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Fort Imus
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Fortimus
Post Number: 1
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, November 7, 2006 - 6:17 pm: | 
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How hard would it be to make our own voting systems that we could market to elections officials? Then we could offer a better alternative. |
Jt Gleason
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Entropyfails
Post Number: 36
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, November 7, 2006 - 6:22 pm: |
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In today's world, the big 3 rule the voting industry. To get any computers system up to certification in 50 states would cost many millions. It may also be impossible due to how tightly wed politicions are to the Diebolds of the world.
Anyway, Do you have a problem with hand counting the vote? It is nice and simple and we already have very good rules for doing these sorts of elections. We would be proposing a solution when there is no problem.
In fact, if you read around, you'll come to understand that computers and voting can never mix for very fundamental reasons.
So get involved! But understand that while better systems are ok, human vote counting is the key to this issue. |
Ben Harrison Parks
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Badbenski
Post Number: 6
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, November 7, 2006 - 6:58 pm: |
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Let's see... a No. 2 Pencil and some little slips of paper!
I like it, let's take it on the road... run it up the flagpole and see who salutes!
It's as close to foolproof as anything out there. |
Fort Imus
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Fortimus
Post Number: 3
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, November 7, 2006 - 7:17 pm: |
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How about this: No election should be considered certified w/out a hand count and an open source, open computer system's count of paper ballots being in agreement? |
Jt Gleason
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Entropyfails
Post Number: 39
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, November 7, 2006 - 7:29 pm: |
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Yeah that works just fine. I would also include language that indicates the hand count as the only true method for the actual vote count and the computer is only there to find frailties of the humans mind, which will get resolved by an even more scrutinized and extensively checked hand recount.
And you have to say "full hand count", so there is no confusion as to the computers lesser role.
Not much to fix. Nobody would bother to rig election machines that don't count anyway. Problem solved. *smile* |
Fort Imus
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Fortimus
Post Number: 4
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, November 7, 2006 - 7:52 pm: |
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Yeah, public hand counts it seems to me could still have small counting errors and machines are hackable but less prone to said small counting errors (when they fail due to error, it's usually big or it fits a pattern). So refining a hand count by checking it against a machine would seem to me to be a good way to use the strengths of both to come up with the correct answer. Do you have any problem with using paper ballots that can be fed into optical scanners? It's important to pick a paper ballot that is easily read by both humans and machines and from what I've seen, optical scanner paper ballots are good for both.
Two other important goals to me are the secrecy of my vote and post election verfiability of my vote (in that order of importance). Do you see any reason why optical scanning would interfere with those goals?
How long would it take to hand count a typical district's votes? How many votes are there typically per district?
If you did a hand count and had to recount a bunch of times, none of which were the same and none of which matched a computer tabulation, which count would you go with? |
Jt Gleason
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Entropyfails
Post Number: 40
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, November 7, 2006 - 8:22 pm: |
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Optical Scanners are quite nice for reading in data and tabulating it correctly, if you can trust it. So I would imagine that the precincts would use them like they do now. They are easy to verify with a hand count. Paper and pencil bubbles are used in University level tests for a reason. They are easy to trust because you sign the test and know your own answers. The lack of secrecy leads to a more trustworthy system. Obviously we don't have that luxury here.
As long as you DO the full hand count, the vote tallying machines will probably have the proper answer for you hours or days before the final result by hand count. They will become trustworthy allies again because there will be no incentive for fraud!
Secrecy of the vote is maintained by ballot control and secluded polling places, just like now.
Verification is counting the number of voters that picked up ballots at a precinct and the number of ballots received in the watched boxes. If these both match, we win can be reasonably certain nothing funny happened. It is the best you can do while maintaining secrecy.
The ballot is not a spreadsheet to be read by a computer. It is a living document of intent, and should have the attention of human hands. We owe it to ourselves to demand this. |
Fort Imus
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Fortimus
Post Number: 5
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, November 7, 2006 - 8:47 pm: |
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How long would it take to hand count a typical district's votes? How many votes are there typically per district?
If you did a hand count and had to recount a bunch of times, none of which were the same and none of which matched a computer tabulation, which count would you go with? If ballots picked up doesn't equal ballots cast, what do you propose be done about it?
Handling errors is an important part of the process and a difficult one that in part depends on how long the counting process takes.
