HCPB fundamentals What are HCPB? What are the essential elements of HCPB? What are the benefits of HCPB? Why choose HCPB against the recommendation of so many computer experts? Aren't HCPB simply a nostalgic throwback to some idyllic "good old days"? Aren't HCPB systems obsolete? Aren't HCPB advocates merely afraid of electronic voting machines? What are the details of the HCPB process? What are the possible problems unique to HCPB? How trustworthy are HCPB systems? How accessible are HCPB systems? Are they HAVA compliant? How practical are HCPB? How can I help get HCPB adopted in my locale?
Other voting systems Why not vote by mail, like Oregon? Why not vote via the Internet? Why not continue to use lever machines? Why not use punch card ballots? Aren't electronic voting machines designed to be secure? Why should we be concerned by electronic voting? Shouldn't certification of electronic voting machines remove concern? Aren't electronic voting machines more reliable than other voting systems? Isn't "chain of custody" easier to observe with voting machines than with HCPB? Isn't an electronic voting machine safe if it's not connected to another computer? Should we be concerned about the partisanship of some electronic voting machine manufacturers? Won't all the problems with electronic voting machines eventually be fixed? Do HCPB advocates totally rule out the use of electronic voting machines?
Hand-counted Tallied by citizens without the aid of tools other than paper and pen (or pencils).
Paper A durable medium which allows data to be clearly and permanently inscribed.
Ballot A list of contests and the corresponding candidates and initiatives (if any) in an election.
What are the essential elements of HCPB?
· The paper ballot, marked with the voter's choices, is the official record of the voter's choices and is the record used in the official vote counting. · The citizens who do the hand-counting include representatives from the different parties on the ballot. This provides essential checks and balances on the counting. · The counting takes place in the polling place immediately after the polls close.
Reliable Other systems rely on HCPB for confirmation of their results
Simple It's less prone to equipment breakdown, poll worker confusion than other systems
Easy to use People without disabilities need only a pen or pencil. People with disabilities can be provided with other appropriate accessories.
Authoritative It employs the actual document prepared by the voter; not a reproduction.
Secure Once placed in the ballot box, the ballot is inaccessible before the counting.
Why choose HCPB against the recommendation of so many computer experts? · Many, perhaps most, computer experts prefer HCPB. · Some computer experts say, "Don't rely on computer experts--not even us!" In other words, evaluate the various systems and see which meets the standards required by a democracy.
Aren't HCPB simply a nostalgic throwback to some idyllic "good old days"?
Not at all. Longing to return to the "old days" before computers existed would be as misguided as longing for some idyllic, electronic paradise where computers are trusted to control every aspect of our lives. Computers are essential to maintaining and improving life and liberty in today's complex world.
Aren't HCPB systems obsolete?
· Our interest is the best way to conduct elections, regardless of how old or new the system is. · Computers are newer technology than pencils but people still find pencils to be the more appropriate technology for some tasks. The same is true of paper money.
Aren't HCPB advocates merely afraid of electronic voting machines?
We are not afraid of computers. We are afraid of unchecked and uncheckable computers.
What are the details of the HCPB process?
Creating the ballots Can be preprinted and delivered to the polling place. Can be printed as a blank ballot at the polling place. Can be printed as a completed ballot, with the voter's choices.
Storing the ballots In a public ballot box, accessible only for inserting ballots, until the counting starts.
Marking the ballots By pen or pencil By electronic printing machine By disabled-assistance devices.
Verifying the ballots By the voter before casting the ballot.
Casting the ballots The ballot gets inserted into a ballot box by the voter.
Isolating the ballots The ballots are kept in a ballot box that is viewable by the public and inaccessible except to deposit ballots, until the poll officials open it to count the votes.
Counting the ballots The ballots are removed from the ballot box, shuffled randomly, and counted, with each vote announced loudly to the public.
Reporting the results The resulting tallies are posted in the polling place and reported to the central authority.
Transporting the ballots Accompanied by poll workers and possibly by other representatives of opposing political interests.
Archiving the ballots Warehoused securely in a vault until the expiration date.What are the possible problems unique to HCPB?
· Running out of paper ballots. · Running out of pens or pencils. · Problems other than the above are not unique to HCPB systems.How trustworthy are HCPB systems?
(Questions like the following might be addressed.)
* Don't HCPB reopen our elections to fraud and vote rigging?
* Don't HCPB allows voters or poll workers to deposit extra ballots?
* Don't HCPB allow voters to more easily sell their votes? (This can be done in a process called "vote chaining," here-in defined.)
* Aren't HCPB more error prone than electronic voting machines?
* Aren't HCPB inaccurate?
* Isn't chain of custody a serious problem with HCPB?
* Who would select the people that do the hand-counting?
* What criteria would be used to select the hand-counters?
* How would the hand-counters be selected?
* Why do you think HCPB will produce a totally accurate result?
* Would audits ever be needed after an initial HCPB count?
* How should HCBP audits be conducted?
* How can we trust the people doing the hand-counting?
* Can't all our concerns about possible malfunctions and/or rigging of voting machines be allayed by one or more of the following?
* "Open source" software?
* The paper record of the voter's choices which is produced by some electronic voting machines?
(This paper record is also sometimes called-- * "Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail" (VVPAT) * "Voter Verified Audit Trail" [VVAT] * "Voter Verified Paper Ballot." (This term is a misnomer. Since this paper record is not physically used for the official count, it's by definition not a ballot.)
* Random audits of the paper record?
* Other statistical techniques for detecting errors?
* Paper Ballots, machine counted?
* Encryption of the computerized ballots?
* Wouldn't the Holt bill resolve all concerns about electronic voting machines?How accessible are HCPB systems? (HAVA compliance)
· Will HCPB be a help or a hindrance to voters whose right to vote has at times been violated and suppressed--for instance, people of color, low-income people, college students?
· Will HCPB result in long lines at the polls?How practical are HCPB?
* Aren't HCPB less accurate than electronic voting machines?
* Aren't HCPB easier to "misplace" or "damage" than the paper trail printed by touch-screen voting machines?
* Don't HCPB cost more than electronic voting machines?
* Don't some jurisdictions have ballots that are too complicated for HCPB?
* Won't HCPB create a need for additional poll workers?
* Won't HCPB demand too much time and effort from already tired poll workers?
* Won't HCPB take too much time?
* Are there "abbreviated" or "partial" versions of HCPB?
* Won't HCPB require more poll workers?
* Will it be difficult to recruit more poll workers?
* Won't HCPB require poll officials to be more highly trained than if they are using an electronic voting machine.
* Won't HCPB require voters to be more highly trained than if they are using an electronic voting machine?
* Won't HCPB required poll officials to be more alert and observant than if they are using an electronic voting machine?What can I do to get HCPB adopted in my state and my locale? · How do I find out whether a HCPB procedure is approved in my State? · How do I find out whether a HCPB procedure is actually used anywhere in my State? · How do I persuade our State and/or local officials to adopt HCPB?
Why not vote by mail, like Oregon? · Ballots may get lost in the mail. · Ballots may be altered or discarded by any number of people who handle the ballots before they get counted.Why not vote via the Internet? · Ballots can easily be hacked, either on the voting machine itself, or in transit to the central collection point. · The receiving we bsite may be hacked. · Internet service may be disrupted, intentionally or unintentionally.Why not continue to use lever machines?
· They can be hacked without being noticed. · Like computers, they can break down. · They are bulky and expensive to store, transport, and maintain.Why not use punch card ballots?
· Their data is not verifiable by the voter. · Punching the holes is an unreliable process. · Counting is done by machines that can make mistakes that go unnoticed.Aren't electronic voting machines designed to be secure?
