Re: Rock and a hard place

[Christian Rudolph <reindeer@xxxxxxxxxx>]

JC,

I agree with your comments here.
I also wonder, along with others, why it is that optical scanning has
not been pursued more vigorously, as it is a well known and more secure
technology that could easily be made handicapped/disabled accessible.

Hart/Intercivic's presentation displayed a reasonable way of doing this,
using bar codes to show proof of the vote, with a paper ballot that
could be easily, accurately and quickly machine counted if a recount
were required.
The fear of an electronic recount freaks us all out, I think.
A paper recount, even if done by machine, would be more secure and
reliable, in my opinion.
Optical bar code readers could be easily made to also have
text-to-speech capability such that a vote could be independently
verified by the voter.
This would allow off the shelf bar code scanners to be modified for use
in voting, which would prevent vote tampering on a wide scale.
I also think that it would reduce the cost to Boulder County.

My guess is that certain companies have lobbied for DREs, and therefore
have convinced legislators that DREs are the way to go.
Legislators are not technologists, so not much convincing is required.
I suspect that the cost to Boulder County will be high for any of the
DREs that we saw presented.
Does anyone know what price tags are attached to them?
Does anyone have verification of this idea, or is this just my
suspicion?

-Christian Rudolph

On Sun, 2003-10-19 at 21:54, Bollinger wrote:
> 1.  I concur with Kellen & others that we MUST have a voter verifiable
> paper ballot.  The Diebold machine controversy in the Georgia governor
> election recently should amply exemplify the problem of not being able
> to truly verify a contested close election.    (Reference,for example,
> which you've probably already seen: 
> http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,60563,00.html   )    
> As mentioned earlier, some machines, such as Hart Interactive, can
> provide a printed receipt of each voter's ballot, which the voter can
> verify thru a window, (where a 2D barcode code also be added adjacent
> to the ballot receipt). This might be quite sufficient.
>  
> 2.  If we go with scanners (or DRE), then there must be guarantees by
> the manufacturer that the machine can handle all main types of future
> applications, such as Ranked Voting, for an agreed-upon & affordable
> price, where it could be installed in the future.  Thus the scanners
> would have to produce a digital Ballot Image of each voter's record, I
> believe.  
>  
> 3.  Can these Scanners give warning about under-votes and prevent
> over-votes?