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September 15, 2006 07:03 PM UTC

Paper Ballots Only this Year?

  • 12 Comments
  • by: Phoenix Rising

(This is not a Colorado Pols-produced post, but it’s a good subject for discussion. – promoted by Colorado Pols)


The news out of what most people considered to be a long-shot lawsuit against electronic voting machines took a startling turn to the serious in testimony by the state’s election machine “expert”…

The Denver Post reports that John Gardner, the supposed expert hired by Gigi Dennis to certify electronic balloting machines, testified that he was not, in fact, an expert in computer and voting machine technology.  Further, testimony came out in the trial that the machines used in Jefferson and Mesa counties did not meet state standards, but were certified for use anyway.

The news follows by a day the publication of a study by noted electronic privacy professor Ed Felten, indicating the extreme vulnerability of Diebold AccuVote TS machines (used in El Paso County), and prompted the following reactions…

The Colorado Democratic Party today recommended that all of their party members request absentee ballots rather than trust that Colorado’s electronic balloting machines will be (a) reliable, or (b) still certified by Election Day.

Democratic Secretary of State candidate Ken Gordon came out in favor of an immediate and stringent requalification regimen of all machines used in the state prior to the November election.  His opponent, Mike Coffman, promised a review of the machines “if elected”.

Well, Mike – I don’t know about you, but I’m not interested in waiting until your possible election to know that the voting machines we use are secure – or even reliable.  I’ll be voting for Ken Gordon this year.

Comments

12 thoughts on “Paper Ballots Only this Year?

  1. I regret voting early in El Paso County on the electric machines.  That whole, “Vote early, vote often” thang? I only agree with the latter nowadays.

    I use technology for many things, but I am totally against using computers for voting.  I think it is a terrible idea, they can be hacked and messed with to easily and a proper count is very difficult to verify.

    Gordon is definitely on the right side of this issue.  It does not surprise me one bit that Coffman is hedging.

    1. As long as the machines have the verifyable paper audit trail (VPAT), the machines can still be counted on for very efficient and honest vote tabulation. The paper audit trail is right there for the voter to see forthemselves that the vote they cast was the one recorded. Most counties have now switched over to these machines (all have to by 2010 by law).

      After the election, a percentage (yes a small percentage, but enough to catch a wide-spread problem if there was one) is done where the paper trail is compared to the votes recorded on the machine. If they do not match, there is cause for a recount using the paper record only. 

      There is a checks and balance system. I encourage all voters to not let the lax (or absent) standards of the current Sec. of State stand in your way of voting.

      I would also remind everyone that only case in Colorado of equipment not counting votes correctly has been with scanners that read paper ballots like the ones used for absentee voting, not with the electronic machines used in most of the larger counties.

      Bottom line: your safest bet is the machines with the VPAT.

      1. The auditing procedures ultimately passed in 2005 are weaker than the standards proposed by Ken Gordon and can easily allow inaccuracies and errors to go unnoticed.  In the absence of a clear audit failure (the standards of which were also downgraded from Ken’s proposal), the electronic record is the SOLE record considered in counting the vote.  The VPAT can be tossed in the trash for all that it normally counts.

        I want electronic voting machines.  But I want procedures that actually enforce election integrity.  If John Gardner’s testimony is true, we probably don’t meet Federal statutes for electronic voting machine certification, and EVERY SINGLE MACHINE could theoretically be decertified for Dennis’s poor employee choices.  No certification, no independent reviews = no electronic voting.  There’s no compromise that’s rational.

        Count the absentee ballots by hand (because the electronic counting machines are also being challenged here…).  But it’s paper or bust unless Gigi stops playing Legislator and starts doing her job.

      2. First of all, paper ballots are not hand counted.  They are scanned by optical scanning machines which are programed and subject to the same kind of error as electronic voting machines.  The problem with using the electronic machines is that most counties, such as big boy  Denver, still have a mix of machines. If there are any machines used in an election which do not have the paper trail, then there is no way to recount the election using a paper audit. There will always be some votes which can not be verified.  This is big time bad news.  There will be no way in November to guarantee that the candidates and ballots issue which voters vote for are the candidates and ballot issues which win.

  2. And do we at least get our money back? Hey, if the taxpayers are gonna be screwed out of the right to have our votes count, at least don’t add insult to injury and have our tax dollars pay for some unqualified hack to serve as an ersatz expert.

    Coffman, whom I otherwise respect enormously, made a huge mistake by not joining in Gordon’s call. If we can’t trust the 100% accuracy and “verifiability” of the voting machines NOW, we shouldn’t be using them for ANY election! All it takes is one rigged election to destroy a free country.

