A question for those who know the scoop on good and bad voting systems .......

..... here in Maryland, this will be our last election using Deibold machines. Next year, we will be back to using the system we've had for a long, long time. They use light card stock ballots on which we fill in circles to denote our choices. They provide a felt tip marker to use on the ballots.

These ballots are then fed into a reader, which counts the votes.

I'm not sure of the manufacturer.



Is this a safe system? It seems to me that even if there are shenanigans in reporting the votes and tabulating them, at the end of the day there are paper ballots that can be counted. No hanging chads, but possible over or under votes.

Your comments?

Whether they are hacked remains to be seen.

I don't think there is much incentive this time to go to the trouble of stealing the election. But I could be wrong.

--p!

Yeah, any system can be hacked. Diebold and ESS/Sequoia in particular.

Our old system, while I can't recall its name, is not Diebold. It was that system I was asking about.

They can be hacked, but most of them have been studied and appear to be about as safe as electro-mechanical machines. This issue (optical systems) came up after the 2000 vote.

If possible, find out the model and make of the voting machine. There are several websites that have reviews and "bulletin boards" where you can find more information. Here is one of them: http://www.verifiedvoting.org/">Verified Voting.

The only REAL protection is as open-source (publicly-available code) system that offers a printed "receipt" and a secure, fully audited information flow. It should be taken up early in the next Congress.

This is probably just a re-hash of stuff you've been hearing for eight years, and I apologize if it's the same old same-old. With so little oversight and accountability, it's surprising the system works at all.

--p!

We never had a problem with them.

And the last time there was a recount that got any news, it was a repub protesting the governor's race. She lost the recount by virtually the same number she lost the original election.

It uses paper ballots. They count them with an optical scanner. Not sure how they get the numbers from the precinct to the mother ship.

But at the end of it all, we are still left with human eyeball compatible paper ballots with human made marks on them.

get a recount!!

Ellen Sauerbrey against Parris Glendenning. In the 90s. The recount showed she lost by pretty much the same number as the original results, as I recall.

or just the same junk count.

The diebold has no such way of tracking the votes. No paper trail, no receipt, no nothing. It's basically your word against the machine if there is obvious voter fraud.

So paper ballots are by far the most accountable system.

However, we're probably not a good litmus test. Florida is using the optical scan method this time around, so I guess you'll have a more clear answer tomorrow night.

It seems to me that this is safer than the pure electronic machines because of the paper trail you mention. The actual marked ballots can be compared to the machine results for auditing purposes. My understanding is that a number of machines in each district are audited.

... which fascinated me for their mechanical complexity and their wonderful clicking sounds of pawls and ratchets and gears working in harmony.

They are still used in NY, I believe. Local NY tv station had a report a couple of days ago, saying something about 10,000 moving parts!

:)

Probably cuz I'm old.

just vastly experienced! ;)

Sometimes old stuff is the best stuff, anyway.

20% would be a good number. The tabulators are hackable.

-Hoot

in an audit. Otherwise, they just give people a false sense of security.

chads.

The reporting speed (as if that even matters, really) is as fast as anything else, the technology is mature, and every single ballot can be read by human eyeballs.

or if it's too small. We use that system here, too.