Re: commissioners presentation this thurs

["LPBC Chairman" <chairman@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

And why couldn't the "DRE" mark the ballot *and* record it at the same time.
Making ballots the official vote to be counted and the DRE count to be used
merely to help verify.
(Ideally, running the two systems side by side, until the E-system had more
confidence and *might* eventually be acceptable as a vote count......but for
now, just a verifying check.)

Seems to make the best of the situation......;-)

Bo
----- Original Message -----
From: "Neal McBurnett" <neal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "bcv" <bcv@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, December 01, 2003 4:43 PM
Subject: Re: commissioners presentation this thurs


> On Mon, Dec 01, 2003 at 03:02:16PM -0700, Neal McBurnett wrote:
> > ...we don't have to buy DRE's until 2006, based on the extension
> > that the secy of state will get (in all likelihood).
> >
> > Ideally we would, in 2006, get
> > precinct scanners that would have fully-disclosed software.  And they
> > could scan DRE-generated paper ballots and read them back so even
> > blind voters could verify them.
>
> Al gently pointed out to me that "DRE-generated paper ballots" is a
> misuse of terms, since "DRE" is generally understood to imply that the
> vote is Directly Recorded Electronically right then and there.
>
> I'll go with his terminology.  In 2006 we want hand-marked paper
> ballots for most people and "Vote Marking" machines -- such as the
> Vogue Elections system -- to make the polling places accessible to
> all.  We never want to see a traditional DRE in Boulder County since
> it does not generate voter verifiable paper ballots that could
> actually be used in a normal recount.
>
> In order to have some protection against flawed, hacked or fraudulent
> software, I also think that Boulder County should institute, as a
> standard part of its vote counting procedure, some sort of
> confirmation hand-count of randomly selected ballots.  Perhaps via
> random selection of a suitable number of stacks of ballots.  Linda
> Salas seemed to think this would be workable in the meeting we had
> with her a few weeks ago.
>
> But that is no substitute for fully disclosed software, which would
> better protect against fraud and lead to improved software quality,
> reliability and security.
>
> -Neal
>
>