Forum Navigation
Topics
Log In
Log Out
:
Forum Search
New Today
New This Week
Advanced Search
Tree View
Forum Account
Edit Profile
Register
Forgot Password
Forum Tools
Help/Instructions
Policies
CLICK STATE TO SEE:
"WATCH LIST"
Marked with: 
"OPEN & HONEST"
Marked with: 
...
|
| (US) 3/06 - Election Reform PLEASE RE... |
|
| Author |
Message |
    
Graham Colin Nayler
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Gnayler
Post Number: 2
Registered: 02-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, February 19, 2006 - 6:06 am: | 
|
I have thought long and hard about the issue of electronic voting. It is clear to me that electronic voting is too easily tampered with and too prone to error to be a reliable means of determining the will of the electorate. I have come up with what I believe is a much better system based on paper ballots. I have written up an article which could become an amendment to the federal constitution, any state constitution, or it could simply be a popular referendum proposition. I believe that this article is capable of generating support from both sides of the political spectrum as I believe most average republicans and democrats are interested in ensuring that the sanctity of the vote is preserved inviolate. I submit it here to you, if you have any suggestions on ways to improve it I am all ears as this is merely a working draft. It was written with the premise that it would be an amendment to the federal constitution obviously it could be appropriately adapted so as to amend any state constitution, or be put to ballot as a proposition, or as a bill in congress or any of the various state legislatures. Without further ado:
Article XXVII
Section One. In every local, state, and federal election in these United States all votes shall be recorded upon individual paper ballots verified by the voter before they are cast into secure boxes, the contents of which shall then be counted and documented by citizens of the respective districts wherein the vote shall have been cast, in a process overseen and certified by elected county officials in a procedure described in Section Two of this legislation, in a manner in which the anonymity of each voter shall be preserved inviolate. The records of the final count in each county, except the names of the respective voters which shall remain anonymous, shall be available as public information in these United States.
Section Two. Voters shall cast their votes on touch screen machines, specially made for this purpose, which shall print out individual paper ballots, one for every representative election and popular referendum voted upon. These touch screen machines shall keep a record of the number of votes for each candidate and the yeas and nays on various popular referendums, but in the interest of the preservation of anonymity they shall not record which person cast the respective votes. These paper ballots shall be of a standard weight and shall be color coded so as to be easily visually distinguishable from one another, the color indicating which candidate the person has voted for in the case of the election of a representative of The People, or whether they voted yea or nay in the case of a popular referendum. These paper ballots shall be verified as accurate representations of the will of the voter by the voter before being cast into separate secure boxes; if upon examination the voter determines that they are not accurate representations of his/her will, the voter shall notify an elected official and the incorrect ballots shall be destroyed and the record of the vote(s) shall be deleted from the touch screen machine and the voter shall cast another vote(s). These secure boxes shall be set upon scales, which shall continuously publicly display a digital readout of the number of ballots contained within them to ensure accuracy increasing by one each time a vote is cast into the secure box. When the polls close, these secure boxes shall, under the supervision of duly elected county officials, be opened by citizens of the district wherein the votes shall have been cast and separated into piles in simple process according to their color. These separate piles shall be weighed by the aforementioned scales and counted by machines akin to those which count currency in banks, which shall have been specially made to count these ballots. If the results from the touch screen machines, the original results from the scales upon which the ballot boxes were placed, the ballot counting machines, and the results from the scales upon which the separated piles shall have been weighed coincide perfectly the election results shall be certified as an accurate representation of the will of the district’s electorate by the duly elected county officials and the final count shall become public information as required by Section One of this article. If the results from these four independent counting methods shall not coincide perfectly a hand recount will ensue, which shall be verified by weight using the aforementioned scales. When the results from these two independent methods coincide perfectly the election shall be certified as an accurate representation of the will of the electorate by the duly elected county officials and the final count shall become public information as required by Section One of this article.
Section 3. The inner workings of the touch screen machine, scales, and ballot counting machines shall be publicly available information.
Secion 4. The legislatures of the various states shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
I'd like to know what you think of this. Obviously I am sure it's language can be improved somewhat but I think the basic process is sound and I believe if implemented it would provide a much more reliable and tamper resistant means of determing the will of the electorate than the current system which leaves no paper trail which can be recounted if necessary and seems to be made with the express purpose, in my opinion, of enabling the tampering of elections in this country. I thank you for taking the time to read this I will be sending it out to other organizations and posting it on message boards to get more feedback. Please reply with your reaction to this article, and if you have any suggestions on ways to improve it's language or the process I have proposed please tell me so I can consider them.
Sincerely,
Graham Nayler
"I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do. What I can do, I should do. And what I should do, by the grace of God, I will do." - Edward Everett Hale |
Robert Sawdey
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Rsawdey
Post Number: 35
Registered: 01-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, February 19, 2006 - 1:44 pm: |
|
Seems like a good start, and the scale weighing idea is straightforward & novel... but I think the idea of a seperate ballot for every race would be a bit ungainly... also the coloring - an election with lots of candidates & issues would need all the colors in the rainbow, and it would take extra effort to keep secret the voters' selections... hard to detect a small filled oval at a distance, but not a larger magenta slip. What about 'non-votes'? I refuse to vote for anyone running unopposed, for example... The coloring might not be as helpful for the color blind, or other visually impaired voters... |
Graham Colin Nayler
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Gnayler
Post Number: 3
Registered: 02-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, February 19, 2006 - 3:14 pm: |
|
You may be right that the idea of a separate ballot for every race could be a bit ungainly, but perhaps the machine could print out one large slip with all the votes on it in smaller slips that could be perforated so that they could be separated and placed into each appropriate box.
I don't think there would normally be a problem for lack of colors as the number of candidates for any given election is usually fairly limited, usually only two are really competitive anyhow in most elections, although I suppose the recall in California did have 135 candidates but that was a rather unusual situation and could be dealt with special rules.
As far as an election with lots of issues it could simply be one small paper slip per issue, with a white slip representing a yea vote and and a black slip representing a nay vote, or any combination of two distinct colors representing a yea or nay vote.
As far as keeping the voter's selections secret obviously that is a concern. Perhaps the best solution to that would be to have the private voting booths contain the secure boxes so that when you place your ballots into the boxes noone can see you, just as the voting booth I voted in on a touchscreen machine in New Jersey in 2004 was a private booth. Issues of tampering brought up by having the boxes in a private area could be dealt with by a system recording the number of people entering the booth and ensuring that the number of ballots cast coincides. Perhaps a small 'I voted slip' could be placed in a box set atop a scale outside the booth to record the number of people that had voted in that booth; the system could be linked so that if ever the number of ballots cast outside the booth and inside the booth did not coincide an alarm could be set to go off.
As far as non-votes are concerned they could be given a specific color and dealt with as if they were a candidate, although I'm not quite sure what the idea of 'non-votes' is, if there are more non-votes than votes for a candidate running unopposed does that change the outcome of the election? Or is it simply to record a dissenting opinion?
As far as people who are color blind the small slips could also bear a number or name of the candidate or the word yea or nay for them to determine that there ballot was an accurate representation of their will. As far as the visually impaired are concerned special rules could be made to apply to those people, perhaps a system using brail, just as we have special rules for those people in our elections today. There are always going to be a segment of the population requiring special treatment because they are handicapped, this is true of any voting method, after all how do blind people cast their votes on touchscreen machines like the one I voted on in 2004?
Thank you for taking the time to read my election reform suggestion and responding to it. I'd be interested to hear your reaction to my proposals attempting to solve the various potential issues you raised.
Sincerely,
Graham Nayler
(Message edited by gnayler on February 19, 2006)
(Message edited by gnayler on February 19, 2006)
(Message edited by gnayler on February 19, 2006) |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 3716
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, February 19, 2006 - 4:39 pm: |
|
Moved to general discussion -- the one-on-one is for smaller cuts with the knife. |
Robert Sawdey
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Rsawdey
Post Number: 53
Registered: 01-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, February 20, 2006 - 2:20 pm: |
|
135 candidates?!?! You'd really need the big box of Crayolas for THAT one! hahaha
As for black & white for yea & nay, I thought the idea was to be able to sort the votes by color, then just count each color pile or weigh them... but then each issue's yea & nay would need to be a different color...
I REALLY don't like the idea of multiple & unobserved ballot boxes... too easy to stuff.
>>>
As far as non-votes are concerned they could be given a specific color and dealt with as if they were a candidate, although I'm not quite sure what the idea of 'non-votes' is, if there are more non-votes than votes for a candidate running unopposed does that change the outcome of the election? Or is it simply to record a dissenting opinion?
<<<
How about this, small government fans... if 'None of the Above' wins, the office is left vacant. And if it happens in three successive elections the office is eliminated all together!
Actually, I recently found out from a Swedish friend that something similar to your idea is used there... but the system is very different there - they only vote for parties, not individuals. It's impossible to 'split your vote'. When more people vote for a certain party, more of that party's people go to parliment. Too much back room party politics for my taste...
One part of HAVA I like, is support for impaired voters... blind voters get audio feedback from headphones on the voting machines... which should produce a VVPAT, of course!
Another problem I see with your system is it can't support 'instant run-off voting' where the voter selects a ranking of candidates... if your first choice is eliminated, you can still influence the selection. That's more of an issue when there are more significant parties... which I'd love to see. This two party stuff tends to frame every issue as Yes/No, Black/White, when 'shades of gray' would yield a better result... of course, even two parties is better than the ONE party system we seem to have gotten into... |
Ron Crane
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Ron_crane
Post Number: 115
Registered: 08-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, February 21, 2006 - 12:31 pm: |
|
Yet again I have to take issue with the nostrum of "voter verification". It does not remedy touchscreens' security issues, and it does not make it possible for the general public effectively to supervise their operation.
"Voter verification" does not work because
1. It involves effectively voting twice. Many voters will not do this (particularly when the polls are busy) and many who do it will not do it effectively.
2. As voters become comfortable with their systems (and comfortable with their "security"), they will also become less likely to verify their votes.
3. Of the few voters who may manage to catch a fraud in action, not all will report it, and pollworkers and officials will attribute the remainder to "glitches" -- rather like the (uninvestigated) "glitch" that had 600 voters casting 4,000 votes for President in Ohio in 2004. Perhaps a machine occasionally will be removed from service, while its sister machines -- running the same software -- continue to be used.
4. "Voter verification" does nothing to counter presentation frauds -- that is, frauds that modify the presentation of the ballot or the acceptance of choices so as to influence the voter to vote as the machine prefers.
5. Some disabled voters (e.g., the blind) cannot "verify" their votes without assistance from another machine -- which creates another cheating opportunity for the machine's vendor and/or crooked officials or hackers.
We should use only elections systems that can effectively be supervised from beginning to end by any member of the general public possessing ordinary intelligence, training, and common sense. Choosing any other kind of system delegates its supervision (and thus, eventually, the control of who assumes office) to "the experts" -- the very problem we're trying to fix.
-R
(Message edited by ron_crane on February 21, 2006) |
Robert Sawdey
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Rsawdey
Post Number: 61
Registered: 01-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, February 21, 2006 - 2:32 pm: |
|
Not some complex duplicate ballot system, but voter VERIFIABLE paper ballots... as long as it's just a computer assisted ballot marking device I'm all for it. When you look at the printed marked ballot, you verify it represents the choices you made or you get a 'do-over'. I completely distrust computers for the tabulation though... only the paper ballot should have any authority.
There is a new & very simple system to assist the disabled fill out paper ballots. Check it out.
http://www.vote-pad.us
Seems pretty unhackable to me... |
Ron Crane
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Ron_crane
Post Number: 116
Registered: 08-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, February 21, 2006 - 7:43 pm: |
|
quote:Not some complex duplicate ballot system, but voter VERIFIABLE paper ballots... as long as it's just a computer assisted ballot marking device I'm all for it. When you look at the printed marked ballot, you verify it represents the choices you made or you get a 'do-over'.
I think I addressed why this is a poor idea. Why don't you try refuting my argument?
quote:I completely distrust computers for the tabulation though... only the paper ballot should have any authority.
If we're going to use computers at all, the public can far more easily supervise their use for tabulation (of paper ballots) than it can their use for generating those ballots. Tabulation can be checked by random sampling hand recounts. Generation, even with "voter verification" is, on the other hand, susceptible to all the frauds my earlier note described.
Of course I don't think we should use computers at all, since only a few computer security experts really understand their vulnerabilities.
quote:There is a new & very simple system to assist the disabled fill out paper ballots. Check it out.
http://www.vote-pad.us
Seems pretty unhackable to me...
The VotePAD is a good idea. Its only real vulnerabilities are the ballot printing (an issue with all voting systems) and the shaker pen. But since the pen probably can't reasonably be programmed to know where it's aimed, it'd be difficult to program it to cheat.
-R
(Message edited by ron_crane on February 21, 2006) |
Graham Colin Nayler
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Gnayler
Post Number: 4
Registered: 02-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, February 23, 2006 - 5:33 am: |
|
Robert Sawdey,
Yeah the 135 candidates would have to be dealt with a special procedure, not enough distinct colors for that many candidates, so a system of paper ballots counted by hand similar to those in place in many counties across the country today could be used in the special case of recall elections that have a ridiculous number of candidates.
You said, "As for black & white for yea & nay, I thought the idea was to be able to sort the votes by color, then just count each color pile or weigh them... but then each issue's yea & nay would need to be a different color..." but that is not so if you have a different box for each proposition/office.
You said that "I REALLY don't like the idea of multiple & unobserved ballot boxes... too easy to stuff." What about my idea of having the ballot boxes on scales ensuring that as each person enters and exits the private voting booth the number of ballots in each box increases only by one? I think that would properly ensure that no ballot stuffing could take place. The system could easily be set up to have an alarm go off in the event of any attempted ballot box stuffing.
As far as instant runoff goes, I'm not a big fan I don't think it is necessary and it complicates the voting process, is it currently used anywhere in this country? As far as I'm concerned you vote for the person you think is the best for the job and let the votes of everyone else add up as they may (properly counted of course).
Ron Crane,
I'm not quite sure that you understand the system I described. It's quite improbable that a person would not notice that their ballot printed out blue instead of red and had the name of the wrong candidate upon it. Or that there ballot printed out black, indicating a nay vote, when they meant to vote yea, indicated by a white ballot. Even as people became extremely comfortable with this system I don't think anyone would not notice if, as they were placing them in the appropriate box they looked at the ballot and instead of being blue and saying Kerry it was red and said Bush. It would be incredibly difficult (daresay impossible?) for a lot of people to be fooled into voting for the wrong person under this proposed system because their ballot would be color coded and would contain the name of the person they voted for.
As far as presentation frauds are concerned I don't believe that would be an issue under this system, and I think that the vote verification process would effectively eliminate the effectiveness of any attempt at presentation fraud on the touchscreens, if you disagree would be please inform me of why so that I can think of a way to modify the system to make it better.
As far as disabled people (e.g. the blind) go they will need special rules/assistance under any system, under this system perhaps there ballots could be printed out with brail or some type of audio verification, or perhaps the vote-pad thing though I haven't really looked at it so I can't say whether I think it is good or not, what type of system do you recommend for disabled people?
You said that "We should use only elections systems that can effectively be supervised from beginning to end by any member of the general public possessing ordinary intelligence, training, and common sense. Choosing any other kind of system delegates its supervision (and thus, eventually, the control of who assumes office) to "the experts" -- the very problem we're trying to fix." and I entirely agree and I believe this system would do just that by giving people a paper ballot that they can look to ensure it properly represents their will and a simple straightforward counting process using the information stored in the touchscreen, the scales, and the ballot counting machines. If these don't all match up 100% a hand recount is done and verified by weight until we can be assured that we have properly determined the will of the electorate.
