RE: Boulder website indicates that precinct ballots counted.

["Some Guy" <someguy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul E Condon [mailto:pecondon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Tuesday, November 09, 2004 3:15 PM
<snip>
But it won't work because the judges open the ballot box and count the
ballots after the polls are closed and before they are delivered to
the collection center. If there are too many, i.e. more the the number
that we issued to voters, our report allerts the collection center
people to handle our stuff separately.
[|>]
[|>] Unless you were the defrauder. You and the judge going back to the
clerk's office. But that's a stretch and involves a conspiracy; duplicate
documents; signature forgery; off-site photocopying; etc. All very unlikely.
[|>] -----

And with the new ballots that have serial numbers printed on them the
computer will be able to identify which ballots, in particular, are
the fraudulent ones.
[|>]
[|>] Ah but that didn't work this go round. The barcodes were smudged and
couldn't be read by the scanners. According to the clerk in the local
newspapers 400 out of 500 ballots in batches had to be reconciled by humans.
All the computers managed to do was capture the images which then had to be
dealt with by people.
If the barcodes couldn't be scanned then the database of what had been
previously scanned couldn't be automatically compared to. In fact it
couldn't be created since the barcodes couldn't be read in the first place.
Without a history of what had been scanned there's little way to know if
duplicates were going through the scanners.
Some people are good with number capture mentally. I happen to be one of
those. To me strings of numbers are patterns. Problem is that its not very
likely that I'm going to be able to recall if I've seen the same 6 digit
number in a possible 176140 ballots or much less in a batch of 500 ballots.
[ when I was in middle school I once demonstrated the ability of recalling
and discerning a 47 digit number out of 15 possibilities. I seriously doubt
that I could do that now - 36 years later. I've become stoopid.] <{;^(
[|>] ----

It is really sad that we are even having this conversation, but our reliance
on computers is in my mind not a good thing. Computers have their place, but
I am fairly sure from hard lessons of a life spent dealing with them that
elections are the last place that I feel comfortable relying on them.

Last month on the capitol steps people were asked to write down reasons why
they wouldn't feel comfortable have computers involved in elections - on 4x6
index cards. One person wrote (paraphrasing): "I don't trust computers. I
don't trust computers that others have built. Hell, I don't even trust
computers that I have built."
My sentiments exactly.

Or as Dick Feynman said so well in describing the reasons behind the 1986
pad explosion of STS-51L:
"In order to have an effective technology, reality must take precedence over
public relations.
For nature cannot be fooled."