(Message edited by fortimus on November 07, 2006) |
Daniel Frank McMullan
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Seevotedan
Post Number: 104
Registered: 03-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - 6:56 am: |
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JT and SPENCER,
THIS IS MY LAST POSTING ...
(cause people here are fascist-like)
REMEMBER: to have real change, one must be willing to change
seeVote will turn your logic upside down.
seeVote is a very exciting (not for profit, not for money) idea that will inevitably eliminate voting-in-secret systems forever.
seeVote will not make sense if you continue to jump around without building a foundation of understanding.
Let's stick to one point at a time, for those who are interested in deciding for themselves that seeVote is a transparent voting system:
1st issue:
ANONYMOUS VOTING with seeVote.
-if I did not understand seeVote, at first glance, it seems that seeVote would reveal voters intended vote - and without coercion protection. This is not the case, seeVote does protect anonymity!!
It is my hope that if my logic concerning this issue makes sense here .. you will give me the courtesy of listening to my logic behind more of the seeVote system. To bring up other issues denies the understanding of this first point, so please be patient.
Let's first build on the understand and trust of some basic seeVote concepts.. before you dismiss it out of ignorance.
It will slowly open your mind,
Believe me, your concerns are typical, but unfortunately, people are so upset with machines, that they typically dismiss seeVote as another trust-the-machine idea.
seeVote is very different.
At first glance, there SEEMS to be no way to protect someone from coercion AND provide a take-home receipt for the post-polling station verification process. yet seeVote does protect while allowing take-home receipts!! how can that be?
BRADLEY AND JT GLEASON, at first glance, are declaring seeVote flawed, but only because they can not think beyond what they already have been taught. Unwilling to learn, they are attempting to eliminate seeVote from any sort of real debate.
They do not understand democracy involves everyone, not just a few people deciding what is good for everyone else.
Dismissing a debate does not make your view best for eveyone.
It is called CENSORSHIP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship
seeVote and Anonymous Take-home receipts:
see the censorship and false conclusions here for yourself.....
http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/show.cgi?tpc=72&post=30081#POST30081
Jt Gleason
If you can prove your vote, EVEN TO YOURSELF, you can be coerced to vote or sell your vote. The thing you call "secret" is not secret. You LOSE things with that system.
So put it down and just embrace a low tech approach. It is not as sexy, but it is sensible.
http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/show.cgi?tpc=72&post=30098#POST30098
Jt Gleason
You are sowing more confusion. ANY VERIFICATION means the possibility of voter coercion or selling of votes.
You are saying the logical equivalent of the following "What we need to do is to rid ourselves of the secret ballot and replace it with a ballot that we call secret but is actually public." You may as well just make everyone take a big marker in public and mark their votes in front of everyone. It would be more fair than creating a pretend system that cannot do what it is supposed to do. I'm taking you to task over this because this is EXACTLY what Diebold is doing. They say "We can create a perfect voting system with computers." This is a lie and a provable lie. You are saying "We can have a secret voting system where we publish the ballots with identifiable numbers and give those numbers to the voters." This is false and provably so. I'm not attributing any evil intent to your ideas.
I'm saying you are misinformed and you should try to understand what I'm saying. Because if you cannot come around to the computational reality, what chance do we have of convincing computer novices of this truth.
You are muddying the waters and have been taken to account by several people. Please abandon your unworkable attempts at creating a perfect computer voting system and get into the hard task of educating people as to WHY COMPUTERS CANNOT BE TRUSTED TO COUNT A VOTE.
http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/show.cgi?tpc=72&post=30006#POST30006
Bradley Spencer
If I understand you correctly you are advocating dismissing a persons constitutional right to vote in secret. (The secrecy of the ballot)
From my understanding its still against the law to tie the voter back to the vote.
Thats not Democracy Daniel....thats taking away an individuals rights and liberties.
Nice examples of people jumping to conclusions without debate!!!
To me, your logic above translates to this:
seeVote some how MUST "ties the voter back to the vote", but I do not want to ask why and therefore I will not listen to any of seeVote. and I want to spoil it for others too.
..but what if I can change your mind that seeVote IS anonymous???, does that mean you will listen to the rest or will you just blast out some other interference? I am asking that you carefully underdstand seeVote one part at a time. Please stop jumping to conclusions based on mis-understanding this important part of seeVote.
THE seeVote SOLUTION to REMAINING ANONYMOUS
Part of the seeVote process is publishing ALL ballots on the Interent and/or booklet found at each precinct.
Each ballot has an ID number on it (yes, random, we can talk about what RANDOM means, but lets get some basics down first).
The ID is placed BEFORE ballot is filled out.
Since publishing ballots defies most logic of secrecy, this is a hard concept to imagine being credible.
so imagine that on the internet you can go to your precinct's "webpage" and view ALL ballots.
Not just your ballot, but everyone's ballot in your precinct at the same time.
Imagine a grid of ballots ... lets say one thousand votes to a page.
A valid fear is that each voter must claim their ballot ID to verify, but seeVote is different... seeVote displays ALL ballots .. the voter is protected because only they know with ID-ed ballot is theirs.
This is incredably powerful to remaining anonymous and yet have ballots published !!!
At first glance the publishing aspect of seeVote defies secrecy, but as you take the time to understand all the pieces of seeVote, like everyone willing to open their mind, you will be will be excited as to how seeVote twists conventional logic to protect democracy with democracy!! please let me explain more ???
JT or SPENCER - can you see how your concerns of ballot publishing were a little premature?
I am happy to re-explain ballot publishing before we move forward with further explainations of seeVote..
.. without a strong foundation of seeVote's main logic.. it will be harder for you to understand other unconventional concepts. ..and you will be making it difficult for other to understand too.
What is stopping me from showing my receipt to a thug buying my vote?
This to is simple.
Since seeVote allows a voter to print receipts of other existing ballots (at the voting booth), any ballot shown to a would-be coercion specialist does not prove voter intention!!!!
Matter of fact, because the ability to print these "decoy receipts" exists, one's real receipt is protected, without the need to print a decoy receipt at all to remain anonymously protected. This is a very important concept to understanding the power seeVote and fraud-free elections.
I am sure if you are willing to see the logic in this part of seeVote the rest will be easy to digest.
I feel your pain, I hate machines too .. that is why I think seeVote is so clever .. seeVote does not trust machines for security .. only for auditing ballots throughout the certification process. I, like you, had to spend alot of time to understand seeVote.
Hang in there. Im not going away until you can poke a hole in this issue.. one issue at a time.
JT and Spencer: just say you understand this posting of seeVote, retract your attacks, and I will continue.
To ignore me at this point will just prove to everyone that you jumped the gun about seeVote.
USA needs people like you, to question the system, but not to dismiss new ideas cause they resemble other similar ideas that do not work.
I welcome all questions about the anonymous aspect of seeVote.
JT:
Because if you cannot come around to the computational reality, what chance do we have of convincing computer novices of this truth.
JT, you don't need to convince anyone of anything.. if their ballot is displayed properly on the internet throughout the confirmation process and the total results of the ballots are equal to the other hand-counting method of the ballots ...then this check-and-balance system proves to be accurate!!
Then and only then, will the voter trust the system. How else do you trust it? wait for someone else to count your vote (even if they don't know for sure how you voted)???
Do you trust the votes to be counted by someone? or by you? The computational reality is that you know enough to be dangerous, but not enough to debate. Remaining anonymous is CRITICAL to seeVote!
I am willing to change as I am willing to debate. .. most people assume seeVote "ties the voter back to the vote" with a receipt, but clearly seeVote is something here you did not imagine... thats what makes seeVote so exciting!! otherwise I'd have nothing to say. I hope now .. you can see clearly how you did not have all the facts.
..and it's ok, what is important is that you are now willing to help me explain the rest of seeVote.
thank you,
seeVoteDan |
Jt Gleason
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Entropyfails
Post Number: 42
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - 7:23 am: |
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How long would it take to hand count a typical district's votes? How many votes are there typically per district?
As long as it takes to count them properly. The number of votes per district is irrelevant. You have to hand count them to get any security.
If you did a hand count and had to recount a bunch of times, none of which were the same and none of which matched a computer tabulation, which count would you go with?
If the humans didn't agree on their last hand count, they need to get more humans to due a new hand count. Either way, you can only ever trust the hand count. The computer count is a "nice to have" but ultimately meaningless in determining the election.
If ballots picked up doesn't equal ballots cast, what do you propose be done about it?
The same thing we should do right now, but don't. Re-vote.
