Electronic machines should be abolished altogether as vote-counting devices.

[JackRiddler]

They should be used as ballot printers for voters who choose them, but ballots should always be on paper and counted (or recounted) automatically by hand, even if that means a higher expense and longer time to get results (oh horrors to the fast-moving consumer paradise!). For all the history of cheating by hand, it's a lot harder to accomplish than with programmable machines.

By experience, by scientific study and really by nature, electronic vote-counting machines are unreliable; they can be programmed to cheat; they can be hacked; they cannot be trusted. The corporations that produce them generally have appalling records, partisan ownership, and an amply demonstrated contempt for their client, the public (see: keeping the code "proprietary").

Until their abolition and the return to full paper ballots counted by human beings slowly in every State, no result can or should be trusted and ALL results involving programmable machines should be recounted regardless of whether prior recounts show an anomaly.

That's for general principle.

[Tesha]

1. Strangely enough, in the recent NH Election, the machines did better than the people.

Strangely enough, in the recent NH Election, the machines
did better than the people.

The only substantial errors that occurred were "errors
of commision" by humans who incorrectly tallied things
or misunderstood the procedures.

The machines counted ballots nearly perfectly, at least
so long as people filled in the ovals. For ballots that
were cast in some "more-creative" way, human eyes were
able to glean about a half a percent more total votes,
but the undervote was uniformly distributed across
the spectrum of candidates so the outcome of the
election was unaffected.

All we seem to need in NH is:

• A big banner in each polling station showing
  how to fill in the oval, and
  
  
• A random, statistical audit of a small percentage
  of polling places after each election, ensuring that
  it would be too risky to corrupt the machines.

Tesha

[RaleighNCDUer]

2. Prove it. nt

[Tesha]

7. Read it.

http://www.sos.nh.gov/recountresults.htm

[RaleighNCDUer]

11. Thanks. But as a note, as I understand it these votes were opti-scan votes.

That is NOT the same as 'electronic voting'. Opti-scan provides a paper trail at the beginning of the process, which can be referred to at the end of the process. Touch screen voting does not.

Essentially, opti-scan is 50% of 'hand-counted paper ballots', in that it is 'machine counted paper ballots'. And on a recount it can be 100%. Electronic voting does not provide a real paper trail and there is nothing there to recount.

This is no vindication of touch-screen voting.

[Tesha]

13. Yes, Optiscan.

Yes, Optiscan of paper ballots. Here in NH, the law requires
that we always vote on a (recountable, auditable) paper ballot.

But again, the OP calls for the banishment of all electronic
devices.

Tesha

[RaleighNCDUer]

20. I don't have a particular objection to opti-scan, except in this particular

political climate where trust in all elections is low, and democracy hangs in the balance.

This recount, for example, shows that they can count accurately. I don't think that was in doubt. But if someone is going to tamper with the machines they would make the difference small enough to be explained away, yet large enough to not automatically trigger a recount.

For example, I think any election where the candidates are within 3% of each other should have an automatic recount. Also, if the vote count differs from the exit polling by 5% or more there should be a recount. If the margin of victory is 4%, and within the MOE from the exit polls there is, obviously, room for shenanigans. Shenanigans that would not be caught because they are within the prescribed parameters; and it is relatively easy to program the counters to flip 2-3% of the vote from one to the other.

That seemed to be the case in 04, when there were small pro-republican upsets that were, nonetheless, within the MOE. There was no obvious need for a recount, as would be in the case of a 10 or 15 point flip, and yet most of those 2-4% flips that resulted in republican victories were in electronic or opti-scan voting districts.

Hand counting from the start eliminates that potential.

I believe that until we get the criminals out of the electoral system that ALL electronically tallied votes that are not decisive victories supported by equivalent exit polling demand recounts.

[sam sarrha]

3. they are probably just refurbished mafia casino poker machines anyway

[fascisthunter]

5. Why Would You Fight so Hard Against Transparency in our Election Process

Why defend a system that isn't transparent, faulty, privatized and hackable?

[Tesha]

9. I'm all for transparency, but I oppose mindless paranoia. (NT)

[JackRiddler]

15. No programmable counting machine is transparent, including optiscan. nt

[Tesha]

17. Nonsense. But that's what many of these election paranoia posts are filled with. (NT)

[JackRiddler]

6. Prove it - and furthermore...

I am certain that machines can do better than humans at the task of quickly and accurately counting stacks of paper.

That is irrelevant. It is infinitely more significant that machines can do infinitely better than humans in allowing the complete fabrication of election results, without leaving any internal evidence of fakery.

It is irrelevant because the machines can be hacked undetectably by one person, whereas faking an election with humans requires hundreds of willing conspirators.

Get it?

And your NH example is premature - the recount has barely started.

And speculative - who says the minor discrepancies uncovered in the single county so far recounted were due to human and not machine error?

And anyway, this thread isn't about NH.

[Tesha]

8. Properly supervised, machines do better than humans.

> And anyway, this thread isn't about NH.

