RE: openvotingconsortium

["Pete Klammer" <pklammer@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

You're being silly; is it deliberate?  "... inviting the possiblity of
discrepant count" ?  C'mon!

Or maybe you're finally getting it, the final stage of enlightenment: we are
not arguing for a "paper trail" to verify "electronic votes".  You obviously
see the problem: if the plain text or "receipt" says one thing, and the bar
code or "digital record" say another, the election directors, or the courts,
will have to rule, well, the computer recorded those bits, and humans are
fallible, so the bits must be right!"  Right?

The ballot as marked and placed in the ballot box is the only record that
counts!  If a voter alters his marks before he casts his ballot, then the
altered marks are counted.  Why should this be hard to understand?  Oh, I
get it, you're still assuming that the machine which printed the ballot
should have priority over the human who casts it.  Get over it.

There is no discrepancy between a marked ballot and itself; the possibility
of discrepancy arises when you set up two competing, ambiguously-vested
representations of one thing: for example, a plaintext list and a bar code,
or an electronic record and a receipt, or any other two or more records, one
voter-verifiable and the other not.

If the open-source PC system is a non-recording, non-counting ballot printer
or marker, then there is no need for a bar code, or any other "second
channel" of information.  Marks in boxes are unambiguous, countable, and
scannable.

And if your naughty voter "alters" his ballot after it's printed and before
he casts it, then maybe he's completing some undervoted races with
hand-marking, or maybe he's overvoting, or maybe he's erasing a printed mark
to replace it with a hand mark.  Maybe those actions ar inadvisable; maybe
the voter should request a replacement ballot and call this one spoiled;
maybe even the ballot should be presented behind glass, so the voter has
only two choices, to cast or to do over; but it's his ballot, and his only
ballot once it is cast.

It is only by creating additional, superfluous, buried, encoded, or secret
records or counts, that anyone is "inviting the possiblity of discrepant
count".

-----Original Message-----
From: Nicholas Bernstein [mailto:nicholas.bernstein@xxxxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Thursday, April 08, 2004 11:06 AM
To: pklammer@xxxxxxx
Cc: paul.tiger@xxxxxxxxxxxx; 'Cvv-Discuss@Coloradovoter. Net'
Subject: Re: openvotingconsortium

A bar code is also not hand-modifiable. This reduces the possiblity that 
a voter will try to change his/her ballot after it is printed.
And your argument about "worst case scenario" doesn't hold water, 
because it is the exact opposite argument as the one that is used 
against electronic voting in the first place. I.e. If you require a 
paper trail (and allow a sample hand count)  you can check for mistakes 
by looking for anomolies. Why is inviting the possiblity of discrepant 
count a benefit in one instance but a hinderance in another?

On another note. Joe, could you explain exactly what you think is 
unconstitutional?

Nick

Pete Klammer wrote:

>>Stepping into a question, Pete - why not a bar code?
>>    
>>
>
>A bar code is not hand-countable, not hand-count auditable.  Now we have to
>"trust" yet another layer of electronics to translate what I thought I
voted
>for into a tally and a count.  At the very least, this is another
>opportunity for coding error.  Above that, it asks the voter to suspend
>skepticism a notch, and trust the technologists.  Worst case scenario: text
>says one thing, bar codes say another.
>
>Occams' Rule: keep it simple, stupid!  If it can be done either with a bar
>code or without a bar code, then get rid of the bar code!
>
>Pete
>
>  
>


-- 
If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention.