Voters Trust Paper Over Electronic Technology

Voting is the backbone of a democracy. And if citizens are to believe in their democracy, they must believe the counting of votes is done properly and correctly. Sadly, most Americans don't believe the machines currently being used in most of the country can be counted on to deliver an accurate count.

I understand that people have become used to getting results quickly after the polls close, and they like that. The old way of hand counting each paper ballot sometimes delayed tabulating the results for many hours. That method could be trusted (and is trusted by 57% of voters), but in this fast-paced world it is unlikely to be accepted (and requires a massive amount of manpower).

But the computer voting machines used in many counties are not trusted. People think they can be hacked (and this has been shown to be true by hackers). Additionally, they have no paper trail, so they cannot be a recount if it's suspected a machine produced a faulty result. A faulty machine will just reproduce its initial results no matter how many times it is asked to recount.

So, what is to be done to restore voter faith in the counting of ballots? There are two solutions.

The first is to make the computer voting machine produce a paper ballot (which the voter can check for accuracy and then drop in a ballot box). If there is any questions about the machine's result, those paper ballots can be recounted. About 71% of voters say they would trust such a system.

I think an even better solution is to vote on paper ballots, and then insert those ballots into a scanning counting machine. The machine cannot be hacked, the results will be known within a few minutes after the polls close, and you have the paper ballots if a recount is needed. As a precinct judge, I have used this system in the past and it works very well. About 69% of voters say they would trust such a system.

Electronic machines with no paper trail are unacceptable. Voters don't trust them. All counties need to stop using them. Trust in the counting of votes is just too critical in our democracy.

The chart above is from the Morning Consult Poll -- done between February 7th and 9th of a national sample of 1,996 registered voters, with a 2 point margin of error.

Can Our Electronic Voting Machines Be Trusted?

(This photo of an electronic voting machine is from statenews.org.)

I'm an older voter, and I worked at the polls in quite a few elections. I can remember working at a polling site that used paper ballots. It was 3:00am, before all the votes were counted in that election (the 1976 presidential election), and that was in a small rural precinct. Today, electronic voting machines are used, and the results of the election are known just a few minutes after the polls close in each precinct. There's no doubt that the modern machines save time, especially for the poll workers. But the question now is different -- Can those electronic machines be trusted? In far too many precincts, the machines are old, vulnerable to hacking, and have no paper trail.

The following article should give us pause about the sanctity of our voting process. It is by A.J. Vicens at Mother Jones. He writes:

A report issued Thursday by some of the country’s leading election security experts found that voting machines used in dozens of state remain vulnerable to hacks and manipulations, warning that that without continued efforts to increase funding, upgrade technology, and adopt of voter-marked paper ballot systems, “we fear that the 2020 presidential elections will realize the worst fears only hinted at during the 2016 elections: insecure, attacked, and ultimately distrusted.”

The 47-page report is the product of researchers who organized a shakedown of voting machines at the annual DefCon conference, one of world’s biggest information security gatherings frequented by hackers, government officials, and industry workers. First incorporated into DefCon in 2017 with the aim of improving voting machine security, this year’s version of the now-annual “Voting Machine Hacking Village” assembled over 100 machines and let hackers loose to find and exploit their vulnerabilities. While election officials have criticized the effort’s utility as a testing ground, deriding it as a “pseudo environment,” some have seen value in letting machines’ flaws become more known and potentially lead to security improvements.

“Once again, Voting Village participants were able to find new ways, or replicate previously published methods, of compromising every one of the devices in the room,” the authors wrote, pointing out that every piece of assembled equipment is certified for use in at least one US jurisdiction. The report’s authors, some of whom have been involved with election machine security research going back more than a decade, noted that in most cases the participants tested voting equipment “they had no prior knowledge of or experience” in a “challenging setting ” with less time and resources than attackers would be assumed to marshal.

The report urges election officials to use machines relying on voter-marked paper ballots and pair those with “statistically rigorous post-election audits” to verify the outcome of elections reflects the will of voters. The authors also warn that supply chain issues “continue to pose significant security risks,” including cases where machines include hardware components of foreign origin, or where election administrators deploy foreign-based software, cloud, or other remote services. The report lands as officials in several states are working to upgrade election equipment, and as lawmakers in Washington, D.C. debate federal election security legislation and funding.

