[EM] Why We Shouldn't Count Votes with Machines

[Kathy Dopp]

On Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 10:00 PM, Dave Ketchum <davek at clarityconnect.com> wrote:

>     First, this is not intended to be used in a zillion precincts - just to
> validate the programs.

OK. Well if you don't care about validating the election outcome
accuracy, and just want to verify the small amount of programs on
voting machines that pertain to voting, then you could do parallel
(Election Day) sampling of memory cards (memory cards unbelievably
have      today interpreted code on them on most voting systems) like
the University of CT engineering dept. has designed for checking the
voting code on CT's voting systems.

My own focus is on ensuring that voters decide who governs them by
checking the accuracy of the election outcomes instead.

>     But part of the requirement on the program installation is that it be
> impractical to alter it undetectably.

OK. So how many billions of dollars do you want to allocate to your
new voting system and voting program design?

And you do understand that it will not ensure that the election
outcomes are accurate right?

>>
>> 1. potentially violates voter privacy
>
>     That is the reason for letting voters CHOOSE whether to volunteer for
> this.

Oh. I see, so you want voters to choose to give up their ballot
privacy. Hmmm.  You do realize that could/would enable vote buying not
just for mail-in voting like today, but also for precinct voting?

>
>> 2. video can be digitally altered, segments deleted (is more volatile
>> than paper ballots)
>
>     So there needs to be extra effort to avoid such.

Extra effort and expense and complexity and you are going to first
convince the public to double their budget for elections so that you
can remove the voter from "voter-verification" so that we can have
video verification?

>
>> 3. another expensive toy (video cameras) that would have to be kept
>> running during elections, & maintained between elections, tested,
>> certified, etc.
>
>     Sounds like overkill.  What more is needed than cameras that can be
> borrowed for use as needed?

OK. So now you plan to change the election statutes in almost all
states too, so that federal certification and testing are no longer
required for voting systems?

Gee, does anyone on this list ever consider practical real life
situations when you devise your "solutions"?

>
>> 4. auditing video tapes would be much slower (more administratively
>> burdensome) than auditing paper ballots
>
>     "Auditing" is not clear to me - must read all the ballots off the tape -
> part of deciding how many voting machines to do this on.

I thought you already said that only some machines are selected prior
to the election for videoing, so that all the unselected machine
counts can be undetectably altered to match erroneous election
results?

Since your aim is not to ensure accurate election outcomes and only to
check some of the vote counting software on the individual machines,
and not on the central tabulator and not check the accuracy of the
election outcomes, I'm not sure how you plan to calculate the amount
of voting machines to "do this on"?

When calculating audit amounts with the goal of assuring correct
election outcomes, the mathematics depend on the reported election
results and the total number of reported auditable vote counts.

>> 5. selecting the machines to be videotaped prior to the election tells
>> any inside fraudsters which machines can be undetectably tampered with
>> or have their votes altered during or after the election  (valid
>> auditing requires only selecting the random audit units AFTER all the
>> auditable vote counts have been publicly posted after the polls close
>> (as in any field, the data must be committed prior to auditing it)
>
>     Then I am not proposing auditing as such.

Yes. I understand that your goal is obviously not to ensure that the
election outcomes are correct, but only to test the voting software on
some machines selected at the beginning of the election.  Obviously
there are a lot of ways to fraudulently manipulate election outcomes
with using your costly administratively burdensome procedure of adding
video machines that film voters' screens while voting.

>     The programs used need to make fraud difficult, and undetectable fraud
> VERY difficult, wherever used, whether or not a particular machine is taped.
>
> Again, my purpose is validating a program, rather than a particular
> election.

Yes. Thanks for explaining that.

I am more concerned about whether or not voters are the
decision-makers in who governs them and really am not interested in
spending gobs of money and complicating elections just to video some
individual voting machines during the election.


Cheers,

Kathy