· Manufacturers and testing companies don't allow security experts to assess the strength of the security built into the voting machines. · Software experts have demonstrated the hackability of various systems, even without having full knowledge of those systems. · Complicated security procedures are sometimes skipped by poll workers. · Votes and programs are stored on credit-card-sized computer memories that are easily misplaced.or substituted. · Electronic voting systems can easily be damaged or otherwise rendered inoperable.Why should we be concerned about electronic voting?
· The contents of the machine, and how the machine processes the ballots, is kept a secret from the public. Consequently, election outcomes are susceptible to being changed by undetectable errors,accidental or otherwise, and/or fraud. · The machines have a history of continuing hardware and software breakdowns during actual elections. Shouldn't certification of electronic voting machines remove concern?
Ideally, yes. But In practice, · Certification is often little more than "rubber-stamp approval," based mostly on vendor assurances that problems will be fixed in the future. · Machines are always susceptible to bugs, breakdowns, and other malfunctions.Aren't electronic voting machines more reliable than other voting systems?
HCPB are relied upon to confirm results of other voting systems, including electronic voting machines. That means HCPB are considered more reliable than other voting systems, including electronic voting systems.Isn't "chain of custody" easier to observe with voting machines than with HCPB?
HCPB has the clearest and most reliable chain of custody between the time the ballot is cast and the time the ballot's votes are tallied.Isn't an electronic voting machine safe if it's not connected to another computer?
Electronic voting machines can be hacked by anyone who has access to the machine. They do not need to be knowledgeable; hacking can be accomplished by simply inserting and then removing a memory card. This can take less than one minute.Should we be concerned about the partisanship of some electronic voting machine manufacturers?
Partisanship itself is not a concern. But exclusive and secret access to voting systems by one group of partisans is a serious concern. Won't all the problems with electronic voting machines eventually be fixed?
· Systems that currently have serious problems should not in be use in critical situations. Such systems are considered by technical specialists to be in the "test" or "shakeout" phase. · Computer experts say that all major computer software has undetected bugs-undetected and unsuspected even by the developers who created the software. · Some computer experts promise that all such problems will be fixed some day, but their proposals are merely speculative. No foolproof strategy for protecting against all bugs and hacks has yet been put forth, and most computer experts are inclined to believe that no such strategy is possible. Do HCPB advocates totally rule out the use of electronic voting machines?
HCPB advocates are opposed to the use of electronic voting machines in our elections, including the storing and counting of votes,
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
Thank you for posting this informative article. Even though I also believe that hand counted paper ballots is the best way to avoid fraud, the way the argument for it has been laid out by you has made it possible to give intelligent answers to the commonly-asked questions.
by
Laur (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 22 comments) on Saturday, May 12, 2007 at 1:13:27 PM
hand counted paper ballots as used in the real world
Many people refer to how Canada uses HCPB and has their election results in 3 hours after closing of polls.
Few mention that Canada only has one contest on the ballot - one (1).
US ballots typically have from 24 contests (North Carolina) to 55 + contests (California, Oregon, Washington) on the ballot. Additionally, some of these contests are multi seat choices.
Mexico used hand counted paper ballots in their highly questionable presidential election, and hand counted paper ballots were used in the recent Nigerian election debacle.
Any system can be insecure, even HCPB, without good checks and balances. HCPB is not a cureall.
If the US wanted to switch to HCPB (less than 1% of jurisdictions even use HCPB), then we would need to revamp our political and electoral system so that we could do HCPB and not have a meltdown.
Take a look at what the ballots in Australia, Canada, Germany, Iraq, Mexico, Russia, the UK and other countries look like:
Part of the UK's success with HCPB is that they only have one contest, or sometimes two (but use two sep ballot papers) contests per election. They gather the ballots at a central location and count the ballots by sorting and stacking them.
You can't sort and stack a 55 contest ballot.
SO, HCPB is an admirable idea, but its an empty one if you do not consider the entire system. HCPB is already in use in other countries, see how they do it and what we would need to change in order to do it well.
