[TriLUG] OT: OpenVote

[sholton at mindspring.com]

Greg Brown <gwbrown1 at gmail.com> writes:
>Voting machine enters the vote into the database.  The ballot is
>printed out and along with the human readable names (and perhaps
>corresponding bar codes of the names) as is the coded primary key
>matching the entry in the database along with other data that would
>allow the ballot to be matched up with the machine and time the ballot
>was entered (say the epoch time of the vote and serial number of the
>machine).  Perhaps a way around the barcoded names would be a
>formatted page where Xs are placed, or an entire area of the ballot
>shaded out, to match the location of a name.  That way the ballot is
>readable by humans and is not bar-coded by location coded to match a
>name.

I guess I'm just missing the point. 

Could someone please chime-in with an explanation of why it's
so important to preserve a second (electronic) copy of the voter's
intent?  Why have the machine observe the voter intent at any
point other than the one where it counts? 

I've always considered voting to revolve around the single atomic 
event of dropping the ballot into the box. Up to that point, you 
haven't voted and after that point the vote is irrevokable. 

I am aware of the peerceived need to expedite the counting, but
consider this: Every ballot is /cast/, by hand, by unskilled volunteers, 
on a single day. Surely we should be able to /count/ every
ballot, by hand, using skilled or semi-skilled paid workers on
a single day.

>In this way we have a true double-entry system where both the
>electronic data and ballot should correspond and if for some reason
>the votes between one machine and the ballots do not correspond that
>machine can be taken off-line.

That requires tallying and comparing the paper and electronic votes while
the machine is still in service. If you're already tallying the paper ballots in
real time, why do you need the electronic copy? 

It also changes voting from "the paper copy is authoritative" to 
"the electronic copy is authoritative, unless there is some reason 
to suspect it is faulty, in which case the paper copy becomes 
authoritative".  

>I absolutely disagree with allowing people to download PDFs over the
>Internet to fill out.  There is far, far too many things that can go
>wrong there.   A hanging chad?  That's nothing compared to people
>bringing in votes that are on non-standard paper, etc.  Also allowing
>people to print out ballots ahead of time practically allows a union,
>church, or "legitimate family business" to pre-print ballots to hand
>out ahead a time (and force people to submit through various means).

For the record, so do I. I probably should have included a smiley face on
that one.


-- 
Steve Holton
sholton at mindspring.com
"Convenience causes blindness. Think about it."