Posted on 9/14/2007, 5:18:49 PM by John Jorsett
Paper trails aren't enough to ensure accurate vote counts, according to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.
ITIF said this week that paper trails increase costs and can actually reduce the chances a voters' choices are accurately counted. Congress is considering a "Voter Confidence and Increased Accountability Act of 2007," which would mandate "voter-verified" paper audit trails.
The bill, H.R. 811, aims to increase the security and reliability of electronic voting. It is similar to legislation that several states could pass as well.
ITIF plans to release a report next week, stating that paper audit trails have "serious limitations that diminish their ability to effectively verify election results." ITIF said it opposes a federal mandate to require paper audit trails because it would prevent the use of other voting technology with more security, transparency, and reliability.
ITIF wants to spark discussion of how new technology can solve the problems. The report outlines innovations in voting machines that offer "end-to-end verifiability." It explains the cryptography the systems use and says that Congress should pass legislation based on S. 730 and H.R. 2360, which require verifiable audit trails without specifying that paper be used.
The report will be available online.
ITIF is a non-profit, public policy think tank. It states that its mission is to promote state and federal technology policy that will encourage productivity and innovation, while supporting a digital economy.
Last year's mid-term elections revealed several glitches in electronic voting. The U.S. Election Assistance Commission plans to issue new guidelines that address the problems. The guidelines are likely to include recommendations for paper trails.
I like the system we have in our county. You mark a paper ballot with a felt tip pen, filling in the circles next to a candidate’s name, like the SAT tests. Then you take your ballot to a machine that scans the dots into a totalizer/counter and the paper gets stacked inside the machine for re-count purposes. The poll workers simply record all the votes on each machine and total them all up. simple, accurate, verifiable, safe...................I guess that’s why it’s not used in more places...............
This description is not enough. Experience with computers and software has taught me that the most skillful programmer can be naive, ignorant (in other areas) and unable actually to address the underlying problem because he simply can't grasp it.
I would want to know who funds this group, who supports their work, and what is their track record of successful proposals.
Nothing is as simple and foolproof as a parallel independent paper trail.
What? I like how that is stated without even a shred of facts to back it up.
ITIF plans to release a report next week, stating that paper audit trails have "serious limitations that diminish their ability to effectively verify election results."
Serious limitation? The limitations I can think of are:
1. The voting machine runs out of ink or paper. This could be fixed by having it track the paper and ink and sound an alarm when just about out.
2. The vote recorded on the paper (and verified by the voter) matches what the voter selected but doesn't match what was recorded electronically. In that case it is the electronic voting which has a problem, not the paper.
ITIF said it opposes a federal mandate to require paper audit trails because it would prevent the use of other voting technology with more security, transparency, and reliability.
I can't think of any methods which have more transparency than ink on paper. Unless I can bring my oscilloscope into the voting booth, crack open the computer watch the signals going into the memory chip on board. But most people aren't going to do that and the election supervisor will probably say something when I ask for a screwdriver.
Personally I think this group just sounds like a bunch of shills for the current (paperless) generation of electronic voting booths.
That’s the same system my county uses now too, after a horrifically disasterous flirtation with an electronic system. Simple, fast, verifiable.
We use the same scantron-type system where I live, too, and it's excellent. Simple and effective and leaves an easily-countable paper trail.
Well, sure is interesting to see problems with electronic computerized voting systems.
After the hanging chads in Florida in 2000, everyone was running around looking for a better system. So then many places have adopted computerized systems, but then we see the lack of paper trails made recounts in close elections very difficult. Then systems mandated that there be a paper trail, I think? Anyway, no system is fool proof.
And did Florida 2000 really constitute a true crisis in election systems in the first place? On election night 2000, in the first count, Bush was ahead in Florida by 1,900 votes, out of 6 million votes cast. After all the recounts taking into account hanging and dimpled chads, the official margin was 537 votes. So all of that craziness in Florida changed about 1,400 votes, which compared to 6 million cast is a miniscule percentage. So it’s always seemed to me that the counting in the first place was pretty accurate, as accurate as humanly possible. And due to human error and machine error, there will never be a perfect recount in any election.
I think what made Florida the mess that it became was that they had no standard for what constituted a punchcard “vote” during a recount. That left the door open for all the subjective “dimpled” and “pregnant” chad mischief. If Florida had put in their election code the “at least 3 corners must be detached” standard of other jurisdictions, I daresay there’d have been no problem.
I like the system we have in our county. You mark a paper ballot with a felt tip pen, filling in the circles next to a candidate’s name, like the SAT tests.
Yeah, we had that here in the nether regions of Kern county, CA until the touch screen stuff took over, too. I also liked 'em. Gave you a feeling of satisfaction to have your ballot zooped into the machine and counted.
When you actually look at error rates, punched cards and electronic systems are about equal, but because they were mad at losing the elction (2000), they had to bitch about something. And they told us how electronic voting was SO much better, as simple as making an ATM transaction. So we spent millions of Federal tax dollars to placate the crying bastards.
Now, they want paper! Mad that they lost again (2004), it couldn't be that they are sore losers, no, hell no, it must be someone or something else's fault.
That paper has it's own problems is funny. When you get down to it, it's not the method, it's the liberals. Liberals can screw up anything.
Dr. Robert D. Atkinson is the President of ITIF...Dr. Atkinson writes a technology column for The Huffington Post.-- Wikipedia
From Huffington Post:
Robert D. Atkinson is President of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a Washington, DC-based technology policy think tank. He is also author of books, The Past and Future of America’s Economy: Long Waves of Innovation that Power Cycles of Growth (Edward Elgar, 2005), the State New Economy Index series and Supply-Side Follies: How Conservative Economics Fails, Liberal Economics Falters and Innovation Economics is the Answer. He has an extensive background in technology policy, he has conducted ground-breaking research projects on technology and innovation, is a valued adviser to state and national policy makers, and a popular speaker on innovation policy nationally and internationally...
Before coming to ITIF, Dr. Atkinson was Vice President of the Progressive Policy Institute and Director of PPI’s Technology & New Economy Project
From the Progressive Policy Institute website:
Organization: The Progressive Policy Institute is a research and education institute that is a project of the Third Way Foundation Inc., a nonprofit corporation organized under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.
Mission: PPI's mission is to define and promote a new progressive politics for America in the 21st century. Through its research, policies, and perspectives, the Institute is fashioning a new governing philosophy and an agenda for public innovation geared to the Information Age.
From the PPI site:
About The Third Way
America and the world have changed dramatically in the closing decades of the 20th century. The industrial order of the 20th century is rapidly yielding to the networked "New Economy" of the 21st century. Our political and governing systems, however, have lagged behind the rest of society in adapting to these seismic shifts. They remain stuck in the left-right debates and the top-down bureaucracies of the industrial past.
The Democratic Leadership Council, and its affiliated think tank the Progressive Policy Institute, have been catalysts for modernizing politics and government. From their political analysis and policy innovations has emerged a progressive alternative to the worn-out dogmas of traditional liberalism and conservatism. The core principles and ideas of this "Third Way" movement are set forth in The New Progressive Declaration: A Political Philosophy for the Information Age.
Starting with Bill Clinton's Presidential campaign in 1992, Third Way thinking is reshaping progressive politics throughout the world. Inspired by the example of Clinton and the New Democrats, Tony Blair in Britain led a revitalized New Labour party back to power in 1997. The victory of Gerhard Shroeder and the Social Democrats in Germany the next year confirmed the revival of center-left parties which either control or are part of the governing coalition forming throughout the European Union. From Latin America to Australia and New Zealand, Third Way ideas also are taking hold.
(Emphasis mine)
I think you'll start getting the idea...
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