Paper Ballots --vs-- Voter Verified Paper Ballots (x-post)

Paper Ballot Concepts In a Computerized World

Time, Access to equipment, Observation, Evidence

– They won’t mean what they used to

Snip....3. The proposed law requires voters to have an opportunity to verify and change their votes before the ballot is cast. Regrettably this only refers to the screen display and the paper printout of the voter’s choices (the voter-verifiable paper ballot, or VVPB). The proposed law assumes that the invisible, electronic ballot in the computer is the same as what is displayed on the screen and what is printed on the VVPB. If you voted on a simple paper ballot with a pencil (or a ballot-marking machine for voters with special needs), you wouldn’t have three potentially-different versions of your ballot. If the VVPB were the ballot of record, it wouldn’t matter if the screen and the electronic ballot were wrong, or if the electronic ballot was falsified just after you press the “OK” button. This is because what you verify on paper is what would be counted, and the paper can’t change itself and observers can prevent a wrongdoer from tampering with it. But our proposed new law makes the electronic ballot the ballot of record, even though no one can verify or observe it, but a wrongdoer in some remote place can modify it at his leisure after it is cast.

Snip....The proposed law requires vendors to submit a copy of their software for escrow, to be examined under court supervision in case of litigation. But since no one can control what software is in the machine during elections, escrow software may be of little use in an investigation of irregularities.



Electronic voting surely brings us into a topsy-turvy world, and our law and our Boards of Elections aren’t ready for it. Citizen activists are pushing for adoption of an alternative technology that our proposed new law allows, paper ballots with optical scanners and ballot-marking devices for voters with special needs. The advantage of paper ballots is that everyone understands how they work. Observers can observe. The ballots won’t change while they sit in a ballot box. Wrongdoers would need to show up personally to get their hands on the ballots, and we could catch them at it. No one could falsify an entire state election in a few nanoseconds. We should go with the paper ballots.

http://www.wheresthepaper.org/PaperBallotConcepts.htm

Verifying a computer operation with a piece of paper...think about it.

It's an absurd concept. The computer can do whatever it wants with a vote, flip it, drop it, hold it AND it can print out a nice receipt of your intended vote at the same time. Feel better now that you have that paper, not!

If a computer generates a paper ballot that agrees with your vote and the computer can change the vote anyway, the paper ballot is meaningless.

If the only way to truly verify votes without them disappearing into "proprietary software" is through paper ballots, then why have computerized voting in the first place.

Thus endeth the lesson...

Great post kster!

the VVPB must be the ballot of record and counted/verified as such.

at the precinct level.

VVPB is a nice idea but meaningless unless the paper is the ballot of record. That's the mind blower. Maybe the machines are there to do a check on the paper count. Or a preliminary count. But ultimately, when you go to the most secure balloting, presuming proper observation and evidence trail, is paper.

"presuming proper observation and evidence trail" of ANY type of counting system is problematic. Thatz why verification should be the central issue, not cellulose marking methodology.

start to finish. With electronic voting, the votes disappear into the software. It is harder to monitor that and requires special training and skills, which the vast majority lack. Everybody can watch ballots marked, put in a box and what happens to them.

Both should be used and as was said, the paper is the ballot of record, initial results and recounts.

ship of state if they can just change vice presidents and "select" that person in '08 with SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code (what seems to be in the works).

Throw Diebold and ES&S election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor' NOW!

need to be kept as far away from the electoral process as possible. If it ain't busted, don't fix it. A pencil and paper are favoured by most advanced countries, as well as open counting and recounting.

Even the man the far right-wingers claim as their guru, Adam Smith, warned against permitting businessmen to become politicians, because of their propensity for promoting their own exclusive self-interest.

Ironically, Smith was not an economist but a moral philosopher; and his fabled Hidden Hand - was not the hand of the free market, as they tout it to their shame, but of morality. But, such matters are minor details to these people. Why be pedantic, when they can twist such imagery to their own sociopathic ends?