If you can prove the election is fraudulent, then the results are in doubt. You MUST redo the vote or you have no credibility. Of course, because the system has no credibility right now, we don't see the re-vote in cases of fraud. Regardless, if you find a bogus election, you have to toss it out BECAUSE of the secret ballot.
Errors do make a big difference in how things work, I agree. But most precincts already have rules and procedures for "close voting margins" and recounts. I think we can use many of the current systems we have in place right now as long as they all fully understand the need for a full hand count.
No doubt that it will make elections a bit slower and a bit more expensive, but representative rule is worth that, you know? |
Daniel Frank McMullan
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Seevotedan
Post Number: 107
Registered: 03-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - 7:40 am: |
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If you did a hand count and had to recount a bunch of times, none of which were the same and none of which matched a computer tabulation, which count would you go with?
If the humans didn't agree on their last hand count, they need to get more humans to due a new hand count. Either way, you can only ever trust the hand count. The computer count is a "nice to have" but ultimately meaningless in determining the election.
..so after many many people have had a chance to corrupt the counting.. the last count should stand ..if everyone [counting] agrees?
wow? that is incredibly wrong.
you can't TRUST ballots verified in a vacuum.
hand-count AND machine counting should match.
you can't prove one is more correct than the other .. if you don't know how the ballots were cast in the first place.. only the voter knows their ballot.
your logic is very backwards. |
Fort Imus
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Fortimus
Post Number: 6
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - 11:51 pm: |
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JT: Well if that's your position then I'd say no vote should count until the hand count and open source machine count are exactly equal. I don't care how many times you have to redo it, you have to get the same number. No doubt that it will make elections a bit slower and a bit more expensive, but representative rule is worth that, you know?
And I still want an answer to how many votes per district so that I can think about how early in the year we should expect to have to vote in order to assure enough time to do the above. I'm guessing July 4th would be a good day to hold elecctions. That gives almost 6 months, is a more historically appropriate day to hold elections, and most people have the day free anyway so working people won't be disenfranchised. |
Craig Bergren
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Babyhuey
Post Number: 12
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, November 9, 2006 - 12:04 am: |
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Fort Imus,
Great! Four months for the politicos to monkey with the ballots before we find out who we voted for.
Craig |
Fort Imus
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Fortimus
Post Number: 8
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, November 9, 2006 - 12:16 am: |
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#1) About six months, not 4 
#2) Hand counting means greater need for physical ballot security, there's no way around it.
#3) This would make ballot monkeying fraud as difficult as possible to get away with undetected which is the best you can do (and it's not like physical security is anything but a joke now given some of the stories I've seen here). Nothing is perfect. |
Jt Gleason
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Entropyfails
Post Number: 47
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, November 9, 2006 - 2:53 am: |
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Canada does a 30 million nationwide by hand in six days. Our 300 million vote shouldn't take longer than 60, if we used a similar system. If we ask for 0.5% of the voting public to tally the votes, then it would take far less long. Perhaps as little as 2 weeks. |
Ami Silberman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Jol
Post Number: 145
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, November 9, 2006 - 7:34 am: |
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"The same thing we should do right now, but don't. Re-vote."
Not something to be taken lightly, since the results of the re-vote may differ more from the original voter intent than the differences in the various machine and hand-counts. |
Daniel Frank McMullan
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Seevotedan
Post Number: 112
Registered: 03-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, November 9, 2006 - 8:12 am: |
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"Canada does a 30 million nationwide by hand in six days. Our 300 million vote shouldn't take longer than 60, if we used a similar system. If we ask for 0.5% of the voting public to tally the votes, then it would take far less long. Perhaps as little as 2 weeks."
lol.
Do you really think more people handling ballots are going to yeild a less tainted result?
or AS TAINTED?
what if everyone in the room was in co-hoots?
what if the two parties were the same?
you can't have a system of counting in a vacuum.
Look at Virginia.
who KNOWS what those ballots ONCE said.. and you can not prove to me .. here in VT that corruption has not taken place. A .05% of the population counting does not make it any less corrupt-free than counting by machines.
I am not an advocate of machines.. you need to rethink what hand-counting means.
