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FYI: LTE / Longmont Times-Call
To the Editors,
Your editorial support of Hart electronic voting is disappointing and illogical for the following reasons.
First, primary opposition to electronic voting is that voters ? both abled and disabled ? cannot determine if a machine has accurately (electronically) recorded and counted their digital votes. There is little democratic value in voting, either unassisted or assisted, if vote accuracy, transparency, and verifiabilty are suspect.
Second, the Hart voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) is spooled on ATM-like paper, which means the spooled paper ballot, with tiny and difficult to read print, does not look anything like the electronic screen ballot, thus confusing for voters to accurately proof. Also, Elections officials will do anything short of suicide to avoid the obvious nightmare of handcounting thousands of impractically tiny, thin, curling paper ballots that first have to be separated (by what, scissors?). The paper back-up system is a shoddy charade.
Third, since the blind can't independently confirm that what the machine audibly reports to them is actually recorded on the VVPAT (much less what is digitally recorded) a primary justification for electronic voting in the first place is rendered moot.
Finally, and most extraordinary: sequential, spooled VVPATs do threaten the secrecy of the ballot (as your editorial acknowledges), as do Hart's sequentially numbered paper ballots used in their non-electronic voting equipment. So, illogically, you support Hart voting equipment because it advertises allowing disabled voters to vote privately and unassisted like abled voters, but which same equipment you acknowledge actually compromises voting privacy for those same disabled (and all abled) voters!
There are vote marking machines that allow most disabled to vote unassisted, just like Hart, but with none of Hart's electronically related disadvantages. Let's use them.
kell carey
4440 Laguna Pl.
Boulder, CO 80303
720.890.0735
"Sapere Aude." Have courage to use your own reason. Kant
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