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ncvoter (19 articles, 1 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 112 comments [2 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Saturday, May 12, 2007 at 1:48:41 PM
Reply: Complicated US Ballots Does Not Preclude HCPB Use
ncvoter ~ you are correct to point out the differences between Canadian and US ballots.
This is exactly why the "Sort and Stack by Candidate Method" can be used to effectively hand count complicated ballots.
Speaking from the experience of running the Nov. 06 parallel election in Franklin County (Ohio), a team of 8 people counted 626 ballots for a total of 5634 votes in five hours.
That's 140 votes per hour, or about two votes a minute.
HCPBs are totally doable by ordinary citizens on election night, as is done around the world from third-world to first-world countries.
A good source on this info is Electoral Management Design Handbook by International IDEA (2006). For a review, see http://tinyurl.com/2cp6sb
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Rady Ananda (182 articles, 374 quicklinks, 49 diaries, 1718 comments [201 recommended, 2 rejected]) on Saturday, May 12, 2007 at 2:19:40 PM
a "team of 8 people counted 626 ballots for a total of 5634 votes in five hours." So you had 9 contests on the ballot?
So this team of 8 people counted approx 125 ballots (with 9 contests on them) per hour.
this is an average of 15.6 ballots per person per hour.
Thats incredibly slow. Imagine if this were a presidential election, with a minimum of 25 contests, or as many as 55 and more contests on the ballot?
In North Carolina, where we had 3 counties hand count the Nov 2004 presidential election, where turnout is high, the workers began counting the ballots after the polls closed and finished during the afternoon the next day.
While this may be doable, its nothing at all like how it is done in countries that have actual HCPB elections.
When it takes days or weeks to count ballots, the election is hardly observable.
Counting a 55 contest ballot is much different than counting a single contest ballot.
You can't sort and stack a 55 contest ballot the way you sort and stack a single contest ballot.
Anyone advocating HCPB will have to be faced with the fact that for the US to do this in a transparent way, it will have to be observable.
That means making it possible to do it within a reasonable amount of time.
Part of HCPB is having only one contest or at most 2 contests per election.
By the way, Mexico and Nigeria both used Hand Counted Paper Ballots in their hotly disputed elections.
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ncvoter (19 articles, 1 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 112 comments [2 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Saturday, May 12, 2007 at 4:21:52 PM
It's ironic that electioneers push voting machines even as they ignore the main benefits that electronic voting could offer. Many people can't see the forest for the trees unless it is pointed out for them. In today's world, why are the masses still content with a representative democratic system designed over 200 years ago? It is primitive, not sacrosanct.
We’ve all seen Range voting in action as the Olympic scoring system. Applied in an election, voters would score any or all candidates, with the highest average score winning the election. This eliminates the “spoiler,” “wasted vote,” and “candidate cloning” problems of our current system.
The CRV was founded in 2005 by Warren D. Smith, a PhD mathematician who has studied voting methods; and Jan Kok, an engineer and political activist in Fort Collins, CO who has “discovered a way to conduct range voting elections on existing voting machines.”
Its goals are to 1) educate the public about the advantages of range voting and comparative disadvantages of other systems, and 2) lobby for its adoption.
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Peter Dearman (10 articles, 32 quicklinks, 9 diaries, 144 comments [1 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Sunday, May 13, 2007 at 2:15:29 AM
Thanks for pointing out some of the difficulties with HCPB. They're not insignificant, and they'll have to be dealt with in a more complete version of our FAQ.
The question is, Are the objections truly deal killers, or can they be remedied?
The answer to that question will determine which of the following paths we take:
* Give up on HCPB, and limp along with inherently insecure, electronic voting systems.
* Devote our resources to refining HCPB.
Given that electronic voting is inherently insecure (according to a recent NIST study group report, http://tinyurl.com/y3ejs7 ), only the second alternative is acceptable.