HERE IS THE SOLUTION
If you have two piles of ballots that are SUPPOSED to match .. and you have the nazis count them over there .. and the 2nd pile is counted by the fascists over somewhere else ... and the results are not the same ... then corruption has occured...
pass/fail ... you dont have to care if the nazis cheated or errored.. or maybe it was the fascists .. it don't matter .. the entire world knows ..something is wrong
it does not matter if its two machines or MLK,jr counting.. or how they count .. don't get hung up on the counting .. focus on security.
then you can count anyway you want .. with cameras or not .. reduce security by making it FOOL-proof.
get it ?
(Message edited by seeVoteDan on November 09, 2006) |
Fort Imus
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Fortimus
Post Number: 9
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, November 11, 2006 - 2:19 am: |
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Canada does a 30 million nationwide by hand in six days. Our 300 million vote shouldn't take longer than 60, if we used a similar system. If we ask for 0.5% of the voting public to tally the votes, then it would take far less long. Perhaps as little as 2 weeks.
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Dude, there's more votes but there's also more people to count them. In order to extrapolate from Canadian data, you'd need to compare relative sizes of districts. You aren't inpiring confidence. |
Jt Gleason
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Entropyfails
Post Number: 60
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, November 11, 2006 - 4:13 am: |
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Dude, there's more votes but there's also more people to count them. In order to extrapolate from Canadian data, you'd need to compare relative sizes of districts. You aren't inpiring confidence.
I have no intention of comparing the sizes of different US districts to Canadian ones. I only wanted to point that is is both possible and necessary to hand count the vote to be certain. The logistics should be left to the precincts as far as I'm concerned. Do you believe that it is possible for 100 million to vote but not to count the vote? |
Dan Oetting
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Dan_oetting
Post Number: 244
Registered: 07-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, November 11, 2006 - 5:55 pm: |
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In my county, precincts recorded on average around 300 ballots. We had 17 races and 20 yes/no questions on the ballot. assuming about 2 seconds to read each name and 1 second for a yes/no takes about 1 minute per ballot or a total of 5 hours. This can be reduced by having more than 1 counting team per precinct.
Only about 30% of the votes were cast in the precinct. If the mail-in and early votes were also counted in the precinct it would take a total of 15 hours divided by the number of counting teams per precinct. |
Catherine Ansbro
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Catherine_a
Post Number: 3419
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, November 11, 2006 - 6:24 pm: |
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You didn't specify what counting method you would use. If you use a sort, stack and count method it's possible (and quick) to double-check the tally, for extra assurance in counting accuracy. (Have a different person recount the stacks for a particular race; they must get the identical result to the first person's count. If not, repeat both counts till they agree.) |
Brant Lamb
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Brantl
Post Number: 1043
Registered: 01-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, November 11, 2006 - 6:54 pm: |
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Ami Silberman: ""The same thing we should do right now, but don't. Re-vote."
Not something to be taken lightly, since the results of the re-vote may differ more from the original voter intent than the differences in the various machine and hand-counts.". The best available solution to that Ami, is you let only the people who voted in the first election vote in the second (unless you can prove an accident on the way to the previous election). You would use exactly the same ID as was used in the first. (The fact that you know what ID you provided and the name (your own) that you used in the previous election should be sufficient.) And if you changed your mind on how to vote, that's your perogative. |
Brant Lamb
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Brantl
Post Number: 1044
Registered: 01-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, November 11, 2006 - 6:59 pm: |
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JT Gleason: "Canada does a 30 million nationwide by hand in six days. Our 300 million vote shouldn't take longer than 60, if we used a similar system." I don't understand this JT, if you have the same percentage of people willing to count the vote, it would represent the same ratio of votes-to-counters, why would it be longer? DO you think that people willing to count votes are 10 times rarer in the US than Canada? |
Ami Silberman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Jol
Post Number: 161
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, November 11, 2006 - 7:33 pm: |
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Catherine -- whatever counting method is used, it is a good idea to recount at least one additional race to detect whether additional ballots have been inserted or removed. If it looks like additional ballots have been added, then recount all the races. (This can occur legitimately, if, for example, a box was missed earlier.)
Brant -- the problem with a revote, even if limited to the same people, is that people will change their minds. This gives incentive to a party or candidate who narrowly lost an election to try and force a revote, and then campaign based on issues identified in the exit polls, play a "late November suprise", or try vote supression.
Brant -- I think, from what I've seen posted earlier, that almost every country has simpler ballots (fewer races and initiatives) than the US, which is why it takes them much less time to count. |
Jt Gleason
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Entropyfails
Post Number: 66
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, November 11, 2006 - 8:22 pm: |
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Brant.