As far as your second post is concerned I feel I have tried to refute your arguement that voter verification is a bad idea, because in the system I described it would be incredibly difficult for someone to not notice that their ballot was the wrong color and had the name of the wrong candidate on it when they place it in the appropriate box. I have a question about the second part of your post, How do you use computers for tabulation of paper ballots? I don't think using computers for tabulation is very wise and I don't think it can be checked effectively by random hand recounts, this is evidenced by what went on in Ohio in 2004 where recounts were obviously charades as shown by the affidavit of one of the county election officials there. I would be much more in favor of a simple straightforward counting system based on weight or some type of ballot counting machine akin to the machines which count cash in banks, or simply a hand count if all else fails. What type of vote generation/counting system do you reccomend? I am completely open to the idea of not using computers at all I merely wrote in the touchscreen aspect of this system because it seems so popular. I would be in favor of a proper analog method of ballot generation, but I thought that the problem created by the touchscreen (i.e. potential that it would spit out a fraudulent count) would be mitigated effectively by the counting system using scales and ballot counting machines which would force the count made by the touchscreen to be correct otherwise it would be removed from the counting process and a hand recount verified by a scale would be the ultimate arbiter in cases of dispute (which would likely not arise because noone would try to make the touchscreens spit out fraudulent counts because they would know that they would be caught).
Sincerely,
Graham Colin Nayler
"I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do. What I can do, I should do. And what I should do, by the grace of God, I will do." - Edward Everett Hale
(Message edited by gnayler on February 23, 2006) |
Ron Crane
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Ron_crane
Post Number: 117
Registered: 08-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, February 23, 2006 - 1:24 pm: |
|
quote:Ron Crane,
I'm not quite sure that you understand the system I described. It's quite improbable that a person would not notice that their ballot printed out blue instead of red and had the name of the wrong candidate upon it. Or that there ballot printed out black, indicating a nay vote, when they meant to vote yea, indicated by a white ballot. Even as people became extremely comfortable with this system I don't think anyone would not notice if, as they were placing them in the appropriate box they looked at the ballot and instead of being blue and saying Kerry it was red and said Bush.
I disagree. Though individual ballots might make it easier to verify your vote, the procedure still involves effectively voting twice: first to select your candidates, then to verify that the machine printed them correctly. I suspect that many voters will be confused by the rainbow stack of ballots this procedure produces, and will either not bother to verify them or will verify them ineffectively. English (and probably most other languages as well) has well-known "objective" names for only a few colors, yet many elections involve dozens of choices, each of which would be represented by a slightly-different ballot color. This will lead to interminable confusion over whether a vote for Kerry is properly represented by a spring-green ballot, a broccoli-green one, or a sea-green one. Add to this the fact that color perception varies widely between individuals (even ignoring the various forms of color blindness), that it depends upon the colors surrounding the target color, and that it depends critically upon lighting, and I think colored ballots will create a great deal of confusion.
This confusion easily can entangle even a single or small number of races. For example, California's 2004 Presidential ballot had 11 candidates (12 including intentional undervote) and its 2004 federal Senatorial ballot had 8. That's a lot of colors.
quote:As far as presentation frauds are concerned I don't believe that would be an issue under this system, and I think that the vote verification process would effectively eliminate the effectiveness of any attempt at presentation fraud on the touchscreens,
Perhaps I did not explain presentation frauds well. These frauds do not involve printing one thing on the screen and another on the ballot in the hope that the voter won't verify her ballot. Instead, they attempt to influence the voter's *actual choice* by altering how choices are presented and/or how selections are made. For example, a machine might enlarge or increase the sensitivity of the selection area for a favored candidate, and do the opposite for disfavored candidates. Or it might place a favored candidate high on the ballot, or display her name in slightly bolder or larger text. These frauds won't deter determined voters (unless they become outright denial-of-service attacks), but they will influence some of the sizeable fraction of voters who decide whom to vote for in the voting booth. And because these frauds actually change how voters vote, "voter verification" does nothing to detect or deter them.
Speaking of denial-of-service attacks, these give cheaters (particularly cheating vendors and officials) another very fertile field to plow. Consider that the new VVSG permit the use of machines having mean times before failure (MTBFs) of as low as 163 hours (yeah, one hundred sixty three hours). An exponential distribution (the usual for failure analysis), indicates that each such machine has a 24% chance of failing during the VVSG-specified typical 45 hour election cycle. Now consider that a machine with an MTBF of 500 hours (still far short of the 100,000 hours typical of commercial-grade touchscreen computer systems) has only an 9% chance of failing in the same interval. So what happens if crooked vendors (or officials) send the 163-hour machines to precincts likely to vote for candidates they disfavor ("D precincts"), and the 500-hour machines to the other ("F precincts")? You got it: they skew the election by making it 24%/9% = 2.7 times as likely that votes will be lost in the D precincts as in the F precincts. And voters would have basically no way to know that this was happening.
