RE: Wait just a friggin' minute!

["AlKolwicz" <AlKolwicz@xxxxxxxxx>]

Nick

I sense you're providing an emotional rather than a logical argument here.  

Surely you are not saying that the security and reliability of DRE's are not
limited by physical constraints.  You seem to infer so.  Surely you are not
saying a DRE or a memory card is safe from theft or a firebombed voting
place.  You seem to infer so. 

Have you answered the basic question?  How does a voter VERIFY that the
digital ballot has recorded exactly what the voter intended and only what
the voters intended?

We discuss the problem of verifiability in two parts -- voter recording and
vote counting.  The ballot box is the link between the two.

Only the voter can verify what is recorded -- after all we do believe in a
secret ballot.  Only the voter can verify their votes and only the voter can
place their verified ballot into a secure ballot box.  Clearly, the security
system that prevents stuffing the ballot box is an exposure -- but is
manageable.  The possibility of a voter voting YES, and getting a receipt
that says YES and the DRE recording NO is real, and if we follow the press
is happening.  A voter verified ballot does not say that it is counted
correctly, only recorded correctly.

It is definitely possible and relatively easy to verify that votes recorded
on paper ballots are counted correctly -- as long as it is agreed what votes
are marked.  This is a function of process design and transparency -- as you
well know.  Unfortunately, the votes on ballots are not always unambiguous.
Where absentee ballots account for 20% of the vote, there is often
considerable ambiguity.  The accuracy of the vote count is complicated by
this ambiguity.  Recounts that do not take the interpretation of ambiguous
ballots into account are flawed.  With paperless DRE's there is no way to
recover the voter's intent.  With paper "audit trails", the voter is
deceived into believing that they are verifying their vote when they are
not.

I'm interested in any data that addresses these points.

Al 


  







-----Original Message-----
From: Nicholas Bernstein [mailto:nicholas.bernstein@xxxxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2004 4:40 PM
To: AlKolwicz
Cc: 'Evan Daniel Ravitz'; cvv-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx;
nicholas.bernstein@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Wait just a friggin' minute!

I've gone though my spiel many time on this list, so I'm only going to 
give the brief version here.

If you use only paper, your security and reliability are limited by 
physical constraints. What are your going to do if someone steals a 
ballot box, or firebombs a voting place? You may object to the 
reliablity of a specific implementation of a DRE, but the concept is 
valid and should not be outlawed. If someone can do it well, they should 
be able to.

The idea that a paper ballot marked and read by a computer is somehow 
more reliable than an electronic one (that doesn't have to go through 
this conversion) is ridiculous. I'm more than happy to talk about the 
difficulties in signal processing and the costs of technology if 
anyone's interested.

Let's stop kidding ourselves. Looking at a paper ballot before you put 
it in a box IS NOT VERIFIABLE.  The only way to verify that your vote 
was counted is to allow each person to see the results of their vote 
AFTER the ballot is processed and the results tabulated.

N




AlKolwicz wrote:

>Nick,
>
>We are not opposed to vote marking machines.  These machines warn voters of
>under votes, prevent over votes, provide disabled voters with a way to vote
>in private, AND print the voter's votes on a paper ballot that the voter
can
>verify before casting.
>
>These devices provide voter verifiable ballots.  Paper ballots provide a
way
>to verify vote counting.  In addition, paper ballot tracking systems, using
>serialized removable ballot stubs and poll books, provide a way to audit
>every ballot and every voter -- a way to "balance" each election.
>
>Vote marking machines might look and feel like a DRE, but have additional
>hardware -- a scanner and page printer.  By eliminating the digital ballot,
>the vote marking machine is trustworthy.  If the machine makes an error,
the
>only place that the error can affect results is any error printed on the
>paper ballot.  Since the paper ballot is verifiable by the voter, the error
>is detectable.
>
>Because of their reliance on a digital ballot, we think that DRE's cannot
>meet fundamental verifiability and auditing requirements.  
>
>Al
>
>  
>