A suggestion to force change in electronic voting machines

Good luck. People should check with their state though. In many you have to have a valid, approved reason to vote absentee. You can't just elect to vote absentee on a whim. They could just as easily find themselves shut out of voting altogether if they don't pay attention.

But I doubt it'll have much effect either way.

Any of you guys in California hearing stories about voting mahine glitches today?

Brand X
Glitches are being reported in three states so far. Electronic machines were dumped and paper ballots were used.

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Yup, and some user errors too.

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I e-mailed the content of my post to CNN's Lou Dobbs last night. On this evening's broadcast, Dobbs didn't read my e-mail on the air as it was too long. But he acknowledged my suggestion that people vote by absentee ballot if the accuracy of electronic voting machines is not protected. His guest on the subject replied that absentee ballot voting would work in some states, more difficult in others.

Dobbs will keep hitting this issue every night until something happens to correct the problem.

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Lou Dobbs transcript
Transcript of Lou Dobb's CNN show 3/3/04 re electronic voting machines.
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DOBBS: Electronic voting failed tests in at least three states yesterday. Voters in Georgia, Maryland and California, some of them had to switch polling places or use old fashioned paper ballots after failures. My guest is one of this countries leading experts on e- voting, David Dill professor of computer science at Stanford, joining us tonight from Mountainview, California. Good to have you here.

DAVID DILL, STANFORD: Glad to be here.

DOBBS: What are we going to do? This is obviously a serious problem.

DILL: Well we need to have paper ballots. They can be paper ballots that people fill out like the existing optical scan systems or they can be paper ballots printed from a touch screen machine. But you need a paper ballot somewhere with current technology.

DOBBS: Some of our viewers who are also disgruntled voters wrote in to us over the last 24 hours and said, that's it, I'm going to use absentee ballots to ensure that my vote is counted come November. What's your reaction to that?

DILL: What we discovered is that absentee ballot systems are different in every state. In California that's a reasonable option. In some other states, you have to sign an affidavit saying you can't possibly vote by other means. And we have to look carefully at how absentee ballots are handled, because people could find their votes not counted that way. It's a reasonable option, but you have to find out what happens.

DOBBS: Senators Graham, Boxer, and of course, Clinton all putting forward proposals on e-voting. What's your reaction to -- which is the best amongst the them, as you understand them?

DILL: My group, verifiedvoting.org has done a comparative analysis of these bills, which you can find on our Web page. We're supporting the Graham Bill, partly because it's just the best bill, and partly because it's very consistent with the Holt Bill in the Congress, which will speed the passage of both bills.

DOBBS: And what is your best advice to voters out there tonight? What's your best advice to policy makers who would be watching and listening to you?

DILL: Let's start working on making sure that we have paper ballots by November 2004. And voters, you know, the most powerful thing has been grass roots pressure on organizations to take positions and on the politicians to do the right thing.

DOBBS: And we want to give them your Web site one more time as a source of information and perhaps a source of communication, if you will.

DILL: Yes, that's http, of course, verifiedvoting. V-e-r-i-f-i- e-d V-O-T-I-N-G.org

DAVE: Professor David Bill, thank you for being here. We're going to be following this subject very closely in the weeks and months ahead. We look forward to talking with you. Thank you.

Human Errors in New Electronic Voting System Give Some Calif
Mar 9, 2004
Human Errors in New Electronic Voting System Give Some California Voters Wrong Ballots
The Associated Press

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Approximately 7,000 Orange County voters were given the wrong ballots in last week's election by poll workers unfamiliar with a new electronic voting system, the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday.
As a result, many people voted for candidates outside their legislative districts, the newspaper said.

However, "from what we have seen so far, we do not believe any of these instances where people voted in precincts they shouldn't have voted in would have affected any of the races," said Steve Rodermund, Orange County's registrar of voters.

Some precincts in the southern California county recorded more votes than they have voters and others had unusually low turnouts, according to the Times, which analyzed county election data. Five of the county's six congressional races, four of its five state Senate elections and five of its nine Assembly contests were affected, it said.

Elections officials said some poll workers gave voters incorrect computer access codes, which resulted in voters accessing electronic ballots for elections outside their districts.

An exact number of incorrect votes is impossible to determine because of steps taken to ensure voter confidentiality, said David Hart, chairman of Texas-based Hart InterCivic, which manufactured Orange County's voting system.

