[EM] Dave Ketchum: Handcounts

[Paul Kislanko]

On 04/29/2012 04:48 AM, Dave Ketchum wrote:
> Computers do well at performing the tasks they are properly told to 
> perform - better than humans given the same directions. Thus it would 
> make sense to direct the computers and expect them to do what is 
> needed accurately.
>
> Still, we sometimes wonder exactly what the computers have been told to
do.

In my original suggestion THAT aspect of "verifiability" is covered by the
notion that if all ballots are made a public record, independent programmers
could perform whatever algorithm is the counting-method against the input.
If 1000 members of EM (or one media outlet like CNN) got a different result
than the vote-counting authority published, we'd know there was a counting
error in the "official" computer code. And that would happen within minutes,
not weeks.