RE: overview of proposed hart intercivic ballot now system (draft)

["Tiger, Paul" <ptiger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Neal, Scott, et al,

I suggest, as I have in the past, that CVV and other like groups propose what it would support, rather than what it would damn.

Neal and Al both directed me to a ballot marking device that many people have thought of as a suitable replacement for DRE. That is a helpful service. Show what could be used.
In fact there are so many options of systems that could be used that don't use proprietary software (in many cases no software at all), that one could create a catalog of mix and match pieces. 
This is what clerk's and election officials need. They are not techno-geeks, and really don't have the kind of time that some of you have to dedicate to such research.

Please try to help by showing the constructive methods that can and should be utilized. I know that you can do this.
So much time is being wasted in the pursuit of negativity.

Paul Tiger

-----Original Message-----
From: Neal McBurnett [mailto:neal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, January 21, 2004 2:31 PM
To: bcv@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: overview of proposed hart intercivic ballot now system (draft)

Scott - thanks for a great document!  Very helpful.

Feedback:

Re DREs:

The clerk's decision in December 2003: No DREs in 2004

CVV's position: No DREs ever.  Meet HAVA/ADA requirements with ballot
marking devices, which produce or mark paper ballots which can be fed
into the same optical scanning system used for other ballots.
This avoids all the security problems with digital ballots.

This makes integration much easier, since all ballots are paper
and fit right in to the flow.  The ballot marking devices could
come from a different supplier.

The clerk's office has not ruled out DREs in the future.


Printing ballots on demand: I think that feature is most useful for
Early Voting - so that the clerks office doesn't have to
manage a ton of ballots of all sorts of different styles.

I doubt there would or should be any Ballot Now printers at the polls
in 2004.  Some sort of ballot-printing process might make sense as
part of a future ballot marking system, or I guess such devices could
mark existing ballots that are fed into them.


Great questions about the "secure archive"....

I'd add: When and how would the pollwatchers and public have access to
the data stored in the secure archive?


Finally, I would find it easier to read it and to follow the links if
it were in HTML.  The diagram is the one complicated part there, but a
gif copy would work pretty well I think.  But it is a hassle.
Someday, SVG should be supported widely enought to be perfect for
this:   http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/


Cheers,

Neal McBurnett                 http://bcn.boulder.co.us/~neal/
Signed and/or sealed mail encouraged.  GPG/PGP Keyid: 2C9EBA60


On Tue, Jan 20, 2004 at 08:22:09PM -0700, Scott A. Morris wrote:
> After digging through the parts of the Hart Intercivic proposal
> released by the Boulder County Elections Office on Friday and
> listening to Al Kolwicz and Kellen Carey's interview on KGNU

> yesterday, it became clear that someone needed to write an overview
> for people trying to wade through the released material.
>
> Towards that end, here is my attempt so far:
>
>    http://www.jomche.org/boulder-election-info/overview-ballotnow.pdf
>
> Its far from complete, and I haven't finished writing up the more
> interesting pieces of the system yet, but I figured I'd put up what I
> have so far in case anyone else is working on something similar for
> tomorrows meeting.
>
> Corrections, comments, and suggestions are very welcome.
> I'll try to have a more complete version ready by tomorrow.