This is a very good idea! I had thought that the Hart ballot scanning
system could be made to do something like this for Boulder County, but
neither Hart nor the County seemed to comprehend the possibility. Now,
with a new Clerk and with somebody else being first, maybe Boulder can
to it, too.
But can we arrange a way to have the scanning done so that even the
most suspicious conspiracy theorist can accept the scanned images as
a true representation of the physical ballots? Maybe, I hope.
I can envision public discussions of voter intent for ballots having
non-standard marking --- On-line web 'voting' about the interpretation
of particularly difficult to interpret images. For a while there would
be chaos, but I'm sure things would settle down, and in the long run,
election administration would be much better done, and public
perception of honesty would be much higher.
On Sun, Dec 17, 2006 at 10:34:22AM -0700, Margit Johansson wrote:
> *In the name of transparency*
>
> James Faulk / The Times-Standard
>
> Article Launched:12/15/2006 04:22:18 AM PST
>
>
>
> County pursues project to make ballot images available to all
>
> EUREKA -- Humboldt County may be setting the bar as far as election
> transparency is concerned.
>
> Humboldt County Clerk and Registrar of Voters Carolyn Crnich is working
to
> develop and implement a system that would have made actual scanned
images of
> every ballot cast in the county's elections available online or on disk.
>
> The program is meant to increase transparency and help to ease people's
> minds about the election process.
>
> "This is Humboldt County only," said Crnich.
>
> Crnich was in Sacramento last week talking to staff members from
Secretary
> of State Debra Bowen's office about getting the program off the ground.
> Bowen is looking to help Crnich and her staff get a pilot project ready
for
> the upcoming November special district elections. They're working to put
> together a request for Proposition 41 funds to pay for equipment --
likely
> two high-speed scanners.
>
> The ultimate vision is that the ballots could be seen and counted by
anyone
> who has an interest.
>
> "Then they could go about counting it any way they want," said Crnich.
>
> It could allow people who favor hand counts to count ballots themselves
and
> comparethe total against the local machine counts, and it could help
people
> developing open-source voting software.
>
> The idea, created by Crnich and Humboldt County elections advocate Kevin
> Collins, has generated excitement among everyone from statisticians to
> election observers and bloggers. Even Harry Hursti, who famously hacked
> Diebold voting machines, has got the bug -- he' s designed software for
> Humboldt County to count the digital images, thereby generating another
vote
> total for public consumption.
>
> The issue was scheduled to be discussed at the Humboldt County Elections
> Advisory Committee Thursday.
>
> "It's not off the ground yet, but I'm really excited about it," said
Crnich.
>
>
> A call to Collins was not returned by deadline.
--
Paul E Condon
pecondon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx