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Catherine Ansbro
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Catherine_a
Post Number: 3060
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - 12:22 pm: | 
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Kip's comment here is really important. Lots of people believe that optical scans with some small percentage of audits will make things better. Think again. (This is also why the HR550 would likely do more harm than good.) Many people have previously pointed out that auditing a small percentage of ballots is not a reliable way to catch fraud, and I'm grateful to know that Ellen Theisen is someone who has been demonstrating this and explaining why it is so.
quote:<snip>
Continuing to pursue Federal legislation (i.e., H.R.550) with this Congress is either a fool's folly or the work of the dark side. Besides, if those advocating H.R.550 were paying attention to the IT investigations in 2003/2004, they would know there are 3 methods that were determined could be employed to avoid fraud detection where audits/recounts were 5% or less: constrain the vote flip to 4% and reduce the chance of detection of more than one flip significantly (Ellen Theisen's demonstration of this repeatedly discovers no flipped votes); current vendor software was discovered to contain method #2 designed-in to easily circumvent audits of 5% or less where precinct totals aren't posted (see GEMS software's 3 detachable tables - works like an old fashioned shell game); and method #3, applied to 3% recounts/audits, is to avoid flipping the vote in the 3 subsets of fewest number of precincts that total 3% - flip the vote in the remaining precincts and never get caught (ensure it 100% by pre-selecting like Ohio did in '04). Of coarse if you screw up and a flipped vote county gets audited, just send in the technicians to fix things (also, Ohio in '04) Read the vendor contracts that stipulate 3% recounts and wonder...
H.R.550 as written (big caveat in this Congress!) calls for a 2% audit. You want the machines? Give me a truly random sample 10% real-time audit in ever precinct without signaling the system it is being audited and you can have the machines. Anything less and its fool or Darth.
<more>
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203& topic_id=441267&mesg_id=441331 |
Brant Lamb
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Brantl
Post Number: 701
Registered: 01-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - 1:41 pm: |
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How do you do a 'real-time audit'? |
Michael W Mather
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Gypsy
Post Number: 74
Registered: 07-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, July 20, 2006 - 8:04 am: |
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Brant-
If you expect an answer, maybe you should post on the site where Kip made the original post? He may not be looking here. |
Brant Lamb
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Brantl
Post Number: 708
Registered: 01-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, July 20, 2006 - 1:41 pm: |
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I look at this site on my breaks at work (I have an 8 year old son and little free time at home) and DU is blocked here. I just wondered if any body knew what he meant by real-time audits. |
Michael W Mather
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Gypsy
Post Number: 75
Registered: 07-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, July 20, 2006 - 6:11 pm: |
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Well, I registered at DU and asked the question. No guarantee that we'll get an answer, especially since the Kip's post was not really on topic in the thread. I don't have a good idea what a 'real-time' audit may be, but in the rest of the same sentence, Kip says "without signaling the system it is being audited"; maybe he means something like the audits should commence as early as possible and should be unannounced to the workers at the precint and to any supervisors who could possibly try to cover up any problems if they knew when and where audits would occur. |
Catherine Ansbro
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Catherine_a
Post Number: 3068
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, July 21, 2006 - 1:13 am: |
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Maybe Bev or Kathleen could email Kip directly and ask him to respond here. It's a good question. |
Brant Lamb
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Brantl
Post Number: 712
Registered: 01-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, July 21, 2006 - 4:35 am: |
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Thanks, Mike and Catherine. Partly I was wondering how you do real time audits and preserve the anonymity of the vote (I suspect we're really talking about frequent batch audits). |
