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Margit, DRE vendors can refurbish their vote
recording machines by adding a scanner and a printer, and by removing the vote
recording and vote counting functions. The User Interface to the voter would be mostly
transferable, and instead of recording the votes in memory, digitally, the
machine would print the votes on the paper ballot. I have not seen the Paul and Scott plan
for sampling. It is my hope that a transparent counting
system will be adopted that will make it possible, and relatively easy, to
reveal all errors. Verifiability of each step in the counting process is
the only way I have found to do this. Even in hand counting, there are multiple steps
to determine the total: Step 0 is the partitioning of the task
into repeatable batches of uniquely identified ballots. Step 1 is the interpretation of each vote
on a ballot. Step 2 is deciding how to count an
ambiguous vote – by the duplication board. Step 3 is the recording of each vote as a
hash mark on an accumulation page – by batch. Step 4 is the summarization of the hash
marks by batch. Step 5 is the summarization of the
summaries for the election. An independent team can repeat all or a
portion of the steps for all or a portion of the batches and arrive at a count
for a ballot, a batch and/or the election. This might be done as a
sampling device to monitor the original and each recount, and of course it would
be done to perform a recount. A third team can compare the results of
two independent counts and declare that the ballot or the batch or the election
counts match or do not. Al From: Margitjo@xxxxxxx
[mailto:Margitjo@xxxxxxx] Al, et al, :) |