I meant to show that even with our current "vote counters" (ie adding no new people) it still shouldn't take months to count the vote.
But yes, I agree. I think we can find a proportional number to Canada and get the hand vote counted in days. |
Dan Oetting
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Dan_oetting
Post Number: 245
Registered: 07-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, November 12, 2006 - 10:57 am: |
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For how many elections will you be able to keep claiming that hand counts are necessary if election after election the machine count proves to be more accurate than the hand count?
I'm not saying that the machines can be trusted. Just that if you pit a properly setup and calibrated machine against human counters, the machines will be faster and make fewer mistakes. How are you going to sell the extra cost and delay of human hand counts after the machines have been proven to be perfect? |
Jerry Berkman
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Jerry
Post Number: 29
Registered: 05-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, November 12, 2006 - 1:36 pm: |
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Humans are more accurate in determining voters intent, especially when you consider the errors voters make. E.g., many optical scanners pick up whited out marks as if they had not been whited out resulting in overvotes. Also, some people circle ovals instead of filling them in. |
Jt Gleason
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Entropyfails
Post Number: 70
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, November 12, 2006 - 1:38 pm: |
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Dan,
As you well know, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. If we ever give computer the final say, we open them up to hacking. Put simply, you can NEVER be certain of any computational result.
I don't really care about the costs. Liberty is worth any price. |
Dan Oetting
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Dan_oetting
Post Number: 248
Registered: 07-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, November 12, 2006 - 3:21 pm: |
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Have you seen this CalTech study of recounts in New Hampshire? <http://www.vote.caltech.edu/media/documents/wps/vtp_wp11.pdf>
Hand counting shows an inherent error of about 1% while the machine count error rate was about 0.5%
Again, I'm not saying that the machines should be trusted. Just that they are more accurate when they are not rigged. When the machines are matched against the humans, the humans are going to loose and after each election it's going to be harder and harder to justify the extra time and expense of a less accurate hand count. Eventually the hand count advocates will just be labeled kooks and ignored. Then the machines will take over.
You are going to need a better plan to insure election integrity than just calling for hand counts. |
Ami Silberman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Jol
Post Number: 167
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, November 12, 2006 - 4:46 pm: |
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"Humans are more accurate in determining voters intent, especially when you consider the errors voters make. E.g., many optical scanners pick up whited out marks as if they had not been whited out resulting in overvotes. Also, some people circle ovals instead of filling them in."
Which is why I'm in favor of machine marking of human (and machine) readiable ballots. |
Matt R. Jezorek
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mattjez
Post Number: 43
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, November 12, 2006 - 6:14 pm: |
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"Humans are more accurate in determining voters intent"
My vote should never be up to interpretation
Voting is not the Olympics. There are no votes awarded for difficulty
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Brant Lamb
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Brantl
Post Number: 1052
Registered: 01-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, November 12, 2006 - 8:29 pm: |
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Unfortunately, Dan the only way to continually be certain that that machines are 'working correctly' (not perfect Dan, if nothing else a perfect machine would never wear out) is to hand count significant random portions of the ballots ,or allow a mechanism of individual-voter-verify our own ballots. Otherwise you can't be sure that the machines are still "perfect". |
Jerry Berkman
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Jerry
Post Number: 30
Registered: 05-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, November 12, 2006 - 8:41 pm: |
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Matt,
Whether you like it or not, paper ballots will be counted by either humans or computers "interpreting" the marks on the ballot.
Prof. Doug Jones, Univ. of Iowa, was commissioned to study paper ballots in an Arizona race. He found the recommended pen to use for marking the ballots was the least effective black pen. He also found many pens are so sensitive a tiny dot will be sensed leading to unintentional overvotes.
Also, fully erased marks were still counted.
There are a lot of problems with optical scanners counting paper ballots.
See Doug Jones site,
http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/voting
for more details in the page titled
"Regarding the Optical Mark-Sense Vote Tabulators in Maricopa County prepared for the Arizona Senate Government Accountability and Reform Committee, Jan 12, 2006. " |
Dan Oetting
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Dan_oetting
Post Number: 254
Registered: 07-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, November 13, 2006 - 10:19 am: |
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And while you are at the Doug Jones site, read through the tutorial titled "Voting on Paper Ballots". |
