More Jetson-headed Claptrap Against Manual Recounts

["Pete Klammer" <pklammer@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

In his recent article "Paradigm Lost: The Death of the Manual Recount," Mr.
Konopasek repeats the flawed thinking that has dogged the voting-integrity
reform movement ever since Congress promised DRE manufacturers the juicy
$4billion HAVA windfall.  Technology-stunned bureaucrats at every level,
like deer frozen in the glare of sudden attention from well-heeled sales
marketers, have apparently lost any capacity of incisive thought, and have
become virtualy mouthpieces of their suppliers' brands.  Their mental
shortfalls are these: blind faith in digital electronics, conflation of
ballots with bits, and dismissive disregard for the deeper philosophical
underpinnings of electoral democracy.

The last mentioned is really the most profound.  As many other election
administrators have done in different words, Mr. Konopasek claims that the
only significant "'end' or objective of all elections, regardless of the
voting technology employed, is to have accurate, error-free election
results."  This outrageous reduction is not merely a simplification, it is
an outright rejection of the deeper, binding, social role an election plays
in democracy.  There is a living contract between the government and the
governed, that is renewed by the act of voting, refreshed by participation
in the electoral process, restored by trust in the conduct and outcome of
every election.  This aspect is easily overlooked by day-to-day
practitioners who can't dwell on the forest as they wade through the
sawdust.  But an election is not sausage: it is insufficient for
white-coated authorities that all is well, that we needn't concern ourselves
with inner workings.  Just getting the right numbers at the end is not
enough!  If you believe otherwise, you might as well accept the sexless
model of procreation in Brave New World: if all you are concerned about is
the final product, test tubes in laboratories are enough.  Or if your only
"end objective" of air transport were delivery to destination, we should all
be herded on Soviet-looking unpainted troop carriers, packed like sardines.
No, a simultaneous, and not subordinate, purpose of airline travel is to
sell itself, to convince you that it is sound and safe, to persuade your
continued use of it.  The normal activities surrounding "natural"
procreation do so much more than merely produce a zygote -- all kinds of
psychological and social bonding effect occur along the way.  So it is for
elections: a strong democracy requires participation, engagement, and trust.
And these aspects, in turn, require transparency, access, and irrefutable
integrity.  The whole election mechanism has to invite, deserve, and instill
confidence -- that the election itself is fair, and consequently that the
government installed is proper.  It is not enough for a voting system merely
to produce right numbers, it must also convincingly persuade the electorate,
with irrefutable evidence, that it does so.

As to the rarely-challenged oxymoron, "electronic ballot" or "digital
ballot," first please turn to etymology: "Italian ballotta, a small ball
used to register a vote."  A ballot is a physical token, a tangible
artifact, a singular object of immutable evidence that indelibly records a
voter's choice.  By "immutable" I mean "inalterable by ordinary means;" I
don't mean "indestructable" -- obviously a page can be burned, or even a
pottery shard can be crushed to dust.  But a ballot, properly defined,
posesses mass and occupies space; it cannot exist in two or more places at
one time, as an electronic symbol can; it cannot be duplicated, or deleted,
silently and invisibly, as a flash-memory record can; it cannot be spirited
in or out of a sealed, guarded room undetectably, as a digital signal can.
In short, an "electronic ballot" is not a ballot at all, and nothing in any
paperless electronic machine can ever be a ballot.  Election administrators
who think otherwise are victims of creative and persuasive marketeers, who
coined the phrase out of the same thin ether that these oxymorons exist in.
The flawed reasoning at work here is the confusion of "ballots" with
"stipulations of ballots".  A stipulation is an assertion of legal
consequence.  A "1" or a "0" in an electronic voting machine is simply an
assertion that some choice took place; a count in an electronic voting
machine is merely an assertion that some number of choices occurred.  These
assertions have no effective physicality!  They come into existence at the
whim of the circuit, without any connection to any tangible artifact that a
voter has held or cast.  To believe in "electronic ballots" is to
dimwittedly miss the distinction between "ballots" and "stipulations of
ballots".