To summarize, voting machines introduce many security holes that aren't apparent on first (or even second or third) inspection. They can effectively be supervised only by computer security professionals, and not by all of them. This, in itself, is reason enough not to use them.
quote:if you disagree would be please inform me of why so that I can think of a way to modify the system to make it better.
Sure. Eliminate the touchscreens entirely and use hand-filled paper ballots counted by hand, by the public, in the places in which they're cast. Face it: machines are unnecessary for the vast majority of the public, and even for most of the disabled (as the Vote-PAD shows). They give little benefit (chiefly overvote/undervote checks) while adding enormous security risks, making it impossible for most citizens effectively to supervise elections, and greatly increasing costs.
quote:As far as disabled people (e.g. the blind) go they will need special rules/assistance under any system, under this system perhaps there ballots could be printed out with brail or some type of audio verification, or perhaps the vote-pad thing though I haven't really looked at it so I can't say whether I think it is good or not, what type of system do you recommend for disabled people?
I think the Vote-PAD is a good idea, and probably suitable for most of the visually-handicapped and some of those with dexterity impairments. It doesn't help everyone, but neither do touch-screens. Those who can't be helped by the Vote-PAD should simply vote absentee. This isn't ideal, but we cannot compromise security and transparency for the laudable goal of having everyone vote exactly the same way.
quote:You said that "We should use only elections systems that can effectively be supervised from beginning to end by any member of the general public possessing ordinary intelligence, training, and common sense. Choosing any other kind of system delegates its supervision (and thus, eventually, the control of who assumes office) to "the experts" -- the very problem we're trying to fix." and I entirely agree and I believe this system would do just that by giving people a paper ballot that they can look to ensure it properly represents their will and a simple straightforward counting process using the information stored in the touchscreen, the scales, and the ballot counting machines....I have a question about the second part of your post, How do you use computers for tabulation of paper ballots? I don't think using computers for tabulation is very wise
What are your "ballot counting machines" if not computerized tabulators? Please explain.
quote:and I don't think it can be checked effectively by random hand recounts, this is evidenced by what went on in Ohio in 2004 where recounts were obviously charades as shown by the affidavit of one of the county election officials there. I would be much more in favor of a simple straightforward counting system based on weight or some type of ballot counting machine akin to the machines which count cash in banks, or simply a hand count if all else fails. What type of vote generation/counting system do you reccomend?
The Ohio problem is a general procedural and corruption-related problem that isn't restricted to hand recounts. Indeed, the same process gave us the awful machines made by Diebold and so forth. Nonetheless, properly-conducted sampling hand recounts permit ordinary citizens to determine, to a high degree of confidence, whether computerized tabulators are counting their ballots correctly. I still would prefer to eliminate all computers from the process, but it's far easier for ordinary citizens to determine whether tabulators are operating correctly than to determine whether ballot printers are.
quote:I am completely open to the idea of not using computers at all I merely wrote in the touchscreen aspect of this system because it seems so popular.
Your proposed Amendment would enshrine touchscreen systems (and only touchscreen systems) in our Constitutions, making it essentially impossible to "not...us[e] computers at all".
By the way, I like your use of scales. They give the citizens who should be watching the ballot boxes another useful tool to prevent box stuffing.
-R
(Message edited by ron_crane on February 23, 2006) |
Catherine Ansbro
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Catherine_a
Post Number: 1783
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, February 23, 2006 - 1:53 pm: |
|
Ron & Graham,
Do you approve scales on their own (as a substitute for hand counting)?
Could the callibration of the scales be successfully "adjusted"? |
Ron Crane
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Ron_crane
Post Number: 118
Registered: 08-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, February 23, 2006 - 2:05 pm: |
|
> Ron & Graham,
Do you approve scales on their own (as a substitute for hand counting)?
Could the callibration of the scales be successfully "adjusted"? <
Scales can help reduce box stuffing, but they cannot eliminate it. And they cannot classify ballots, though they conceivably could be used to count color-coded ballots if you put aside the issues with color coding that I discussed above. But scales can be manipulated, either directly (by fraudulently programming them) or indirectly (by playing with the ballots). As an example of the latter, an individual cheater might cast two half-thickness ballots instead of a single standard-thickness ballot. Or cheating officials might give voters in "disfavored" precincts incorrect-weight ballots and then palm off the resulting problems on phantom "cheating voters".
Scales are in no way a substitute for hand counts.
-R |
Brant Lamb
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Brantl
Post Number: 407
Registered: 01-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, February 24, 2006 - 12:29 pm: |
|
Or heavyweight ballots. |
Robert Sawdey
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Rsawdey
Post Number: 80
Registered: 01-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, February 24, 2006 - 3:09 pm: |
|
'Puce! I wanna be Puce!'... "Everyone loves Puce so I'll be the obvious winner!" (actually I have no idea what color 'Puce' is!) 
Scales? Good additional check. Authoritative decision maker? NO WAY!  |
Catherine Ansbro
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Catherine_a
Post Number: 1793
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, February 24, 2006 - 3:38 pm: |
|
OT
". . . Puce is the French word for flea! Yes, the color is a brownish-purple or a purplish-pink, the color of the blood-sucking flea; coagulated blood in other words. It may seem astonishing to the modern reader that one of the most popular colors in 1805e. was just puce!"
http://hibiscus-sinensis.com/regency/colors.htm |
Ron Crane
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Ron_crane
Post Number: 119
Registered: 08-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, February 24, 2006 - 3:42 pm: |
|
quote:OT
". . . Puce is the French word for flea! Yes, the color is a brownish-purple or a purplish-pink, the color of the blood-sucking flea; coagulated blood in other words. It may seem astonishing to the modern reader that one of the most popular colors in 1805e. was just puce!"
http://hibiscus-sinensis.com/regency/colors.htm
Perfect! Now compare that color sample to this one. Any questions?
-R |
Robert Sawdey
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Rsawdey
Post Number: 83
Registered: 01-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, February 24, 2006 - 5:23 pm: |
|
WHAT have I gotten myself into? Knowing, now, what the color PUCE is I'm nearly as nauseated as from rigged elections! Eeeewww!  |
Graham Colin Nayler
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Gnayler
Post Number: 5
Registered: 02-2006
Best of Black Box? 
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, March 15, 2006 - 12:23 am: |
|
I've rethought this and I've come to the conclusion that how the counting is done and related issues should be decided later by legislation at the state or local level...Ultimately I think the most important thing is to enshrine the paper ballot, as it is the key to ensuring that the will of the electorate is properly recorded, here is the original amendment I wrote up before I came up with the whole color coded, scale and ballot machine counting scheme (which I still think would work if implemented properly with appropriate rules and regulations established by legislation...but that is a debate that need not occur at this time as I hope we can all agree on the basic need for PAPER BALLOTS) Which based on your reactions to my earlier proposal I think all of you would support (If not let me know why)
Section 1. In every Local, State, and Federal election in these United States all votes shall be recorded upon a paper ballot verified by the voter to be an accurate representation of his will before it is cast into a secure box, the contents of which shall then be counted and documented by citizens of the respective districts wherein the vote shall have been cast, in a process overseen and validated by elected county officials, in a procedure prescribed by law by the respective States in a manner in which the anonymity of each voter shall be preserved inviolate. The records of the final count in each county, except the names of the respective voters which shall remain anonymous, shall be available as public information in these United States.
Section 2. The Congress and the States shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. |
Brant Lamb
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Brantl
Post Number: 454
Registered: 01-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, March 15, 2006 - 6:27 am: |
|
I think you're going to have to have a receipt that details the ballot choices, that is legally binding and allows a voter to correct misrecording of his vote to what it says. Otherwise, I believe that corruption of the vote will evolve in various ways to circumvent the security measures, but it will continue to circumvent the security measures by any means possible. |
|
|
