Comments on: Senators to abandon '08 e-voting paper trail mandate

Democrat behind a bill to ban paperless touch-screen machines says she doesn't expect new rules to take effect until at least 2010.

[jabberwolf]

Are they kidding?

Yes having a complete view of choices you selected and selecting PRINT.

Thats waaaaaayyy too complicated.

What they are planning to steal yet another election?!

[aabcdefghij987654321]

No they have another motive...

... by not requiring the paper trail they'll be able to make the claim that the election was stolen again. It's a lie they seem to love repeating despite the fact that it's historically and traditionally been the Democrats who cheat and steal the elections. It's their same strategy they've been using for the last 30 years, do something evil themselves and accuse the Republicans of the same.

[alflanagan]

WTF?

"The fact that the two most celebrated recent attempts to manually count ballots have dealt severe blows to public confidence should raise red flags for this committee"

Am I missing something? He seems to be arguing that since manual recounts are difficult, we should make them impossible. And this will increase public confidence in the system?

[kyle172]

Just add a Printer!

Easy!

[insanegeek]

Did you *read* the article???

Let me quote it for you

"For one thing, one in five direct recording electronic machines outfitted with printers fails on election day--about double the rate of glitches with paperless machines, he said."

[Ushiikun]

New Technology??

"Vermont Secretary of State Deborah Markowitz and other panelists claimed the technology required by the current draft--in particular, paper records for touch-screen voting machines that are durable, privacy-protecting and accessible to the disabled--is not even commercially available yet."

Does this mean I can get a patent for a device which transfers text from a computer screen onto a piece of paper that can then be verified by the voter?

[aka_tripleB]

How about we ban e-voting machines?

I'm not saying indefinately, just until they make a system that ensures that what voters say get heard where there is no doubt. Having a piece of paper that prints out after you vote that both people and machines can read should already be used. Schools have been using such machines for years now, so why haven't we implemented those for voting?

[wnew813]

Voting Joke

The crooks are at it again, they could start changes now if they wanted to and if the thieves in power didn't screw up the first time it would not be soooo expensive to fix it now. Take it out of their salaries not ours.

[James Anderson Merritt]

The true value of voting: bamboozle the masses

Let's be honest here. By next year's election, we will have had over 7 years to fix the mechanisms, three years longer than it took to win WWII. If voting were really important, we would have fixed it by now. Instead, the whole "Help America Vote Act" business has been a sham and a swindle, keeping us more confused and agitated, siphoning more taxpayer dollars into the pockets of politically well-placed contractors and bureaucrats, and serving as a political football that politicians on both sides use to their advantage in rousing the rabble.

It is hard not to conclude that the only purpose of voting is theatrical: We are to get caught up in the process of citizenship, and fool ourselves into thinking that the results reported to us represent "the public will," so we'll all step into line and get with whatever program the powers-that-be wish to foist upon us.

We need an open source method of secure and verifiable electronic voting that is compatible with off-the-shelf computer hardware -- even one's own personal computer, PDA or cell phone. Through cryptography, ballots can be anonymized such that nobody can see how you personally voted, but you personally can verify that your vote was accurately registered. They can also be encoded so that any intermediate tampering or natural damage to the records can at least be detected, if not repaired. The millions of anonymized ballots can be posted to the internet, so that EVERYONE who wishes to can recount and verify the results of the election. Total transparency in the source code, hardware employed, ballot format, posted results, and other aspects of the system will guarantee its integrity, through the efforts of the thousands -- maybe millions -- of people who will independently verify the voting mechanisms from start to finish, to satisfy official requirements or simply for their own peace of mind.

Such a system is well within our capability to specify and implement. But, as this news story illustrates, it seems well beyond the public will, or at least the will of those who are ostensibly pledged to "serve" the public.

"Serve the public," yeah. Serve 'em up on a PLATTER!

[dfrank_robinson]

Print paper ballots on demand

Scrap the e-voting machines, give 'em to the schools to learn hacking. Install printers in each polling place to print ballots on demand - but with the embeded coding used secretly on modern color lasers to authenticate the ballot - not the voter. Then empanel and pay 12 voters from each voting place as a jury to count the votes. Unfortunately, because of deliberate legislative footdragging, it may not be possible to produce all the printers needed for each precinct in each state. But it could have been done. So expect more scrappy pseudo elections.

[stephen weir]

Who's Peddling Paper?

The concept that paper ballots can be printed at the polls is technologically flawed and potentially the most corrupting aspect of voting.

First, paper ballots (in California) must be printed of specified stock, under controlled conditions. To meet the requirements of optical scanning equipment, the printed ballot must meet exacting specifications.

Second, either through mistakes, foolishness, or nefarious intent, printed paper ballots at the polls will frustrate required audits.

As the registrar of a good sized California County (Contra Costa) I have a centralized ballot on demand printer, housed in a locked cage in a secured room. This printer is slow. No printer exists that is adequate for printing ballots at the polls and no safeguard I can think of would not yield serious flaws in any post election audit.

[robertsgt40]

Senators to abandon paper trail

"Who you vote for determines nothing. Who counts the votes determines everthing." Uncle Joe Stalin.--History doesn't repeat itself,but it does rhyme"--Mark Twain