Black Box Voting Blog-O-Lection 7/21: Burglars at the window

(CA) 7/09 - LOS ANGELES: WUPS! WHAT'S THIS AUTOMATED BALLOT REMAKE SYSTEM? -

If anyone has more information on this, shoot it over to Black Box Voting. According to a press release from Los AngelesCounty, "New tools helped to automate the remake of provisional ballots during the election canvass period. . . The system was developed in-house by Department Technical Services' staff using available commercial off-the-shelf hardware. "

"Ballot remake" is a process whereby ballots that someone deems unreadable by a voting machine are "remade" or duplicated. I've got several concerns with this process, such as:

(1) record keeping - both Contra Costa County (CA) and Minnesota had questions raised in terms of accounting for the remakes, and in the close Frankel/Coleman race in Minnesota, some of these remakes appear to have been counted twice.

(2) Automated remakes, according to a set of Diebold programmer instructions, can follow procedures that I can only describe as shocking. To wit:

quote:

"To dup a ballot, locate each of the undefined votes. Scroll up and down the ballot as needed, and choose Other Side to turn the ballot over.

Using the mouse, left-click on an undefined oval to change it to a NO vote. Use right-click for a YES vote.

You can also change NO votes to YES votes, and vice versa, if you determine that the voter's intent has not been read correctly."

Now, the above quote is from programmer's information for the Diebold/Premier high speed central count scanner. We simply know very little about what this "automated remake" is in Los Angeles. Watch the Black Box Voting Website for updates.

We need to know a whole lot more about any new automated ballot remake systems, starting with questions about accounting and concealed alteration of the votes. What software, specifically, is used? What publicly viewable controls exist? Where else is "automated" remaking of ballots being done?   

(WA) 7/09 - IF YOU LIKE CAT AND MOUSE GAMES WITH VOTER AND BALLOT ACCOUNTING, YOU'LL LOVE INTERNET VOTING -

As you may know, Hawaii has just experimented with Internet voting. Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed was again pushing Internet voting just couple weeks ago in the tri-cities, where he said:

"It may take a few years, but eventually people will realize the benefits of online voting."

Many citizens sense that Internet voting is somehow -- well, wrong -- but find it hard to articulate objections.

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