RE: New NIST draft on VVPATs and DRE audits; Holt bill

["Michael Melio" <meliom@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Good conversation, Neal.

But the following section you quote from the NIST draft,


> mandating that the paper record shall always be trusted
over the 
> electronic record (or vice versa) may not result in
greater accuracy. 
> .... This suggests that the paper record and the
electronic record 
> should be treated as two separate but equal
representations of >voter's choices.

Implies that fraud is not an issue. But fraud IS AN ISSUE.
And electronic fraud is the most pernicious type of fraud
around because it lulls the user to sleep by it's fancy
interface and presumption of "hi-tech"; these DRE machines
are nothing more than exuses for fraud. A manually filled
out paper ballot is superior because it is all on the level.
Elections should not be about speed nor hi-tech gadgetry but
about ACCURACY and VERIFIABILITY. In this sense the paper
ballot entered by hand is superior to any DRE; but a "ballot
producer" would be superior to both, using a touch screen
interface to produce a BALLOT (not a scrolling paper trail)
that neither stores votes on a permanent storage device nor
tabulates votes.

I must be getting tired. 

Why must we accept these DRE machines? Because they exist?
Because we'll never get rid of them? Because the SoS will
have nothing else? Because we'll get no legislation passed
that calls for their removal?

And if we go along with these DRE machines, wouldn't this
concession on our part further ENTRENCH the vendors? Making
it even more impossible to rid ourselves of these pernicious
machines?

I know this much. The 2004 election was stolen, big time.
And the exit polls provide the greatest evidence of massive
voter fraud not in precincts that used manual or
mechanically marked paper ballots, but in those precincts
that used DRE machines and Diebold tabulators. The national
"vote turn" differential is now estimated at 8 million
votes.

Anyway, I feel like I'm ranting. Nothing personal. Just
frustrated that we have such a monumental mountain to climb
before we can regain our election system and our democracy.


Sincerely,
 
Michael David Melio
Jefferson County, CO.
meliom@xxxxxxxxxxx
 
"As we view the achievements of aggregated capital, we
discover the existence of trusts, combinations, and
monopolies, while the citizen is struggling far in the rear
or is trampled to death beneath an iron heel. Corporations,
which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the
law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the
people's masters." --  President Grover Cleveland (1885 -
1889)

 
 

|-----Original Message-----
|From: Neal McBurnett [mailto:neal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
|Sent: Tuesday, March 08, 2005 12:11 AM
|To: cvv-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
|Subject: Re: New NIST draft on VVPATs and DRE audits; Holt
bill
|
|Thanks for your feedback, Al - it helps a lot.
|
|On Mon, Mar 07, 2005 at 10:49:49PM -0700, AlKolwicz wrote:
|>
http://coloradovoter.blogspot.com/2005/03/say-no-to-nists-vo
ter-
|verification.html
|
|which says:
|
|> The NIST draft is a step backward.
|
|Certainly not a step backward from the present.  Is there a
proposal
|you support, and a strategy for getting it into law here in
Colorado
|real soon now?  Unless something passes in the next month
or so, I
|think a whole lot more pure-DREs are likely to be bought to
comply
|with HAVA, and used for a long time.
|
|> 1. It does not require that the votes on the voter
verified ballot
|> be the official votes that get counted. Consequently, it
is little
|> more than a mechanism to deceive voters into thinking
that
|voters
|> are verifying their votes.
|
|Note that the NIST draft is about what the system should be
able to
|do, and does not specify any law.  In fact this is input
for a
|voluntary standard and they can't define a mandatory
standard.
|
|The Holt bill, which I also cited, does require that the
paper records
|be the "true and correct record of the votes cast"
|
|Like you, I would reject either requiring that the machine
count
|be the official count, or letting official choose between
two
|different subtotal counts.
|
|But note that the NIST draft mandates that individual paper
records
|be identified by random serial number (invisible to the
user) so they
|can be matched to the electronic records.  This allows the
election
|officials to recover the vote on a damaged piece of paper
by looking
|at the electronic record, or to use an electronically
signed paper
|ballot in a case where the electronic ballot is missing, or
to choose
|what to do given a conflict.
|
|It's basically like the truely private serial numbers that
Paul
|Walmsley and I have wanted in order to do really good
manual tally
|audits with a "batch size" of one.
|
|Specifically, the draft says:
|
|> mandating that the paper record shall always be trusted
over the
|> electronic record (or vice versa) may not result in
greater
|> accuracy. ....
|> This suggests that the paper record and the electronic
record
|should
|> be treated as two separate but equal representations of
voter's
|> choices.
|>
|> The DRE-VVPAT design contains specific capabilities for
making
|the
|> audit of its records more accurate and easier to
accomplish. It
|> marks the paper ballots with information concerning the
election
|and
|> voting precinct, and includes as well an identification
of the
|> specific DRE-VVPAT. It maintains a one-to-one
correspondence
|between
|> its paper records and electronic records by including a
unique
|> identifier for each record pair. It also prints the paper
record
|> such that it is machine-readable.
|
|Al writes:
|> 2. It requires that the voter be able to compare the
votes on the
|> paper to the votes in the computer -- which as far as I
can tell is
|> not possible. "To permit the voter, at the time of
voting, to verify
|> that the DRE-VVPAT is recording the electronic ballot
choices
|> correctly and to resolve problems should they occur,"
|
|I agree that isn't good wording, but it certainly requires
that
|the voter be able to reject the paper that was offered and
correct
|the ballot, so I don't see the practical consequence.
|
|> 3. Several members of the IEEE committee on Voting
Systems
|objected
|> to this solution and provided many arguments against it.
|
|Where would I find those arguments?
|
|> As far as I can tell, this draft is another attempt to
protect DRE
|> vendors and election officials who have purchased DRE
|equipment, and
|> is not an attempt to achieve the highest level of
election security,
|> accuracy and verifiability.
|
|ADA and HAVA and my own sense of justice clearly require
some
|sort of
|machine to provide private, independent, accessible voting
to all.
|
|This question seems to come down to whether the paper is a
ballot
|or
|an audit trail (covered in the previous discussion), and
whether
|any electronic ballot is allowed.
|
|I think that NIST is forced to provide an option for
existing
|jurisdictions that choose to go with the redundancy of "two
separate
|but equal representations of voter's choices", and an
argument can
|certainly be made for that.
|
|If we get a "no electronic ballot" law passed, we can just
do away
|with them.  But unless we also get a pure hand count law
passed,
|we're
|still left with de-facto electronic ballots after the
batch/machine
|counts are fed into the tally computers, so we still need
good
|manual tally audits.
|
|From what I've seen, the accessibility community is pushing
very
|hard
|against the sort of ballot marking device I've supported
for a while,
|e.g. ES&S's Automark, since it requires a mobility-impaired
voter to
|somehow privately transport the ballot to the ballot box.
Or does
|the Automark include a ballot box as part of the booth,
like a
|DRE-VVPAT does?
|
|Cheers,
|
|Neal McBurnett
http://bcn.boulder.co.us/~neal/
|Signed and/or sealed mail encouraged.  GPG/PGP Keyid:
2C9EBA60
|
|Neal wrote:
|> Preliminary Report: NIST Approach to VVPAT Requirements
for the
|VSS
|> 2002 Addendum (John Wack)
|> http://vote.nist.gov/TGDC/VVPAT%20Addendum%20-
|%20jpw%20-%203-2-051.pdf