Under the new electronic system, voters arriving at their polling places were given tickets with their precinct number and party affiliation. They handed the tickets to poll workers who checked them against computer records and provided four-digit access codes to use in accessing the proper electronic ballots.

Several poll workers said they didn't know more than one precinct had been assigned to their polling places, however, and thus gave some people the wrong access codes.

"I was very upset about it," said Shirley Green, an Anaheim voter who discovered she received the wrong legislative district code.
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This story can be found at: http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGA6C493MRD.html

A cash register not only tallies numbers but provides a receipt for every transaction. The corporate world INSISTED on receipts to stop money from being stolen from the registers, and to stop lying customers from getting refunds they never paid for, etc...by stealing the product and then returning it.

Gee, it seems to me a carbon-copy recipt - one for the voter, and one for the poller seems to be the solution here. You see immediately that the ones you voted for were actually voted for, and the poller has a record if any problems result, or if exit polling is way off the machine results.

Why are the politicians NOT INSISTING on receipts?

Sometimes I think Florida was one big manipulation to create the conditions for the electronic voting method...to ultimately be able to render any voting verdict desired. We should be keeping in mind here that officials have been trying to stack the voting decks for as long as we have been voting in this country. Trying to force the outcome is nothing new here. The only difference is that the illegality of it is being buried under technology, instead of the old blatant ways of burning crosses and baseball bats outside the polling district.

Re: A suggestion to force change in electronic voting machin

Sounds like a good way to increase the likelihood that your vote will not be counted.

Yes, let's all remember who it was who complained that existing voting systems were not acceptable and pushed states around the country to adopt these new electronic systems.

Lo and behold, on Jay Leno tonight he stated that some states are demanding the machines give a receipt to the voter! I knew my cash register comparison was right! It only makes sense, though. Jay went further and suggested we get a 90-day return policy to go along with the receipt: "Hey, the bozo isn't working out, I want my vote back!"

So long as the "register" makes a receipt for itself as well as gives one the voter can use to verify, then I'd say electronic voting is OK. The paper ballot is the traditional method because it can be counted and recounted if need be. A paper trail for the polling place is an absolute necessity to uphold this wise tradition while applying modern technology to it.

But will all the machines have a paper trail by November?

And of course, why wasn't this simple idea applied to the original model?

Scrat, it was Congress that appropriated funds to install new systems in all the states. It wasn't just the democrats. It was the entire Congress that leaped on that one. Funny how they never insisted upon a paper trail though, that I will admit doesn't make too much sense considering what happened with the punch out nonsense.

Regardless of how 'accurate' machines can be, there still needs to be SOME physical evidence of a persons vote.

I know some states election laws REQUIRE that there be some actual way to physically count each vote if needed (Recount or in the case of machine error/mechanical breakdown)

The problem with electronic voting is that there is always going to be pool of people who will worry about electronic fraud or tampering.

Imagine the chaos if a national election was 'hacked' and the results were corrupted or lost.

Just my 2 cents (pre tax)

I agree that some kind of secure, trackable paper trail is needed to ensure voters' confidence in these systems.

We trust the cash register receipt don't we? Hell, most cashiers are ordered to give each and every customer a receipt, or get fired for not doing it. Sure, there are lots of ways to get free money out of a cash register when the customer doesn't want a receipt.

We take this way to provide security without blinking once. A voting receipt will be accepted as well. The machine records a receipt for itself to be reviewed later on if necessary. The voter gets a receipt right then and there to confirm the vote he or she took. The receipt is probably the only way voters will accept electronic voting. A receipt roll is more user friendly than individual voting cards. It would deter tampering as well, since they would have to lose the whole roll of receipts instead of select cards. The history of voting in this country has been one attempt after another to rig the results, so the tighter we get with the paper trail, the better.

I think receipts are the answer to this problem. I'm more than a little concerned that Congress didn't insist on them from day one. Why would they want a system that could black out and lose thousands of votes without any means of recovering them?

The republicans will be crying foul somehow come November anyway. That's all they do nowadays is cry foul because things aren't going their way without opposition. I suspect Kerry may win bigger than they realize, so they won't have the chance to play with a close call like they did in Florida.

That is the funniest thing I have read in days! Someone please give the gentleman from the spilt-milk, "stolen" election crowd a mirror. Thanks.