I saw a demonstration of our new ballot counting machines.

This isn't BBV - but it is a result of the new HAVA (Help America Vote Act) that was passed in response to the 2000 fiasco, I mean selection, I mean election. We (Montana) still have our wonderful paper, blacken-the-oval ballots, the difference is, in the past you would just drop your ballot in the box and it would get counted later at the county elections office. With the new machine, you yourself feed the ballot into the counter, which will tell you immediately if it is spoiled, blank, has overcounts, etc. giving you the opportunity to correct your ballot right then -- under the old system it would have to be thrown out.

Seems like an improvement to me...

... that it's the same old BBV software counting and collating the votes at the central counting facility. If there's fiddling around with that, or a change in the count through a software error, then no one knows unless there's a hand recount of the ballots....

Cheers.

the vote is counted at the precinct. The only time it would be counted at the county seat would be in the case of a recount.


You are right in that no system can eliminate the potential for a corrupt human to falsify data, but this definately is an improvement in that it allows the voter to at least know they didn't submit a spoiled ballot.

And how are the precinct tallies made at the county?

And... how is the electronic tally justified with the paper ballots at the precinct level? If it's not, then the scanner/tallier at the precinct is suspect, as well.

Anytime the vote is tallied electronically, there's opportunity for mistakes and mischief.

Yes, the opportunity to redo a potentially spoiled ballot is good. Having those ballots counted and collated electronically, without clear legislation to invoke a hand recount for cause, is not good.

You get to look at your ballot and get to have it confirmed that it's good. But you have no way of knowing if the machine recorded the ballot incorrectly.

A Diebold optical scanner did precisely that in the 2000 Florida election, giving Gore a minus 16,022 votes. The error wasn't caught immediately, and a later audit didn't discover the reason.

You might want to go to http://www.blackboxvoting.org and read the book (it's in .pdf format, chapter by chapter). Lots there about the sort of optical scanners your county is now using.

By the way, did you happen to notice the brand name and model of the optical scanner being used?

Cheers.

But my point is, before this change they still used an optical scanner to read the votes, only it was all done at the central office. Before this, I dropped my ballot in a box and for all I knew it could be simply discarded while it was driven to the central office. There is always plenty of opportunity for mischief in any system; whether whether an optical scanner is used or votes are counted by hand, whether the results are modemed or hand carried -- what counts is the transparency, not the particular technique.

However, I have the feeling I'm being drawn into a discussion that I'm just not up for, lol. I don't have some strong opinion that I care to defend.

A couple counties in Florida had those for the 2000 election, but one county did not turn on the reject "option" and they had a lot of bad ballots.

I like Optical Scanners. In my county, we could have paid 3.5 million for optical scanners, but the brain dead SOE pushed touchscreens without printers for 14 million. When we are forced to add printers, that will add 2 to 3 million. Oh by the way, the first election the touchscreens were used in the SOE got elected Mayor of Tampa, funny how that worked out.

...One touch and he's president again.:donut:

in that Florida county and 20000 votes had to be recounted!

machine had "slight error"

seem to always produce those GOP upsets where a recount is impossible since no paper receipt.

A receipt doesn't mean squat, a ballot has legal meaning.

:-(

:-)

said I voted correctly on my ballot, when I intentionally undervoted (blank for governor). The poll worker was happy when it sucked in my ballot, and complemented me on being the first person to vote "correctly" Then I mentioned that I didn't vote in the race for governor, that I intentionally undervoted, and the scanner said it was correct.

You know what software is running on this "scanner"? You know it's correctly counting what you blackened? It won't tell you what you did in each race, only what it decides to tell you, i.e. spolied, blank, over/under voted, etc.

This stuff is BBV, don't let them kid you otherwise!!! :mad:

Scanners do not have to report NO MARK FOUND as an error. They only report error in reading or trying to read ballots.

they were completely blank. If you just didn't vote in one race, it accepted it. I often don't vote in the non-partisan races if I'm not familiar with them. It rejected the overvotes consistently though.