Elections are intended to be deterministic (you get the same results no matter how many times you re-calculate). Surveys are understood to be stochastic (they are subject to probabilistic behavior). Checking samples of audit trails is not adequate verification.
What do we recommend?
1. Prohibit digital ballots and bar codes.
2. Require that user interfaces support paper ballots.
3. Require the same ballot for absentee, polling place and provisional voting.
Al Kolwicz
CAMBER ? Citizens for Accurate Mail Ballot Election Results
Boulder, CO
AlKolwicz@qwest.net
www.users.qwest.net/~alkolwicz
www.coloradovoter.blogspot.com
CAMBER is a dedicated group of volunteers who are working to ensure that every voter gets to vote once, every vote is counted once, and that every ballot is secure and anonymous.
***
Joan, you can be sure that this bill (HR 550), if it is ever passed, will be so
transformed, probably for the worse, that it won't even resemble the original
bill. Don't worry, things will get worse.
Liz R., NY activist
***
Dear Joan:
I feel very guilty about not having returned your dvd or sent you a
contribution, but we'll do one or the other soon.
Although I'm disheartened at the lack of response to the issue of
voting machines from the party in general and the press in particular, I'm
encouraged by the fact that Chicago's last election demonstrated
that machines are so flawed that they can screw up even with no one
at the helm of manipulation, as it were. In other words--and Mark tells me this is happening all over the country-- electronic voting units are
falling apart of their own weight and screwing up counts in
innumerable ways, quite apart from some evil-doer hacking them. Of course, we're all still trying to point out to whomever will listen how votes had been flipped in 2004 by the hundreds of thousands, but people--who before wouldn't even listen to legitimate complaints about votes being stolen--are now beginning to think that touch screens and other electronic devices are just not capable of doing their basic job and
can, and do, acrew up elections irreparably. That, even more than
the issue of computer intervention, could very well win advocates for
paper ballots or, at least, the rejection of electonic counters.
We all know that the denigration of punch cards in 2000 was apparently
a calculated attempt to get rid of them, and not because they were
fatally flawed. As if a hanging chad or a "pregnant" chad was not
incontrovertible evidence that someone tried to punch it out of its
mooring altogether. All that nonsense about "hanging chads" became
all the buzz and even the butt of jokes; the voting machine companies and their Republican allies launched a PR campaign to get counties to abandon punch cards and paper ballots and buy hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia equipment, the makers of which kept their codes secret, except from the band of Republican hackers who did their their work all too well. And who was one of those behind the noble cause of HAVA? Ohio's Bob Ney, a model of probity.
What do we recommend?
1. Prohibit digital ballots and bar codes.
2. Require that user interfaces support paper ballots.
3. Require the same ballot for absentee, polling place and provisional voting.
Al Kolwicz
CAMBER ? Citizens for Accurate Mail Ballot Election Results
Boulder, CO
AlKolwicz@qwest.net
www.users.qwest.net/~alkolwicz
www.coloradovoter.blogspot.com
CAMBER is a dedicated group of volunteers who are working to ensure that every voter gets to vote once, every vote is counted once, and that every ballot is secure and anonymous.
***
Joan, you can be sure that this bill (HR 550), if it is ever passed, will be so
transformed, probably for the worse, that it won't even resemble the original
bill. Don't worry, things will get worse.
Liz R., NY activist
***
Dear Joan:
I feel very guilty about not having returned your dvd or sent you a
contribution, but we'll do one or the other soon.
Although I'm disheartened at the lack of response to the issue of
voting machines from the party in general and the press in particular, I'm
encouraged by the fact that Chicago's last election demonstrated
that machines are so flawed that they can screw up even with no one
at the helm of manipulation, as it were. In other words--and Mark tells me this is happening all over the country-- electronic voting units are
falling apart of their own weight and screwing up counts in
innumerable ways, quite apart from some evil-doer hacking them. Of course, we're all still trying to point out to whomever will listen how votes had been flipped in 2004 by the hundreds of thousands, but people--who before wouldn't even listen to legitimate complaints about votes being stolen--are now beginning to think that touch screens and other electronic devices are just not capable of doing their basic job and
can, and do, acrew up elections irreparably. That, even more than
the issue of computer intervention, could very well win advocates for
paper ballots or, at least, the rejection of electonic counters.
We all know that the denigration of punch cards in 2000 was apparently
a calculated attempt to get rid of them, and not because they were
fatally flawed. As if a hanging chad or a "pregnant" chad was not
incontrovertible evidence that someone tried to punch it out of its
mooring altogether. All that nonsense about "hanging chads" became
all the buzz and even the butt of jokes; the voting machine companies and their Republican allies launched a PR campaign to get counties to abandon punch cards and paper ballots and buy hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia equipment, the makers of which kept their codes secret, except from the band of Republican hackers who did their their work all too well. And who was one of those behind the noble cause of HAVA? Ohio's Bob Ney, a model of probity.
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