Accurate and Fraud-Free Elections Now: Florida's Solution

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By William Faulkner (about the author) Page 3 of 4 page(s)

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Florida has become the wild west for those who wish to commit fraud and our Election Laws make it Legal. It's time to correct these injustices in order to restore confidence in our Election Officials. Election activist have not made Florida the Joke of the Nation, the decision to eliminate the Paper Ballot, Recounts and the decision to purchase Touchscreen DRE's has definitely done that.

Proposed Solutions Currently available

In the Real world of Florida Elections, most SOE's already have Precinct Count Optical Scanners (PCOS) that use Paper Ballots. I'm only proposing a realistic compromise and Statewide Standards now certified by the SOS and the Department of Elections.

The Manual Count of Paper Ballots is proof that the Voting System Technology is not Malfunctioning.

The Machine Count is proof that there was no Human Error in the manual count of VVPB.

By combining the 2 counts will achieve a "Transparent Independent Audit".

It's so simple that I don't know why everyone does not understand we need this solution to stay out of the Courts in the future.

Discussion

Someday our Election Officials could come closer toward reaching their goal of 100 % Accuracy. "No other goal than 100 % accuracy is acceptable, because the stakes are far too high. Without the Voter Verified Paper Ballot no other form of evidence can serve as proof that Election Officials actually performed their fiduciary responsibilities owed to Florida's Electorate."

When manual ballots are used, human error only affects individual ballots on a one error, one ballot ratio. When machine tabulation is concerned, however, a single human error might affect multiple ballots, perhaps a large number of ballots altered by a single "error" (a word I placed in quotation marks because some such errors are deliberately caused).

In our elections the stakes are utterly enormous. The temptation to cheat, if there is a way to cheat, is irresistible. Any way votes can be stolen they will be stolen. With paper ballots, manually marked and manually counted in front of bipartisan witnesses, it is far more difficult to alter a large number of ballots by a single action, er, umm, I should say "error," than it is by any type of mechanical or electronic device.

And in the long run, paper ballots are also easier for the voters to understand, far more confidence-inspiring, provide a better and more permanent record, minimize voter error, and perhaps most importantly, are much cheaper. I cannot conceive of any valid objection to paper ballots and manual counts on ANY reasonable grounds, unless the motive behind the objection is to permit control at will of the outcome of our elections despite the potentially contrary intent of the electorate.

However, no system can ever be fully successful in eliminating error or the possibility of fraud. The starting goal instead is to implement a system that minimizes the opportunity and likelihood of voter error and, regarding fraud, renders it more difficult to achieve and lessens its potential impact on the outcome of elections, while making it more likely that the fraud can be detected and the perpetrators identified and apprehended.

Every mechanical or electronic device that might be involved in voting, whether in the balloting aspect of it or the vote tabulation, works at odds with those goals. Any kind of artifice or device that intervenes between the voter and the tabulation of his or her ballot introduces an additional risk of error or abuse atop whatever such risk would exist for manually marked and counted paper ballots.

Such a goal has got to be to implement a system that has as its chief feature ballot integrity, and to restore the confidence in our election processes that can only be provided by such obvious and transparent integrity.

Everything else, all the arguments about "access" and various programming sources and verification and what not are just obfuscation. It is clear what we must do ensures that the will of the electorate is honored during our elections, which is the only aspect of democracy that has any merit in the first place. That is why the will of the people must be paramount in order to provide the only thing about democracy that has any value. It is only by ensuring the integrity of the ballot that democracy can maintain the people's faith.

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I learned at a very young age in the 60's that the press never really understood the War or The anger against the War. The Press paid more attention to the Political Battles, not the people that were actually dying or watching their sons and (more...)

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