Machines are too easy to cheat with.

Post #238,791 by pwhysall 12/21/05 1:34:51 PM Reply	Machines are too easy to cheat with. Human error is a factor, true, but look at the hanging/pregnant/dimpled chad fiasco; did mechanical voting add ANYTHING to the process other than complication? Basically, it's easy to dismiss human error as a reason for mechanising the voting process, by the simple mechanism of allowing the interested parties to oversee the counting process. Works for us. No reason it couldn't work for you. People don't cost money. They volunteer. But now big business has smelt profit in the democratic process, and any hope of a simple-but-effective process in the American political system is dead. Cross in a box, counted by humans, overseen by the interested parties. It's the wave of the future, baby! Peter [link\|http://www.no2id.net/\|Don't Let The Terrorists Win] [link\|http://www.kuro5hin.org\|There is no K5 Cabal] [link\|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org\|Home] Use P2P for legitimate purposes!
Post #238,794 by Another Scott 12/21/05 1:46:19 PM Reply	People do cost money. At least around [link\|http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/eb/working.htm\|here]. It's not a lot, but 1.4 M people at, say, $100 each is $140 M. I have to believe that more people would be needed if paper-and-pencil ballots were used. I understand your point, and agree with it to some extent. But I think the problem is mainly trust and verification, not the technology. Cheers, Scott.
Post #238,797 by pwhysall 12/21/05 1:57:53 PM Reply	Volunteers are free. And the machines make trust and verification harder, not easier. To put it bluntly, I simply do not believe that it is possible to produce a machine where I can visibly see that the vote I think I've cast (and have received a receipt of some kind for) has voted the way I intend. I have no way of knowing that, even before the ballot box, my vote hasn't been tampered with. People and paper have their flaws, but this very fundamental one isn't it. Peter [link\|http://www.no2id.net/\|Don't Let The Terrorists Win] [link\|http://www.kuro5hin.org\|There is no K5 Cabal] [link\|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org\|Home] Use P2P for legitimate purposes!
Post #238,802 by Another Scott 12/21/05 2:26:34 PM Reply	See my link. Volunteers are paid here. :-) There's a recount going on in Virginia in the Attorney General race. The official margin of victory is [link\|http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/20/AR2005122001409.html\|323 votes out of 1.94 M cast]: Four types of voting machines had been used in the election, complicating matters. Voters in most of the state used optical scanners and touch-screen or lever machines. Individual ballots cannot be recounted on touch-screen and lever machines, but the results can be double-checked from printouts. The judges decided not to rerun ballots through the optical scanners and punch-card machines. The attorney general's race is the closest statewide election in modern history. State law permits a recount when the margin is less than one percentage point. In this race, the margin was 0.0166 of a percentage point. Democratic observers allied with Deeds pinpointed discrepancies of just five votes in three precincts, apparently all the result of paper jams when ballots were fed into optical scanners. The mistakes apparently occurred when poll workers took jammed ballots out of the optical scanner and either ran them through the machine again -- in effect, counting them twice -- or lifted the optical scanner and dropped them in by hand, meaning they were never counted at all. The machines, which have been used in Loudoun since 1997, reportedly have an error rate of 1 in 4 million, according to county officials. About 60,000 votes were cast in the county in the attorney general's race. Pencil and paper aren't foolproof either. FWIW. My final $0.02, I think. :-) Cheers, Scott.

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