a lot of controversy with respect to the procurement process, the company's previous unreported lobbying, and whether the machines would truly be secure... and of course now Jill Stein has inserted herself into the process.

[questionseverything]

55. if it only prints out a bar code then it is worthless

if it prints out a ballot with readable choices, if the ballots were hand counted openly and transparently that could be ok

but thrusting any software to count votes is insane

[BumRushDaShow]

58. I think the way they described it here

was that the printout would include a readable version of the candidate/question choices that were selected by the voter (and I believe the printout would most likely also have a barcode representing that for the machine reader), which the voter would have time to review before submitting as their final "vote". But the ballots wouldn't be "hand counted" at the end of the voting day (but would preserved and be hand-countable if necessary to compare against the machine count - am guessing if there is some question about the machine count).

One of my issues is imagining the machines running out of paper and/or ink to print out the ballot someone cast or the printed ballot gets jammed in the machine when trying to print and then poll workers struggling to resolve that issue, effectively holding up a line of people waiting to vote. This would be a situation where provisional ballots should be required so that voters can get their vote cast and go on about their business, regardless of the malfunction, and their completed "provisional" paper ballot be considered an "official and valid final ballot" as their vote.

One of the justifications given by the city Commissioners who selected this was that as a "paper ballot-generating electronic system", it would supposedly be more handicap-accessible by using a touch screen, than requiring a "hand-marked" ballot that requires use of a pencil (or whatever is used to fill ovals or check boxes), which may be difficult or impossible for those with arthritis or other deformity of the hand to mark. As I understand, those who are handicapped and unable to use the touchscreen, would have assistance to cast their vote (as has been done in the past).

Our city is broken down into 1692 polling divisions/precincts, each that represent a population block between about 8000 - 10,000 residents, with probably about 1/3 - 1/2 eligible/able to vote, so hand-counting only would be a significant and time-consuming effort if made part of the routine.

[questionseverything]

61. without hand counting it is a trust me system

the software makes the choice, or the last person to direct the software makes the choice

yes hand counting takes time but it is the only way CITIZENS get to oversee their own elections

even if only the federal races were hand counted that would be an improvement

[TheFarseer]

54. So it's basically

A scantron machine but the computer prints it rather than filling it in with a pencil? Am I getting it?

[BumRushDaShow]

59. What we were told here in Philly is

that the candidate/question selections would be made on a touch screen device and then that device produces a human-readable printout of the votes cast (apparently with a barcode - or I guess more accurately, a "QR code" representing the selections). That printout can be reviewed by the voter and if satisfactory, then (I believe) the voter would take the printout to a different machine to submit the completed paper ballot as their final vote.

Our November election would be the first time using these here in Philly (assuming court cases currently underway don't hold it up). Other counties in the surrounding Philly area are using different paper-ballot systems now - e.g., Montgomery County, PA started using the traditional "hand-marked" paper ballots during the May primary, where the completed ballot gets fed into a scanner machine.

[hunter]

63. It's an easy way to manufacture fake votes, since every paper is mechanically produced.

Votes represented by electronic bits are even easier to manufacture or delete.

There's really no reason for these machines to exist unless someone is up to no good.

Elections are not television sporting events. We don't need to know the results as quickly as we can, what we need is elections that are as secure as we can possibly make them.