AN OPSCAN IS NO DIFFERENT THAN A DRE

especially when the same company is writing the software code on both systems!


OK, all you folks who think Opscans are safe, please LISTEN UP with all due respect.

A DRE takes a human vote and converts it into an electronic vote.

An opscan machine takes a human vote and converts it into an electronic vote.

there is no difference. period.

there is still secret software code reading the votes and providing output. and the same company is writing the code that performs the operation in either case.

it's all about input and output. that's all any computer program ever does. input and output.

there is no difference between a DRE taking a person's vote as input and an opscan taking a person's vote as an input.

as long as the software that processes the data is secret code, there is no difference.

OK, I know all you "paper trail" people are saying, "but the opscans have a voter verified paper record."

Of course that's true, but did we have a recount in my OPSCAN state of Vermont, which had the highest deviation from the exit polls? No.

And, many states that use DREs are going to require VVPATs anyway. When you put a VVPAT on a DRE, you get the equivalent of an opscan with paper "ballot". A piece of paper that is meaningless unless there is a recount.

IN all election systems, we must ask:

what is converting the voter's intent into an electronic vote?

if it is secret software code,

we are screwed and we have no democracy.

opscan = DRE

once the opscan reads the vote from the "ballot", it is converted to an electronic vote.

how do you know it converted it properly?

is that not the same question we've been asking about DREs?

is there any difference between DREs and opscans?

I'm starting to think NOT.

unless there are AUDITS.

I still don't know if 2% is enough. I am not a mathematician. But it doesn't seem like enough to me. I'd probably be happy with 10% if I could really believe they were chosen randomly.

MMRA

Mandatory
Manual
Random
Audits

it's all about the audits. DRE, opscan, I don't care which one. We need audits.

In that audits performed on opscan ballots are a meaningful thing, whereas it's impossible to perform a meaningful audit on a DRE system.

So, yes, opscan without audits is just as bad as DRE, but that doesn't mean that they are the same thing, as an opscan system *could* be part of a trustworthy voting system, whereas a DRE, in my opinion, cannot.

I have been TRYING to get people to understand this for months! For God's sake, it's not that hard to get.

YES, if the DRE kicks out a "paper record" it's really no different from the optically scanned "ballot" because, as you say, once that vote is scanned into the machine, who the hell knows that the machine is keeping an accurate count? Unless the race is tight, per legislative guidelines, and unless the candidate requests it, there is no recount of the paper ballots to prove or disprove what the precinct tabulators have counted is correct. And, once the votes have been captured on the precinct tabulators, what is the assurance that the media used are "clean" (that is free of executable programs) or haven't been substituted for another with different results? And, then, there is the additional problem of dumping the precinct tabulator results into the central tabulators, which of course can be used to manipulate ANY of the results, and if they are connected to the LAN or to the Internet, it's anyone's game if they have access (which apparently is not difficult to achieve). The results can be hacked, and the audit logs can be overwritten to hide the trail of corruption.

Please read what Rebecca Mercuri says about all of this:

http://www.notablesoftware.com/evote.html

Your Right on the need for audit....

5% random audits per county...

Though just about everything else you said seems true to me.

But stating DRE = OpScan, is false by your own account of auditing. And there are other issues.

So why muddy the water with ALLCAP error message and trash your own otherwise well-reasoned post? Catharsis?

How about, "An OpScan is better than a DRE, but not by much...so we're still outta luck". Or, "DREs or OpScan: Both involve hackable software". And save the allcaps.

To be accurate, an OpScan is better because...

1. You can audit OpScans (but probably won't)
2. DRE generated VVPAT's probably won't be looked at by most voters
3. There may be more ways to hack a DRE than an OpScan
4. OpScans may be cheaper to use and store
5. You can handle more voters with OpScan
6. It may be possible to test them prior to the election, and then locally record the votes, and get a fair count

Can you add to the list?

and a county in South Florida is looking to drop TS over the on going costs of the system.

I know in Hillsborough county it was 3 mil for Opscan and 14+ mil for TS and yet the SOE went with TS....

obviously i'm not saying they are th eexact same thing. of course they use different processes, hardware, software, etc.

WHAT I'M SAYING IS that in terms of providing assurance that the votes are counted properly, they are equal.

I thought that was pretty clear, but perhaps not.

The points you make are true, but they really are minor points in the overall picture. As I stated, more and more DREs are going to have VVPAT printers. So there is "backup" for DREs just as there is for opscans. Will it be checked? Will it be verified? Will it be audited? It doesn't matter if it's a DRE or an opscan system. I have no faith in the integrity of the vote (and either should anyone else here) unless there is auditing.

In regards to the price of the system, yes opscans are cheaper. But you know what, I don't care that much about the price. I just want my vote to count. What if the more expensive option was much more accurate? Wouldn't you then prefer it? I would. So the cost is a selling point to the BOEs but as far as a consumers go it's a drop in the bucket compared to the billions being spent to "spread democracy" over the world when we don't have it here.

