the election part 3

"dgk" wrote

Computerized voting is a wonderful thing. Touch screens are great. The
problem is, there is no way of knowing, short of receipts being
printed, that the software is not making mistakes, intentional or
otherwise. Touch screens, in particular, present a calibration problem
to insure that the area on the screen is correctly correlated with the
candidate.

It was NOT Democrats who produced these machines, they were produced
by a company owned by Republicans, whose head, campaign chairman for
Bush in Ohio, promised to deliver the state for the Bush.

They were produced by at least 3 different companies, not "a" company.

The Diebold CEO said " committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes
to the president next year "
Now...that could mean to President Bush, or to the office of the President,
whomever that may be.
(personally, I believe he meant the former, as he said this at a Republican
fund raiser)

In any case, corporate Diebold has slammed him for that statement.
http://www.verifiedvoting.org/article.php?id=2334


Now if that was a Democrat, you wouldn't feel a bit apprehensive if a
close election tipped to the Democrat? Especially since there is no
way of knowing if he did cheat?

Well...since both sides had a army of lawyers, jets at the ready, waiting to
pounce on any irregularities...And we had UN observers....the fact that they
didn't pretty much puts paid to any gross manipulation. This time.

And Ohio wasn't that close.

What is the objection to printing receipts? The voter looks at the
receipt through a windows, and oks the vote and the receipt drops in a
bin to be saved for a recount if needed, or just spotchecked to verify
that the vote total is the same as the program output.

A voter verifiable receipt is better, but by no means secure.
Print A, record B. Who's to know?

Pete

"loki"

wrote in part:

I'm not certian what dgk had in mind but having a paper trail does not
require the renunciation of the secret ballot.

-You vote on the electronic machine.
-The machine records and transmits your vote.
-It also spits out a printed ballot with your vote recorded; much like a
lottery ticket
-This also gives the voter the opportunity to verify their choice.
-This ballot is put into a ballot box
-If there is any question about the vote the ballot boxes provide a
non-electronic audit trail and method to recount and scrutinize the votes
without the issues of overvotes, undervotes, hanging chads and what not.

Who voted for whom is not recorded.

Since some variation of the above is already in place in most places, I
interpreted dgk's complaint to be that an individual voter can't be sure that
the vote he cast for Candidate A was actually counted for Candidate A and
that's simply not possible using a secret ballot. If I misinterpreted his
gripe, I apologize.

Regards,
Bob Hunt

On 08 Nov 2004 02:35:15 GMT, (Hunrobe) wrote:

"loki"

wrote in part:

I'm not certian what dgk had in mind but having a paper trail does not
require the renunciation of the secret ballot.

-You vote on the electronic machine.
-The machine records and transmits your vote.
-It also spits out a printed ballot with your vote recorded; much like a
lottery ticket
-This also gives the voter the opportunity to verify their choice.
-This ballot is put into a ballot box
-If there is any question about the vote the ballot boxes provide a
non-electronic audit trail and method to recount and scrutinize the votes
without the issues of overvotes, undervotes, hanging chads and what not.

Who voted for whom is not recorded.

Since some variation of the above is already in place in most places, I
interpreted dgk's complaint to be that an individual voter can't be sure that
the vote he cast for Candidate A was actually counted for Candidate A and
that's simply not possible using a secret ballot. If I misinterpreted his
gripe, I apologize.

Regards,
Bob Hunt

Unfortunately that is not how it works with most black box voting
machines. There is no paper trail. No, I didn't mean that a receipt
should print out with the voter's name. Just a plain listing of what
was voted for, dropped into a box, would do for most of us.

On Sun, 07 Nov 2004 21:11:20 GMT, "Pete"
wrote:


"dgk" wrote

Computerized voting is a wonderful thing. Touch screens are great. The
problem is, there is no way of knowing, short of receipts being
printed, that the software is not making mistakes, intentional or
otherwise. Touch screens, in particular, present a calibration problem
to insure that the area on the screen is correctly correlated with the
candidate.

It was NOT Democrats who produced these machines, they were produced
by a company owned by Republicans, whose head, campaign chairman for
Bush in Ohio, promised to deliver the state for the Bush.

They were produced by at least 3 different companies, not "a" company.

The Diebold CEO said " committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes
to the president next year "
Now...that could mean to President Bush, or to the office of the President,
whomever that may be.
(personally, I believe he meant the former, as he said this at a Republican
fund raiser)

In any case, corporate Diebold has slammed him for that statement.
http://www.verifiedvoting.org/article.php?id=2334


Now if that was a Democrat, you wouldn't feel a bit apprehensive if a
close election tipped to the Democrat? Especially since there is no
way of knowing if he did cheat?

Well...since both sides had a army of lawyers, jets at the ready, waiting to
pounce on any irregularities...And we had UN observers....the fact that they
didn't pretty much puts paid to any gross manipulation. This time.

And Ohio wasn't that close.

What is the objection to printing receipts? The voter looks at the
receipt through a windows, and oks the vote and the receipt drops in a
bin to be saved for a recount if needed, or just spotchecked to verify
that the vote total is the same as the program output.

A voter verifiable receipt is better, but by no means secure.
Print A, record B. Who's to know?

