ERC presentation a few weeks ago

[Paul Walmsley <paul@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello everyone,

On April 8th, I gave a short presentation to the Election Review 
Committee.  Some have expressed interest in the topics of the presentation 
and the materials that I distributed, so I'd like to post that information 
here.

I presented three recommendations:

1. If the ERC chooses to recommend further use of the Hart system, the ERC 
should recommend an audit plan to ensure that the blank paper ballots can be 
read correctly by the scanners.  This audit would be conducted in advance of 
the election.  An overview of such a plan was provided to the panel 
members and is available at:

http://www.booyaka.com/~paul/ea/erc-20050408/how-to-pre-audit-damaged-ballots.pdf


2. If the ERC chooses to recommend further use of the Hart system, the ERC 
should recommend an audit plan to ensure that the marked paper ballots are 
interpreted by the scanners with the same outcome as human election judges.  An 
overview of such a plan was provided to the panel members and is available 
at:

http://www.booyaka.com/~paul/ea/erc-20050408/how-to-audit-with-serials.pdf

http://www.booyaka.com/~paul/ea/erc-20050408/ballot-interpretation-report-revised.pdf


3. The ERC should consider recommending precinct-counted, hand-interpreted 
paper ballots, since the complexity of current mechanical and electronic 
systems -- and the complexity of the security and audit procedures that 
are necessary to ensure the accuracy of the count -- is beyond the ability 
of election officials to undertake, or the public and election judges to 
assess.  A overview of an election system like this that seems to work - 
the Canadian system - was provided to the panel secretary.  This overview 
can be obtained by taking pages 40-43 of this document prepared 
for Elections Canada at

http://www.elections.ca/content.asp?section=loi&document=index&dir=vot&lang=e&textonly=false


Hopefully, all three of these handouts were entered into the Committee's public 
record, and would be available to anyone who wishes to request them from 
Boulder County, along with any other information entered into the public 
record associated with the ERC.

Comments welcome,


- Paul