(Hybrid measures--partial handcounts of electronic paper trails--are not an acceptable alternative, for reasons I won't go into here.)
So, can ingenuity and/or technology help us refine HCPB systems, without corrupting the very idea of HCPB? If so, how?
Rady has already discussed one idea. I'll discuss another: Publish the ballots.
To start, consider that the essence of HCPB is not counting by "hand," it's counting by "eye." The ballots do not need to be handled, but they do need to be inspected (literally, "looked upon").
With that in mind, it's easy to step beyond the notion that only a handful of people can be allowed to actually "handcount" the ballots. After all, handling is time consuming and potentially damaging to the ballots; but merely viewing them is not.
So, after the polls close, why not project each ballot on a large screen, so everyone in the polling place can see and "eye-count" the votes? (Or at least count the votes in one contest? Observers from each candidate in the contest can do the counting.) With a proper strategy for "comparing notes," any discrepancies in counting can be detected and rectified almost immediately.
Even better, why not videotape the displaying of the ballots? The videos can then be posted on the Internet so that anyone and everyone can independently count the votes, using whatever means they wish. This would also allow each person enough time to tally all the votes for all the contests, if s/he so wished.
Transparency doesn't get any better than this.
Can objections be raised to this proposal? Sure. The above is not a polished and complete proposal. It's brainstorming, intended to show that there are still approaches to HCPB that have not yet been conceived or explored.
Still, some of the more likely objections to the above proposal have already been dealt with. These include--
* "The large-screen images of the ballots might be faked or altered."
* "The original videos might be faked or altered."
* "The video copies on the Internet might be faked or altered."
* "The Internet site may be crashed or otherwise become inaccessible."
Excellent work, Roy and Sheila! Question, tho, for ncvoter-
So what you're saying is 'It's too hard'? I'm sorry, but that is not an acceptable response, at least for MY vote. Good grief, we're talking about our democracy here. Having a fair and transparent vote, both cast and counted, is what our democracy rests on. If we don't have that, then we have NOTHING! No other issue is as important as this. If we lose control of our elections, which I feel we are literally on the verge of, then we can't choose our legislators, therefore our voices are gone. This is absolutely crucial. So what!, if it takes a little more effort? No problem, because the alternative is fascism. No thanks.
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Pamela (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 7 comments) on Tuesday, May 15, 2007 at 9:49:05 AM
Reply: the argument doesn't address the real world
Hand counting a ballot with 9 contests on it is easy.
A general election in North Carolina will have usually 25 contests, a general election (midterm) in California will have 55+ contests.
So unless the authors provide practical solutions, all of the idealism in the world won't convince lawmakers and election officials to make drastic changes in how over 99% of the country counts votes.
Provide a way that a 55 contest ballot can be counted accurately with in a reasonable amount of time so that the counting can be observed.
If the counting is still going on 24 hours later, the transparency of the process is questionable.
I am all for HCPB, but given that the only way to quickly count them is if you only have one contest on the ballot, it won't happen without other major changes to our electoral system.
Most states can't get 3-4 poll workers per precinct, much less 16.
New Hampshire citizens may care more about elections, since up until now, NH has had an inordinate amount of influence over our primaries.
Wonder how long that interest will last now that NH won't be so important to the primaries?
Just provide solutions to counting in public and address the poll worker shortage as well.
Browbeating won't work, solutions would be better.
Can you get lawmakers to agree to have elections more frequently and not let them capitolize on the turnout associated with being on a large ballot?
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ncvoter (19 articles, 1 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 112 comments [2 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Wednesday, May 16, 2007 at 12:28:13 PM
Reply: Joyce, YOUR argument doesn't address TRANSPARENCY,
which is not possible with machines. BTW, do you have a horse in the race? You seem to have oh so many reasons why 'it is just impossible'. Thought maybe there was a reason you wanted machines????
by
Pamela (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 7 comments) on Friday, May 25, 2007 at 6:21:07 PM
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