Electronic Voting Machines

K

kjm

New member
Do these things bother you? I don't much care that they're electronic, but why not have a paper tape behind a glass that while I vote for a candidate, it prints on the tape that I can see that my vote was recorded correctly on a paper trail?

What if the electricity goes out or something goes wrong with the machine? My computer has crashed plenty of times. Why are these things impervious to error? If something did go wrong, would I be notified that my vote was lost and I needed to come back in and cast another ballot? Also with a paper trail, they could manually verfiy the votes up to the point where the machine quit. Therefore, I could verifiy my ballot accuracy while I voted and the election officials could as well.

Accountants have had tapes in their calculators for decades, and it backs up their work. Aren't votes as important as my taxes?

I was pondering the implications. A constitutional amendment could be passed by votes of the state. Could that vote be accurately determined or could it possibly be subject to fraud? I don't care about the presidential race in this matter- Texas passes all major legislation affecting taxation by constitutional amendment. This could affect TRKBA's. Isn't it cheap insurance to have a paper trail?
 
You're on to something here, kjm…

Based upon what I myself know about computers, and based upon conversations I've had with an expert on this topic, I would like to see much more strict regulation of elctronic voting in the US. I've written to my reps about this.

Here in RI we use a system which is pretty good. We vote on big heavy stock paper cards using a sharpie. You can run these cards through the machines many times to recount a vote, or you can count them by hand. [RI local elections are regularly decided by ten votes or less, so the ability to recount accurately is very important here]. The ballot cards are a little expensive, but aren't our elections worth it? I feel that any state that wants to use computerized vote tabulation should have to meet the sort of security standards we do in RI. Furthermore, I don't really feel like abiding by election results from states that run sloppy elections. Why should I have to?
 
What if the electricity goes out or something goes wrong with the machine? My computer has crashed plenty of times. Why are these things impervious to error?
Click to expand...

On a side note, it's possible to design a system such that it is more or less impervious to error (at least of the non-tampering variety), either from power loss or crashing or similar. I'm not saying that the machines commonly used qualify, just that in theory if a company was given the time and resources to design a dedicated voting machine, it could be done. It could be made much more reliable than the likely margin of error in any election (even Florida in 2000), at least.

But even if you manage this, tampering will still always be a concern. Which is why a voter-verified paper trail is absolutely essential to any such system.
 
No perfect system

While it is true there is no perfect system you have to be a but realistic about the voting machine. Every day millions and millions of transactions are conducted over the Internet. Of the multi millions of transactions a few will contain errors. Many of the human errors.

In the great Florida vote count fiasco it was obvious people can not even pull the handle on a paper punch with out problem. Ballots cast using the old paper and pencil means were found to contain errors when voters marked more than one box. Manual recounts of ballots continually find differences between the counts of one person and another. There is no perfect system.

Is the potential for problems any greater electronically voting than when several thousand dead people turn up at the poles? I doubt it. Regardless of what system you want to put your faith in there are aways those who will try to beat the system.

Those who seem so worried about the electronic voting sometimes present the issue as if they are the first to consider how the system might be beaten. Those who are developing these units can allow for human error that no other system can consider. Software can prevent you from voting for more than one candidate or not pushing the little chad fully out of the card or the marking of the box with a pen that does not work and leaves only a track mark on the ballot.

The biggest issue around the country is getting voters to the poles. That's where alll this creative problem solving should be focused on.
 
Yes and my calculator on my desk here at work has a paper tape that tells me all of the caluculations I've made. I can't conceal the work I've done on the calculator as it records it on paper. So- why not have a voting machine that can do the same? One that I can watch as I vote and the machine shows me the tape that shows my vote went down accurately?

Grocery store machines show the potential for fraud. Numerous reports are done where there is a slight overcharge on items that nobody catches, but every once in a while, a shopper does notice and mentions it.
 
The electronic machines where I vote have a paper tape that prints your vote and is viewable behind a glass window. The last step is a question that asks the voter to verify the paper matches the computer display of the vote. The paper is stored in the machine after the voter verifies the match.
 
There was an HBO special called "Hacking Democracy" about this very topic. I regret that I have not seen it but apparently one of the diebold machines was hacked live during the show. Has anybody here seen it and if you will you elaborate for us?
 
so what is the alternative

Most of us agree there needs to be some record of how we voted. The paper trail of the electronic machines seems to be fairly acceptable to all. But then what. After the election are we going to go and have someone manual count every paper tape to see if that machine was correctly reported. Its a never ending battle to believe we are going to see every ballot checked a number of times and the results verified.

Even in the old paper only ballot box the votes got counted a few times and the results send to some office where they were written down and subject to errors. There has never been a national election where some problem did not exist. There never will be. During the last Presidential there were a number of reported cases where ballot boxes from one local never made it to the counting point. And dozens or cases where entire districts were never counted. Worrying about computer hackers and allowing the old problems to continue seems to be a rather missguided mission.
 
Yes, electronic voting bothers me, as the machines are way too hackable.

To paraphrase Stalin:"it doesn't matter how people vote...what matters is who counts the votes!"

I'm beginning to seriously think we are just going through the motions, especially when voting for President.
 
 
Where I live we use Optically scanned ballots. The machines read the ballots and spit out any that are not filled out correctly. Ones that are accepted are dropped by the machine into a locked box at the bottom.

There are 3 checks. There is the actual physical ballot that can be recounted if need be, there is a mechanical counter that counts the number of accepted ballots in the machine, then there is the computer portion that read the paper ballots and records the votes for the individual candidates.
 
Doesn't really matter what a paper tape says. If the system's rigged, the results won't have anything to do with any paper tapes. It's not accidental "problems" that concern me.
 
Doesn't really matter what a paper tape says. If the system's rigged, the results won't have anything to do with any paper tapes. It's not accidental "problems" that concern me.
Click to expand...

Depends. If the results vary significantly from exit polls (due to tampering), for instance, I'd say having those paper tapes might be nice in case somebody pursues a recount. Without them, a "recount" amounts to hitting "count" again and seeing the same result. Also, from what I understand another easy method to "rig" an election using electronic voting devices is simply to wipe them; on some devices this was possible for voters to do if they had the know-how, for others election workers could manage it. Simply wipe a few in a district that you know skews heavily in favor of one candidate, and you just gained votes in favor of the others. Again, a paper trail makes this more difficult, as the votes will still be left behind. Most people might blindly accept that a computer might fail (even if it absolutely should not have), but having paper ballots thrown out as well would raise a lot more questions.

If you're just trying to imply that no election system of tamper-proof, obviously you're correct. However, having electronic voting machines with no paper trail actually makes rigging an election trivial. With a paper trail it becomes harder to do in general, and much harder to do without leaving traces.
 
While none are tamper proof, I like the one post where the guy has a hard paper copy in the machine. I don't have that where I vote. All I have is a wheel (IIRC) that you spin to the candidate you want, a select button and next page and back page buttons.

What would trigger a count of the paper is several people say they voted for Obama in my precinct and the results posted by the machines said that Obama received no votes in my precinct. That would be suspicious enough to trigger a recount to me.

Obviously, Joseph Stalin was correct to point out that it doesn't matter who votes, but who counts the votes. Still, with absolutely no backup, you just give fuel to the fire of those like in Florida who still swear the 2000 election was rigged or the black helicopter crowd.

Elections should at least make a half-hearted attempt to counter fraud. I certainly don't believe there is any massive plot, but to say I also trust the government- that would be a stretch. I believe only fools and those who don't know history trust the government.
 
Still, with absolutely no backup, you just give fuel to the fire of those like in Florida who still swear the 2000 election was rigged or the black helicopter crowd.
Click to expand...

There are people that claim it was actually "rigged?" All I really hear is that the end result was within the margin of error, and that depending on which recount methods you use (all of which are perfectly valid) either candidate could have been shown to have won. Having an election with a margin that small was what actually prompted the move to electronic voting methods, in an effort to reduce the margin of error. At least that's the way I understand it.

What would trigger a count of the paper is several people say they voted for Obama in my precinct and the results posted by the machines said that Obama received no votes in my precinct. That would be suspicious enough to trigger a recount to me.
Click to expand...

Oh, the standard should be (and generally is) much lower than that. Generally if the result is within a certain margin, a limited recount is pretty much automatic (or can be requested by the candidates). If the result is outside that margin, yet differs significantly from exit polling, that should also suggest that a recount is necessary. It makes subtle tampering pretty difficult, because if you don't sway the vote enough then you're within the margin, but if you sway it too much it's obvious as well.

And obviously with electronic methods any "recount" should involve going to the paper. Not much point in having a computer spit the same result at you again.

Elections should at least make a half-hearted attempt to counter fraud. I certainly don't believe there is any massive plot, but to say I also trust the government- that would be a stretch. I believe only fools and those who don't know history trust the government.
Click to expand...

It's not just about trusting the government. There are plenty of individuals that have access to these machines as well.
 
As long as we have Democrats, we'll have election fraud. Paper backup in the machines might make some difference in the reliability of the machines, but having individual paper receipts for the voter won't mean jack.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top