Sure it is; the thread calls for the banishment of *ALL*
electronic aids to voting, and NH has just proven that
that's a damned foolish idea.

Tesha

[JackRiddler]

14. We can all read, you know.

1) For a second time you have ignored the point, which is not whether "properly supervised" machines can be more accurate than human hands, but that HUMANS cannot be trusted, as they have proven a million times in the past. Many humans may desire to fake election results. For this reason, votes should not be counted exclusively by programmable machines, which raise the potential for unscrupulous humans to completely fabricate the results and get away with it. Or, if machines are used, there should be an automatic full hand recount of all paper ballots, regardless of whether the machines were accurate.

So the issue I am raising has nothing to do with "proper supervision" or technical expertise, but the potentials for malfeasance raised by programmable machines.

If you reply and ignore this point again, I will have to conclude you either don't want to deal or are disingenuous.

2) This thread does not call for banishment of "all electronic aids" - printers are just fine as aids, to those who wish to use them. But the final, legal ballot must be on paper. I do call for the abolition of counting votes by way of programmable machines, or else for automatic FULL hand recounts of all results counted by programmable machines. The reasons are specified in point 1, and they are obvious to everyone on the planet except for a) the obtuse, b) the irredeemably naive, c) those who hope to benefit from the higher potentials for election fraud allowed by machines, or d) those who for ideological or job-related reasons wish to serve up bogus PR and strawmen on behalf of voting machine manufacturers. Does one of these four options describe you?

[Tesha]

18. No.

> The reasons are specified in point 1, and they are obvious
> to everyone on the planet except for a) the obtuse, b) the
> irredeemably naive, c) those who hope to benefit from the
> higher potentials for election fraud allowed by machines,
> or d) those who for ideological or job-related reasons wish
> to serve up bogus PR and strawmen on behalf of voting machine
> manufacturers. Does one of these four options describe you?

No, none of your four points describes me.

I'm also not paranoid, nor delusional.

I simply know how my state conducts elections, know my
elected officials, and know my elections officials.
New Hampshire citizens tend to be that way.

Tesha

[JackRiddler]

21. Down-home rhetoric to avoid the point. Irrelevant state patriotism.

We don't care how well you know your officials. Communist party cadre in a Romanian village could have said the same thing about theirs.

There are other people in your state who don't know your officials. There are 299.90 million people in this country who don't know your officials, and yes we DO matter, because the NH primary is our business, given how the system is set up such that NH often picks the next president.

And we don't want to "trust the nice people" even if they really are nice! We want transparency and verification built into the process. In modern politics, dependence on personal allegiances and village good-feeling amount to an invitation for organized crime to take over.

YES OR NO: Do programmable voting machines increase the potential for perfect election fraud that is undetectable, unless a) there are paper ballots and b) these ballots are actually counted by hand?

You are of course free to continue avoiding this question, thus confirming what I conclude is a counterfactual bias.

[fascisthunter]

24. Don't Be Paranoid

:sarcasm:

[JackRiddler]

25. Poll: Would you rather be called paranoid or naive? nt

[fascisthunter]

28. There Should Be One Other Choice on the Poll

a) paranoid

b) naive

c) liar

[Tesha]

26. Until you take your medication, it's really not worthwhile debating with you.

So long as proper after-election auditing controls are
in place, there is *ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG* with paper
ballots being machine scanned.

Tesha

[JackRiddler]

27. Insult in mode of Bill O'Reilly = admission of bankruptcy on logical terms.

(Needless to say the question also is once again avoided.)

[Tesha]

29. No, it's just an admission that there's no convincing you.

Any system built by humans, electoral or not, is
only as good as its auditing and other internal
controls. And it doesn't matter whether the system
uses humans counting objects or machines, they both
need appropriate statistical controls.

*BUT NOT FULL RECOUNTS WITH EVERY ELECTION*.

Tesha

[donsu]

4. YES! no more machine counting

nt

[Ganja Ninja]

10. Here's the system I would like to see us use.

Step one: A touch screen will record the vote and print a readable paper ballot that the voter can check and correct before submitting his final vote.

Step two: The ballot will be counted by an optical scanner not linked in any way to the touch screen system.

Step three: The ballots are counted by hand.

Step four: All three counts are compared, any discrepancies will trigger a recount consisting of repeating steps 2 and 3.

[Retrograde]

12. If there's only one race per ballot

California usually has multiple items on its ballots. It's possible to have one election covering
-president
-US senator
-US congress
-state senator
-state assembly
-local offices
-multiple state ballot propositions
-multiple county ballot propositions
-city propositions
-school district items

It gets complex really quickly. If we went to human counting, each ballot would have to be handled multiple times, increasing the chances of some getting lost or damaged.

I sent back my primary ballot last week. There were 8 separate elections on it: one for presidential candidate, 7 for various state propositions.

[JackRiddler]

23. There are systems that work exactly this way -

with one race per ballot, easy ballots, separate boxes for each race. If they can do it in Greece or Nepal, we can do it here.

[Retrograde]

33. Out of curiosity, where do you live

and how is your voting currently handled? Current methods vary widely, even within states. When you last voted, was it on a paper ballot? How many contests were on it? Was it in person or by mail - which my state is currently encouraging.

There is no fraud-proof voting system. Paper ballots can be lost or destroyed. Electronic counts can be altered. Even if a tally system seems sound - e.g., New York's old-style voting machines - you can still have election fraud: you just need to do it differently, by challenging voter eligibility, or the time-honored "vote early, vote often". That's why both major parties want their reps present both at the polls and at the vote counting.

You seem to be mixing electronic counting with electronic voting. Electronic counting has been around at least since I started voting in the 70s, and mechanical voting goes back to the 19th century. Electronic voting has potential, but not the Diebold way.

My preference? Punch cards. Sturdy, machine and human readable, as any old computer person can tell you, store well, versatile. Leave it to Florida to screw things up for the rest of us.

[JackRiddler]

35. Ha, in New York with the no-paper lever machines...

However, faking results on those involves taking them apart.

New York is officially in delay on the required purchase of new machines, and there is some awareness of the issues amongst officials - for example, DREs are not going to be bought.

Your points are well taken: paper can be fixed, of course. As you know, this involves a large operation, a traditional political machine that may be a gang, but it's on the ground and has to respond somehow to its constituency.

Paper raises the cost and complexity of fixing.

Electronic counting allows the fixing by entirely remote, corporate entities. Or by anonymous hackers. And it can be undetectable, absent a paper trail and a full hand count.

So I'm not unaware of the distinctions between different methods - are you seriously suggesting that paper ballot stuffing (which always ends up known, at least) is comparable to the kind of fixing that electronic counting allows? Please.

[Kucinich4America]

16. Now that the Repukes are having their own problems with the foul machines from Hell

Maybe something will get done? McCain, for all his faults, still carries a lot of credibility among his fellow senators. But I suggest that those on the ground in South Carolina pay very close attention during the Democratic primary.

If Hillary "wins" that state, I'd be very suspicious. And just in case the Hillbots think I'm singling her out, I'd be just as suspicious if Dennis won there. :evilfrown: Obama vs Edwards would be tougher to call the "irregularities".

[The2ndWheel]

19. "even if that means a higher expense and longer time to get results"

Certainly going against the momentum of thousands of years of forward motion with that one. I like it.

We are a society built by, for, and of machines. People are mostly in the way, and this would make us that much more obtrusive. Again, I like it.

[JackRiddler]

22. Well, the expense is actually negligible...

We are talking about elections of the representatives who determine how TRILLIONS of dollars in tax money are spent. Trillions federally by the Congress, trillions more if you put all the state and municipal budgets together. And if it takes mere millions to influence the results (or to buy representatives by financing campaigns), then money in a capitalist system will find it irresistible to influence the results.

So yeah, we need to spend millions more than we do to safeguard against that, but this is likely to save hundreds of billions that will be otherwise lost to boondoggles, plunder and imperial hubris if elections continue to be fixed by money (which they are by way of campaign finance and media control, independently of the machines).

[Tesha]

30. No problem then -- *YOU* can pay for it out of your petty cash fund. (NT)

[JackRiddler]

32. If you put up half of your pro-fraud slush fund.

[The2ndWheel]

31. Would there be trillions?

How could we have trillions to spend if people were allowed to slow up the system?

"We are talking about elections of the representatives who determine how TRILLIONS of dollars in tax money are spent."

And they don't even read most of what is written when they're determining. We've complicated ourselves into a corner. Why? This is not a human scale world. We don't have time to catch up with the shadow that we're relentlessly chasing.

I don't know that you could take out that one aspect of this whole thing, the counting of the votes, and have everything else work. Again, we're a machine culture. If you take out a bolt, what's going to happen? You couldn't take out the bolt while the machine is running, you'd hurt yourself. You can't turn the machine off, then you hurt everyone. All you can do is keep it well lubricated, so it can spin faster and faster. Friction and erosion start to take over, and the machine begins to break down. At most you're able to maybe slide a book under one of the legs holding things up. Then everything starts to overheat, since we can't turn anything off. We're just sort of stuck watching. Then the machine finally stops. We don't know what to do with ourselves, since we're no longer hearing that humming sound. When we get over that shock, maybe we can then talk to each other, instead of through the machine. Every time that's happened though, we end up building a new machine, then go through the same process, step by step.

We live in an increasingly standardized world. I don't know if you can put people back into the equation anywhere you want. There are no X or Y variables.

How could money not fix elections? In today's world, we don't exist if not for money. Again, the culture of the machine. We're simplified. We're standardized. We're 1's, 5's, and 10's. We're not inefficient, diverse life. We're cold hard cash. Or digits, which decreases our value that much more.

Can you spend money to safeguard against the spending of money? Where does that loop end?

[JackRiddler]

34. kick