Pete

Lawyers can do NOTHING about votes that cannot be recounted. They can
stop intimidation but cannot recount bits in a machine.

dgk wrote in message . ..
It was NOT Democrats who produced these machines, they were produced
by a company owned by Republicans, whose head, campaign chairman for
Bush in Ohio, promised to deliver the state for the Bush.

There were plenty of democrats involved with writing the
specifications for the machines.

What is the objection to printing receipts? The voter looks at the
receipt through a windows, and oks the vote and the receipt drops in a
bin to be saved for a recount if needed, or just spotchecked to verify
that the vote total is the same as the program output.

There weren't any manufacturer's objections to printing receipts, and,
as I recall, at least one of them even basically assumed that the spec
writers would come back for future elections and require a printer;
and so included interface hardware that would accomodate the printers.

Printers do sometimes have problems with being a mechanical device
that fails often in various situations, out of paper, paper jam, ink
cartridge failure, etc. But, from the hearing on it, I got the sense
that if someone writes new specs they will be more than happy to sell
the counties more hardware to print receipts.

I can only think of one objection, and that is a desire to cheat.

I don't think there is any objection at all. As long as the receipts
are left in a sealed box and can't be used by people outside the
polling process to intimidate voters into voting for one candidate or
another.

Blaming the manufacturers for a failure created by those writing the
specs seams to be a reach to me.

On 8 Nov 2004 10:44:45 -0800, (rwwff) wrote:

dgk wrote in message . ..
It was NOT Democrats who produced these machines, they were produced
by a company owned by Republicans, whose head, campaign chairman for
Bush in Ohio, promised to deliver the state for the Bush.

There were plenty of democrats involved with writing the
specifications for the machines.

What is the objection to printing receipts? The voter looks at the
receipt through a windows, and oks the vote and the receipt drops in a
bin to be saved for a recount if needed, or just spotchecked to verify
that the vote total is the same as the program output.

There weren't any manufacturer's objections to printing receipts, and,
as I recall, at least one of them even basically assumed that the spec
writers would come back for future elections and require a printer;
and so included interface hardware that would accomodate the printers.

Printers do sometimes have problems with being a mechanical device
that fails often in various situations, out of paper, paper jam, ink
cartridge failure, etc. But, from the hearing on it, I got the sense
that if someone writes new specs they will be more than happy to sell
the counties more hardware to print receipts.

I can only think of one objection, and that is a desire to cheat.

I don't think there is any objection at all. As long as the receipts
are left in a sealed box and can't be used by people outside the
polling process to intimidate voters into voting for one candidate or
another.

Blaming the manufacturers for a failure created by those writing the
specs seams to be a reach to me.

There were lawsuits to force paper trails, all of which were objected
to by the government of the various states. Certainly Florida, where
Waxman sued.

I think the bigger problem with receipts is the concept of people
keeping them, and then collecting money or something for the proof of
voting for someone. That must be avoided at all costs. Thus the system
of viewing but not touching.

(rwwff) wrote:

dgk wrote in message . ..
It's possible that folks were embarrased to admit that they voted for
Bush, I sure would have been. It's possible that the exit polling
methodology was wrong. It's possible that they vote was tampered with.

Or afraid that they would be physically attacked if they admitted to
voting for Bush. There were plenty of examples of Bush supporters
having tires slashed, being boo'ed in line, etc. If it weren't for
the fact that I currently live in one of the most republican counties
in America, I might have felt the same. I know I would have felt that
way, had I been questioned where I used to live, and might have lied
to a pollster to prevent anyone from coming after me or yelling at me.

Not to mention - I doubt that as many Republicans are willing to
discuss their voting with pollsters as Democrats (just a guess, but I
know I would be less vocal about it if someone asked me). We're not
talking about a huge swine.

I think the real answer though is that the exit polls made some
assumptions about sample weighting that have been true in the past,
but were not true this time around. Republicans have never done a
massive get out the vote drive like they did this time around; usually
thats only the Democrats field of play. Pollsters can't weight
something they've never seen before.

And let's NOT forget that the vote turned out nearly identical to the
average of the many polls being done running up to the election (which
showed Bush ahead by 2-3%), and pretty much spot on state-by-state as
well.

Mark Hickey
Habanero Cycles
http://www.habcycles.com
Home of the $695 ti frame

dgk

wrote:

Unfortunately that is not how it works with most black box voting
machines. There is no paper trail. No, I didn't mean that a receipt
should print out with the voter's name. Just a plain listing of what
was voted for, dropped into a box, would do for most of us.

The balloting system I am familiar with uses paper ballots counted by machines.
Unless you add a paper ballot filled out by each individual voter any such
paper trail in a totally electronic balloting system (touch screen voting)
would have to rely on the machine to print out the voter's ballot so the paper
trail would not vary at all. I mean, I've never seen an electronic cash
register print out a receipt for an amount different than the total on the
register's electronic display.

Regards,
Bob Hunt

Mark Hickey wrote

We're not talking about a huge swine.

Why are you dragging Michael Moore into this?!?

Bill "came immediately to mind" S.

"loki" wrote in message ...
I was going to vent on both sides and tell everyone to get over it:

Kerry-ites: you lost. Deal with it.

I am dealing with it. I am anticipating 4 years from now when Hilary
is our President. ;-)
http://hometown.aol.com/lbuset/