[EM] Dave Ketchum: Handcounts

[Dave Ketchum]

On Apr 30, 2012, at 7:02 PM, Paul Kislanko wrote:
> 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.
>
Automatically trusting CNN, or any other single source, with automatic  
credit for being more dependable than an official authority program is  
stretching it.

As I wrote earlier, a program can be rigged to give either a correct  
or a biased result, as cued, with existence of the cue being hidden  
from observers.