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Re: Hand Recounts of votes recorded on DREs


Not sure about the leading "A", but VVPAT means: Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail

In Boulder (and on most of the national lists I've seen, as well), many folks are specific about using the similar acronym VVPB for a paper ballot instead of just an "audit trail"

I'm sure there is discussion in the archives or on the website about the importance of this distinction, at least in Colorado where we have the problematic "method of recount" law.

In general, the dozens of Boulder citizens who researched this last year reached consensus around asking specifically for a paper ballot to be the official record of the voter's intent, instead of creating a possibly ambiguous situation in which there could be "two" ballots (the DRE record and the audit trail "receipt") and one might have to fight in court for the paper to have primacy.

Then, if paper is going to be the official record, there is no reason to use the term Audit Trail, nor to have the artifact be difficult to hand count (a la an ATM or gas pump type print out), so instead, let's ask for what we want: a paper ballot.

The "compromise" position was to propose using "vote marking" machines (and specifically not vote recording devices of any kind) that could offer all the accessibility, language, and ballot style benefits of a tablet DRE, but instead, the device creates uniform marks on "regular" ballots to be hand counted and/or optically scanned. The same device could offer audible read-back of a cast ballot for verification. I've heard these devices now called "hybrids."

In any event, part of the importance of these terms is that the "audit trail" term has been used against voter verification and trustworthy election advocates by people such as Colorado's Secretary of State, who ignore the request for a paper ballot by saying that "adding an audit trail is too complicated" (or too expensive, or too difficult for elections judges to manage, etc.) So instead of talking about the benefits of paper ballots, the discussion is lost on modifications to DREs that we don't want to begin with. There is also the valid concern that the "audit trail" will provide a false sense of security if not treated (that is, counted) like an official ballot; imagine a majority of voters leaving a polling place having voted "Yes" on an issue, but the final DRE total says "No" and everyone just assumes the machine total must be correct because they saw the paper slip, even though the paper slips were not tallied as part of the final total. Of course a physical audit of the "slips" might catch such an error, but in places where such an audit is not currently automatically provided for by law (such as Colorado), there's no guarantee that the audit would occur, and if the slips differ from the DRE, what's the likelihood that the legal basis for using them will be challenged if they are not "official" ballots to begin with?

We haven't been asking for an audit trail in Colorado, we've been asking for paper ballots, and we recommend the same to voters across the nation.

Paper Ballots are certainly what I'm wishing for, and I'm not afraid of wishing for them, either!

Joe

Joe Pezzillo, Citizen Activist
Boulder, Colorado USA
jpezzillo@xxxxxxxxx






On Dec 7, 2004, at 1:32 PM, Paul E Condon wrote:

On Tue, Dec 07, 2004 at 12:18:10AM -0800, Arthur Keller wrote:
At 11:14 PM -0800 12/6/04, David Aragon wrote:
Barbara Simons wrote:

A "hand recount" of paperless DRE votes should come up with
the same tally that the DRE originally produced, unless the
DREs are really really broken.


Clearly it can't detect errors in the recording of votes to
produce the DRE output.  But it can detect errors in the
tallying of those outputs downstream of the DRE's -- which is
certainly an area of concern and potential source of errors.

It can also detect errors in the tallying of votes WITHIN the DREs.

So it's not pointless.  But neither is it the end-to-end
audit function that "hand recount", with its connotations
of painstaking meticulousness, has formerly meant.


Certainly it is better to have an AVVPAT for each DRE.  But let hand
recounts of DREs go forward with the painstaking auditing process if
there's a chance it's not pointless.  We don't want election
officials deliberately avoiding a great deal of effort by choosing
DREs without AVVPATs.  Be careful what you wish for, you just might
get it.


Please excuse a question whose answer is obvious to most everyone
on this list: What does AVVPAT stand for?

--
Paul E Condon
pecondon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx