[EM] HR811 and Federal paper trail legislation

[Chris Backert]

First, it was not my intent to exclude anyone from the discussion, but nor
was it my intent to launch an intense debate on the merits of paper ballots
and hand tabulation.

I was only trying to give my opinion that your comments were a bit brash and
made without a thorough command of the issues at hand. For one, saying
"can't we just use paper ballots" ignores the millions of American's who are
unable to use paper ballots.

If I could make a suggestion that rather than learning "by pointing out what
makes no sense to [you]" and waiting for "some idiot" to tell you you're
ignorant, you could research a topic or request information. I'd imagine you
would be much more successful respectfully requesting information that
demanding it from those who point out your lack of it.

Your comment "I don't think you have the foggiest idea what you are talking
about" much like the previous I responded to has no basis in fact.
Regardless, your own limited experience with paper ballots indicates some of
the potential problems associated with paper ballots.

I was not advocating any particular voting method (or technology). I was
only pointing out that statements like "can't we just use paper ballots"
don't solve anything and that the solution to these problems is not as
"simple" as you may think.

 - Chris

P.S. The most common jurisdiction for tabulation is at the county level,
though this can be done at a precinct or polling place level. There are on
average approximately 1,100 registered voters per precinct, though also on
average 2 precincts per polling place. States average 62 counties and 3,500
precincts each.

-----Original Message-----
From: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax [mailto:abd at lomaxdesign.com] 
Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2007 1:18 PM
To: Chris Backert
Cc: kathy.dopp at gmail.com; election-methods at electorama.com
Subject: RE: [EM] HR811 and Federal paper trail legislation

You did not, apparently, include the EM list in your recipients, nor 
Ms. Dopp. I'm restoring that.

At 09:39 AM 5/24/2007, Chris Backert wrote:
>With all due respect I think a better education on the topic would boggle
>your mind a bit less. You are incorrect that in your assumption that a
>"simple" paper ballot would satisfy the requirements, nor would it be a
>workable solution for most local jurisdictions.

If you would like to be helpful, I'll point out that providing me and 
anyone else interested with some clue as to what is specifically 
incorrect, or to what would be unworkable about a paper ballot 
solution for large precincts, is quite better than simply saying 
"you're ignorant."

I'm ignorant. Let's get that out of the way. I'm ignorant, and I 
learn by pointing out what makes no sense to me. And sometimes I 
found out where I was wrong, and sometimes I'm the boy saying the 
emperor has no clothes. No way to predict which it is until I open my 
mouth and say what seems clear to me. And then some idiot says 
"You're ignorant," and, fortunately, someone else either tells me 
what my mistake was -- which can take patience and intelligence, or, 
sometimes, only a few seconds -- or, otherwise, confirms what I had 
written. The latter sometimes takes several years!

I'm sure I'm ignorant of the specific requirements of some laws. 
However, if it is true that HAVA has essentially outlawed paper 
ballots and hand-counting, there has been a serious and expensive 
error made, quite contrary to the public interest. I already knew 
that there was something very fishy about HAVA, now I'd have the dead 
fish directly in my face.

As to workable solution, I don't think you have the foggiest idea 
what you are talking about. The paper ballot hand-counting 
feasibility is not simply my own idea, and I have some substantial 
experience with paper handling and sorting, which is what's involved 
in some methods of counting ballots. And I've lived where ballots 
were hand-counted. Small jurisdiction, yes. But the largest unit for 
which votes must be directly counted is the precinct. How big do they get?

And they were counted, in my small town, in a very inefficient way. 
Why? Well, that's the way they always did it, and it worked well 
enough. In a sense, counting the vote was a social event and nobody 
cared that it wasn't done efficiently, and nobody also cared about 
counting errors, which were significant and which resulted from how 
the count procedure was arranged. It was not redundant and it was 
serial, so that an error in any one of three actions, with respect to 
each race or question on each ballot, would result in a vote 
tabulation or calculation error, with no check being performed. As 
far as I can tell, they did not bother to verify that totals added 
up, i.e., that the total of valid votes plus blank or invalid votes 
equalled the total of ballots.

It didn't matter much to them, nor to anybody else, because most 
races weren't even contested. I saw one, though, which was, and the 
count was close, a 10-vote gap. A recount was done, and the original 
winner confirmed. However, the original vote was shown to be off in 
more than one way, at least two independent errors, out of a few 
hundred votes, not more than 600 total, I think.

If it was like this in a large city, I can see why people would want 
to go to machines. But it's not the optimum solution, and nobody in 
business would consider buying machines to do this kind of task as 
infrequently as elections take place. Instead, they would develop 
procedures to hand-count quickly and accurately. It is not difficult.

Ballot imaging would make it far easier, by eliminating the security 
considerations for counting. If images are used for counting instead 
of ballots, no longer must every move be carefully watched by 
multiple observers. And the latter was always impossible, anyway. The 
hand is quicker than the eye. My father could move cards around in 
ways that were simply not visible, even when I tried. Or perhaps he 
actually was able to pull cards from behind my ears.