All these things are comparatively small issues when we consider that in both systems, the votes are being counted by secret software code. It's not about hackability either. It's about the companies who write the software, like Diebold. They could insert malicous code that changes the vote totals and no one would know. they could do it on either DREs or opscans, with the same amount of ease. No hacking would be required. The fact that DREs are more hackable is true, but I'm not talking about hackability. I'm talking about bad code written on the machine.

Why did I use all caps? Because I wanted to get your attention, and it looks like I did.

I've noticed that lately there seem to be some folks just trying to get their BOEs to choose opscan systems instead of DREs. It's not as simple as that. In one case I even read one person trying to say that a DRE with audits is bettern than an opscan without audits.
In one recent post one of our experts said "I'm still OK with opscans".

I'm not.

Not with secret software code and no audits. And that's what we're facing.

Would you have felt better about it if I made the title:

"OPSCANS ARE BARELY BETTER THAN DRES"

Then i might not have gotten your attention. Your list of facts are all true, but I submit to you that they are rather minor details when one considers that still, all the votes are being run through secret software code and there is no auditing.

OK, I will leave you with a question that will hopefully make my point.

Would you rather have a DRE/VVPAT system with mandatory random audits, or an OPSCAN system with no audits?

think about it. that's the point i'm trying to make.

optiscan is no better, because of the ease with which it can be corrupted/hacked.

A paper TRAIL on a DRE is not worth a damn, because it just prints out the hacked results contained within the machine/database.

But, just because we have a BALLOT is no security against fraud. ONLY if all those paper ballots are counted, and this will ONLY happen if there is a tight race and the candidate requests it, will that occur. The count can be controlled so this won't occur.

We need paper ballots, YES, but the REAL ISSUE is SECURITY--all the way down the line--from the precinct counting and recording to the central tabulator counting and recording--IOW, we have to have security in the way we CAST our votes, plus the way they are COUNTED, and the way they are RECORDED.

I'd like to offer a couple ideas and suggestions.

I think it would be good to have a list somewhere of the things we can do to support the reclaiming of democracy. It seems to me that just sending money to support politicians who MEVER MENTION the voting machine scam and con game should not receive my money. When I get mail from a political cause, no matter how worthy the cause is in and of itself, I just trash it because it's money down a rat hole to support it, unless it is saying SOMETHING about the voting machines.

On the other hand, I am giving money to the votecountusa people and others who are working on this project, to any other group I can see making some headway in the fight.

I also have a subscription to Harper's because the editor Lewis Lapham has publically said that he believes the 04 election was a fraud and he has signed onto the vote analysis going on. As far as Mother Jones or any of the other mags which generally do good reporting, why support them with a subscription if they can't see what's obvious? That these machines have stolen our democracy?

Are there any other magazines or people or orgs that deserve our money and attention? It seems to me there are more and more of these as time goes on. And so often I feel I'm just being negative by not supporting the mainstream Dems and groups (like the ACLU, which isn't doing dip to set the voting procedure straight that I can see), but there are a ton of ways I am being positive and others can work toward a positive goal: assuring that our votes count.

MMRA is the only way to fly, short of hand-to-eye first counts.

The Board of Election's people shy away from the hand-to-eye first counts, leading to their being head over heels in love with electronic counting: "It is so easy", they say.

I'm thinking that we let them have their electronic counters,(do we really have a choice at this point?) but only if there is the Mandatory Manual Random Audits -MMRA. I am thinking the percentage should be at leaast 30% of the total from each precinct, recounted hand-to-eye by citizen committees.

Would such a process give us assurance that our vote was counted correctly, and might it result in a restoration of faith in the whole voting process?

I thought this had been settled long ago.

You should push for MMRAs in VT, but don't use those exit polls as "evidence!" You might end up with paperless DREs like GA where the exit polls were pretty damn close to the vote count. (Unless of course you just want to cherry pick your evidence. Good luck with that.)

Here are the differences between Op Scans and DREs:

http://nyvv.org/paperballotVsDRE.htm

The main one is that op scans can be fully tested by humans while DREs in essence have to test themselves. That's a big difference.

It is a travesty that with all this time being spent on exit poll analysis by PhDs and other quantitative analysts, they haven't come out with a SERIOUS MMRA model to rule out fraud with mathematical certainty that could be put into law.

USCV is talking 3% for example with no mathematical justification whatsoever for this number. Doesn't sound very QUANTITATIVE to me.

I have a hunch that the "right" number might depend on the initial margin of victory (NOT the margin of EXIT POLLS!). In other words, if the outcome of a race is 70-30, you might have to examine fewer machines to confirm the outcome than if it were 51-49, right? So the model could be somewhat dynamic, but a simple chart could be published to specify all that.

Remember, it's not the exact count that matters, it's the CERTAINTY of the outcome.

Instead days and nights are being spent looking at exit polls while laws are being made that may not protect us from future rigging of our elections. Can you say "BRAIN DRAIN?"