  3. What this dispute says to me is that nobody trusts anybody to run honest elections with electronic or paper ballots. 

    That’s why we’ve always had poll watchers representing the candidates in each race.

    So how can poll watchers for candidates ensure an election’s integrity when paper ballots are scanned by vulnerable computers and electronic voting machines, which are equally vulnerable are used?

    Or do we go back to paper ballots, which can be messed with when a poll watcher dozes off or wanders away from the action or is intimidated by being a minority in a rough neighborhood?

    On the one hand we have Republicans pushing for computerization, and on the other hand Democrats who oppose all atempts to ensure that all voters are citizens of not only Colorado, but also the USA. The Dems are all for voting by non citizens and ex cons but against computerization of voting. They seem to figure that if they like cheating by non citizens, Republicans are just as corrupt and favor hacking computerized voting equipment.

    As for the public, we just want to vote and we want our votes counted. We don’t trust either party any more even though there has been relatively little election fraud in Colorado as far as I know. We’re not in Texas, California, NY or Illinois.

    So are the Dems following the Obrado strategy. Demonize election officials, undermine Americans’ confidence in our democratic system and try to divert attention from their own attempts at voter fraud?

    I’m Another skeptic on this one.

    1. Expressing legtimate concerns about the integrity of the election process is following the Obrado strategy? If we can’t verify the election results, how do we know if there has been any so-called fraud in Colorado? This old crapola about American democracy is too fragile to withstand scrunity and so we have to mindlessly support the administration is really the subversive strategy. Don’t be such a scarity cat, “AS”.
      The most important thing is to protect the Constitution and that means making sure the process works.  Right now, there is legtimate concern that the voting process is screwed up and needs to be fixed. People in both parties want to do that. If scares you, leave.

    2. When the crux of your post is that Democrats are bad?

      Here is an Example:
      “On the one hand we have Republicans pushing for computerization, and on the other hand Democrats who oppose all atempts to ensure that all voters are citizens of not only Colorado, but also the USA. The Dems are all for voting by non citizens and ex cons but against computerization of voting. They seem to figure that if they like cheating by non citizens, Republicans are just as corrupt and favor hacking computerized voting equipment.”

      You erroneously imply that Republicans are for computerization and makiing sure that only US citizens can vote and that Dems are against both. You tried to compare the two, but they are not mutually exclusive. Nor are they correct for that matter. Do you realize that if non-citizens  (I think you mean mexicans) were to vote they would most likely fall under the R umbrella due to religious views? And do you also realize that excons are in fact allowed to vote in some states? And by them just being excons does not mean that they necessarily line up for the dems either?

      The Obrado strategy? Are you serious? It seemed like a great thing when it was done in the Ukraine. Have dems bussed in people from outlying areas to protest elections in our country’s capital? As far as I know, the answer is no. And how can we not be skeptical when the 2000 election was thrown to the Supreme Court for as I paraphrase Scalia “a one-time only deal.” And read the reports on the diebold machines and election officials. The machines get certified then in some states, election officials are allowed to take them home. That is a clear violation of certification. What happens when they get taken home is anyone’s guess.

      What I want is a way to know that my vote counted who I voted for. I like to vote on election day, sadly this year I can not, for the feeling I get that I participated in the very ideal that makes this country great. Kind of like being on a jury which I would love to do. I dont care how we do it, as long as it is transparent, certifiable, and true.

    3. Why should you accept it in your elections.

      If you don’t trust poorly certified machines to run your accounting, your chemical processing, or your nuclear control facilities, why would you trust them to run your democracy?

      I’m not an advocate of paper ballots; I *am* an advocate of auditable elections.  As you say, paper ballots have known issues, too; we have centuries-old procedures to minimize those issues and to double-check against fraud in all but the most degenerate cases.

      The current electronic systems suffer minimally from such checks and balances.  The vendors control the software audits.  They control the hardware audits.  They often control the ballot programming.  In some states, they control the ballot counting (and no second-guessing them, either – the ballot records are sealed from the public eye)!  Colorado is actually one of the better states in terms of electronic voting integrity – but if the state auditor doesn’t (can’t, isn’t capable to) do his job, we lose significant confidence in the machinery.

      If the public wants its vote counted, then it shouldn’t be relying on machinery that isn’t well-tested.  (Unless it doesn’t really care what the count is; in the USSR, citizens were pretty much resigned to that style of voting…)

      AMLO (should be Lopez-Obrador, not Obrado[sic]) may or may not have won the election, but I’d be protesting if I were in his shoes: the Mexican election as I understand it doesn’t even count all the ballots, but uses statistical analysis!

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