RE: Hart InterCivic presentation materials up

["Paul Tiger" <tigerp@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

There are a number of problems associated with the thermal printers, most
important of which is aging. Think about what happens to the receipts that
you get printed on thermal zinc oxide paper? UV breakdown is fast.
Clerks are required to keep all election records in storage for 22 months.
For some odd reasons most keep them for longer. If zinc oxide receipts or
ballots are kept for this period they'd need to be in a cool dark place.
Refrigerated would be best.

Paper that comes off of a roll is a nightmare to deal with. They are not
flat and don't want to stay flat. The crystalline structure of the zinc
coating causes them to breakdown when folded (and the folds).
In short everything about thermal printouts is not intended for longevity.

The idea that the paper could be (or should be) respooled onto another roll
is simply out of the question, because every voters ballot needs to be
separate from any others. An elections official needs to be able to get his
or her hands on a ballot for a myriad of purposes, most of all to
authenticate or disqualify a ballot. All wrapped up on a roll impedes this.
As previously stated, there are problems with zinc oxide thermal paper, and
if you roll it back up and then get it warm - you are completely screwed.
Take the next thermal receipt that you get and lay in on your dashboard for
a few hours. You'll see what I mean.

Back on the topic of why not a receipt ... it was the vendors that came up
with the idea of vote selling. I never heard about it before they started
using it as an excuse not to provide a voter-verifiable printed ballot.
This idea assumes that there is a majority of dishonest people coming to the
polls. That we are judged guilty of a crime that we have not committed. Here
we are having morality legislated, again.
In most places we have far more difficulty just getting people to bother to
vote. I don't see those that strive to be involved selling their votes. I
feel that I am in the minority, but only because others have been sold on
the idea that it 'could' happen. Where's the documentation that it is
happening? Its crap! It is a sales tool for the lazy.

Paul Tiger



-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Walmsley [mailto:paul@xxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2003 12:07 AM
To: Paul Tiger
Cc: bcv@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: Hart InterCivic presentation materials up

On Tue, 21 Oct 2003, Paul Tiger wrote:

> The thing that both Al and Kell have been making me see so clearly is the
> need for the voter verifiable ballot. Maybe you'd be shocked to know that
I
> think that voters should be able to keep a copy of their ballots? Yeah, I
> can't see what all the secrecy is about. Its my vote and I should be able
to
> tell anyone that I want to.

seems like it's worth distinguishing between paper receipts and paper
ballots.  the difference (to my mind) being that you can take paper
receipts home with you, they are not available for counting; whereas paper
ballots are deposited at the precinct and are used either (A) as the
official record of your vote, or (B) as a backup record of your vote, for
recounts and for voting machine validation tests.

I don't think that paper receipts are very useful; they also facilitate
vote-buying, as one of the vendor representatives pointed out.  On the
other hand, the generation of voter-verifiable paper ballots makes sense,
since it works around many verifiability problems which seem inherent to
DRE machines.

> Can anyone here tell me if Hart was able to demonstrate a method to use
> their DREs to produce a paper ballot?

Hart showed two devices that generated paper ballots.

The first device was familiar: a voting terminal (the "eSlate") with an
thermal printer attached.  This device generated a plain-text confirmation
of your vote, which would scroll onto an enclosed takeup reel once the
vote was confirmed.  I do not recall whether this printout incorporated a
2-D bar code or not.  Hart actually demonstrated this device in operation.

The second device shown was a standalone thermal printer in a voting
booth-style privacy shield.  Next to it sat a laptop computer with a
barcode scanner attached.  Voters who wish to confirm their votes on paper
would proceed to this device after voting on an eSlate.  The standalone
printer would generate a 2-D bar code -- without printing plaintext --
which could be scanned by the bar code reader to confirm the voter's
intent.  If the voter accepted the ballot, they could press the "Accept"
button on top of the printer, which would then scroll the barcode onto the
enclosed takeup reel.  Otherwise, they could press the "Reject" button, at
which point the barcode would be annotated with some sort of rejection
code and scrolled onto the takeup reel.  The voter would then return to
the election judge to vote again.  Hart did not demonstrate this device in
operation - it was an 'engineering prototype.'



- Paul