The power and accomplishments of programmable digital systems are
impressive.  They are all the more impressive, the less you fully understand
how they truly work.  But for all their apparent effectiveness, they are not
perfect.  What is missing in the comprehension of nearly all users of
computers, and especially proponents of electronic voting machines, is the
difference between a computer program, and a computer running a program.
The former, a computer program, is a mathematical object of flawless
determinism.  On paper, 1+1=2 eternally and without any exception, ever; and
computer programs -- on paper -- are similarly perfect and infallible.
Given the same input, the same program will produce the same output every
time, forever.  On paper.  However -- and this is a very big "however" -- a
computer is a physical machine, subject to all the slings and arrows of
physical existence, including (deep breath here) voltage margins, timing
margins, heat degradation, ground bounce, radiated noise, capacitive
coupling, waveguide effects, alpha-decay events, mask-alignment flaws,
parameter aging, electromigration, humidity swelling, thermal expansion,
gas-tight connectors, speed derating, battery memory effects, and, um, etc.
In other words, there are many ways a perfect computer program can fail to
execute perfectly in the real world.  It is to the credit of the engineering
profession (my proud trade) that such failures are largely far and few
between.  But the point is, it is only a gullible customer who believes
anything "computerized" is beyond the need of cross checks and backup.

So, no, dear election administrator, we have not entered a gilded beatific
age of electronic perfection which would forever banish the need to lift
more than a finger at a keyboard.  Far from it.  Florida 2000 didn't tell us
we need ballotless elections; what it told us is that we need chadless
ballots!  But more importantly, our participatory democracy requires a
trustworthy election system of unsophisticated transparency, in which every
ordinary lay citizen can witness the undeniable, undiluted tie between the
vote cast by his hand and the winner who takes office as a result.  That
cannot happen without the casting of physical ballots, and the ability to
manually recount them, and the regular exercise of both.

Best hopes,
--
Pete Klammer, P.E. / ACM(1970), IEEE(SA,P1583), ICCP(CCP), NSPE(PE)
   3200 Routt Street / Wheat Ridge, Colorado 80033-5452
 (303)233-9485 / Fax:(303)274-6182 / Mailto:PKlammer@xxxxxxx
   "Either Be Good, or Else Be Careful, but Do Have Fun! "
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-stds-1583-stg3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
> [mailto:owner-stds-1583-stg3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of 
> Barbara Simons
> Sent: Wednesday, October 06, 2004 7:20 PM
> To: Konopasek, Scott; 'stds-1583-stg3@xxxxxxxx'
> Subject: Re: Meaningful Recount Article
> 
> Dear Scott,
> 
> I have several problems with the paper that you have posted, 
> but let me
> start with just one of them.
> 
> As you know, ballot definition files (bdf) can be complex, 
> especially when
> they have to deal with graphical user interfaces such as 
> those found on
> DREs.  Consequently, some bdfs are written by the vendors, 
> while others are
> written in-house by employees or contractors working for 
> election officials.
> In neither case is there an independent (outside) audit or 
> review of the
> bdfs.
> 
> We know of at least one case in which the bdfs written for an 
> optical scan
> device misrecorded votes, namely when Gephardt received a 
> surprisingly large
> number of primary votes after he had already pulled out of 
> the Democratic
> race for the presidential nomination.  Because this occurred 
> on a mark-sense
> system with voter verified optical scan paper ballots, it was 
> possible to
> conduct a manual recount and determine that votes for Kerry had been
> improperly recorded as votes for Gephardt.  I don't think 
> there was anything
> malicious - it was simply an error.
> 
> If, however, something similar or perhaps a bit less dramatic 
> had occurred
> with a paperless DRE, it's quite likely that nothing would have been
> uncovered.  First of all, folks might not realize that there 
> had even been a
> problem.  Second, even if they thought that there might have 
> been a problem,
> there would be nothing to manually recount.
> 
> A response that one could always review the bdfs is not, in 
> my opinion,
> adequate, especially if there is no blatantly obvious problem 
> - as there was
> with the Gephardt vote.
> 
> Regards,
> Barbara
> 
> On 10/4/04 21:47, "Konopasek, Scott" 
> <Skonopasek@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> > Attached is an article on the topic of meaningful recounts 
> of paper and
> > electronic votes. After hearing much discussion about the 
> topic in this
> > forum and by other activists, I felt compelled to capture 
> on paper my
> > experience and musings recounting hand counted paper 
> ballots, punchcard,
> > optical scan and electronic ballots.
> >
> > I hope this article will contribute to our discussion of 
> VVAT and the
> > ability to have a meaningful recount.
> >
> >
> > Scott O. Konopasek
> > Registrar of Voters
> >
> > ***via Blackberry***
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Skonopasek@xxxxxxx <Skonopasek@xxxxxxx>
> > To: Konopasek, Scott <Skonopasek@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > Sent: Mon Oct 04 21:34:16 2004
> > Subject: (no subject)
> >
> > <<Paradigm Lost 10-4-2004.pdf>>
> >
>