If they were trying to steal votes secretly, they wouldn't leave clues.

I voted on one that, after I made all my choices, foreced me to review each page and after I OKed the page created a printed record (inside the machine, but readable by me).

There are lots of details - what is the audit percentages? how are the "random" precincts selected?

But a VVPAT is a good start. Alas, the machine I voted on this morning had none.

If they wanted to steal votes with that machine, they'd have it print out what you thought you voted.

any audit/recount would have to go by the printed record, so it's a very risky proposition.

Yes, it mangled live votes - all it is is a plastic cartridge encasing a roll of cash register tape. The printer is pretty flimsy.

So all they need is a couple paper tape VVPR records to be spoiled by a printer jam, and when they do the recount, oops, the paper record is unreliable! Guess they'll have to go with what's in the memory card...

ANd I agree that it's not foolproof (nothing is). But it's not too bad IMHO

We use that NCR 3-part paper in many parts of our lives. A yellow part, a pink part, a white part.

Why not for ballots? One copy for the ballot box, one copy for the voter, one copy that goes to a "failsafe" archive with the county sheriff or other designated authority?

Ballots to be counted by hand.

With a note that I have your family unless you show me your copy ofte ballot. Or you lose your job unless you show me, the boss, you voted "correctly"

Secret ballot for a reason. But I agree, paper ballots.

I don't believe that old tale.

There's cryptographic solutions to this problem.

For example, you fill out your ballot, which has codes printed on it in invisible ink, and your voting marker makes that invisible ink visible.

So when you vote for Barack Obama, it will reveal a code "TMV", which you would write down. Then, you put the ballot in the box, you keep your written copy of the codes, and you go home and look on the election web site, type in your ballot's serial number, and it will show you your codes.

Voila. You have exactly enough information to verify your ballot was counted correctly, but not enough to reveal who you voted for.

Upton Sinclair wrote of this very thing happening to both his protagonist, Jurgis Rudkus and all his friends in the 1905 book, 'The Jungle', written after his extensive undercover work and investigations into the local political machines.

However, I'm almost certain that you may indeed believe we've advanced to the point in which no politician would ever dream of buying votes, or people poor enough to sell them to buy food, and thus you consider it "BS".

she had this on the show. No joke at all.

It's like "touchscreen miscalibration is OK to cover, but DON'T bring up the lack of audits issue."

and I agree

MSNBC has reported that it was taken out of service.

It was not a red herring. Obviously it was a malfunction, no hacker would make a vote change visible like that, but malfunctions can be just as bad a problem as deliberate hacking, and they need to be reported and corrected. Ignoring them and calling them red herrings is not helpful.

And yes, I agree that the possibility of a machine silently recording the wrong vote is a very real problem.

Edited to add: I should mention that's it's possible to deliberately miscalibrate a screen, but I think it's unlikely since people will notice pretty quickly.

just imagine 600 machines flip these "red herring" votes because people weren't paying close enough attention--that could easily happen nationwide. Bam! Something that's just a "fluke" has just cost someone an election. Intentional? Probably not but I bet it's not a problem the Republics want to solve soon.

made possible by the fact that over 80% of the vote is counted with proprietary software overseen by one privately owned company.

But I guess that would go against the honor code that demands that if you steal a vote, you must show the victim you're stealing their vote.

The code use should be verifiable by elections departments.

There's arithmetic and then there's ES&S SuperSecret(tm) arithmetic.

You can even look at what its printing as you change your selections and such. Its very nice.

Yes, I saw this with my own eyes a few years ago when I worked as a poll watcher.

If the paper record has unreadable votes, the Repubs can argue it's too unreliable to use as an audit record, thus they convince election officials to use the memory cards, which as we all know, could have a vote for Romney recorded on them even though you selected Obama, completely without your knowledge.