Ultimately, the report notes flaws that have been acknowledged for years.

“As disturbing as this outcome is, we note that it is at this point an unsurprising result,” the authors conclude. “However, it is notable—and especially disappointing—that many of the specific vulnerabilities reported over a decade earlier…are still present in these systems today.”

You Can read the full report here.

Most Voters Don't Really Trust Electronic Voting Machines

Most counties here in Texas now use electronic voting machines, and most of them don't have a paper readout so the voter can check their votes (and to provide a way to recount those votes in case of a machine malfunction). That's a problem, and voters know it. A new poll shows that voters don't really trust the electronic machines. They believe it makes voting less safe. Only 36% say those machines making voting more safe, while 56% say they make voting less safe -- a significant gap of 20 points.

Voters do trust paper ballots though. About 68% say paper ballots make voting more safe, while only 26% say they make voting less safe -- an even larger gap of 42 points! Obviously, going to paper ballots would increase voter trust in our electoral system.

I understand why counties like the electronic machines. It makes counting the votes much faster and workers don't have to spend most of the night counting votes in a large precinct. But there are some compromises to be had.

We could use a paper ballot that can be electronically counted (and recounted by hand if there is any doubt as to the electronic count). We can also require electronic machines to have a paper printout. That printout could also be counted by hand if there is a recount (or question of machine malfunction).

County officials are right to try and find a way to speed up vote counting, but they have gone too far in many cases -- and that is hurting voter trust in our electoral system (which is necessary in a democracy). We need to outlaw any voting machines that don't at least have a paper printout.

The charts above reflect the results of a NPR / Marist Poll -- done between September 5th and 9th of a national sample of 949 adults, with a 3.6 point margin of error.

Voting Machines MUST Generate A Paper Ballot

The voting machine pictured here is the Ivotronic. It is a touch screen voting machine that's very easy to use (even for a first-time voter), and it allows poll workers to report voting results very quickly after the polls close.

I am very familiar with the machine -- both as a voter and a poll worker. However, I was disappointed when I recently moved to a new county in Texas, and found my new county was also using this same machine (as are thousands of counties across this nation).

Why was I disappointed? Because the machine has a fatal flaw in my opinion. It does not generate a paper readout that shows the voter how their vote was counted. The voter just has to hope their vote was counted and reported correctly.

This is bad for several reasons. 1) It wouldn't be known if a crooked election judge or worker tampered with the machine to miscount votes. 2) Machines do make mistakes. 3) It is impossible to do a recount in a close election, because no matter how many times you ask it, the machine will spit out the same numbers.

Now, there is another reason to mistrust the machine's results -- the interference by another nation in our electoral system (Russia). We now know that Russians hacked into the electoral systems of at least 21 states in the 2016 election. It is believed that they only got into voter rolls and were not able to change any vote totals. But will they be better at their hacking in 2018 or 2020? Will they then have the ability to alter vote totals to suit themselves?

Some are calling for a return to paper ballots that are hand-counted. I wouldn't like to see that. I worked at the polls when paper ballots were used, and counting them took forever. It was a rural precinct that had only a few hundred ballots, and it still took until about 3 am before the ballots were counted and ready to be reported. I can imagine it would be a nightmare for a urban or suburban precinct with a few thousand voters.

There is another solution. Make sure all machines print a paper ballot that can be saved and recounted if there is a question of the validity of the originally reported results. This can be done in two ways.

1) Voters could vote on a paper ballot that is then fed into an electronic counter. Those paper ballots could always be recounted by hand if there is any question.

2) Make sure all electronic voting machines print out a record of how the voter cast his/her vote. The voter could check the printout, make sure it's correct, and then put it in a locked ballot box. Those paper printouts could be hand-counted if there is any question.

It doesn't matter which way is chosen by county governments. Both would work. But it is now imperative that all electronic voting machines print out the results. It is the only way to insure our electoral system is correct, and the only way to restore voters faith in our electoral system -- especially in light of Russian electoral hacking, and a president that refuses to acknowledge the hacking even took place.

Has GOP Been Stealing Votes For Years ?

I am not a person who believes in conspiracy theories most of the time. In fact, I think most of them are rather silly and lacking in proof. But there is a growing pile of evidence that electronic voting machines, especially those without a paper trail, are just an invitation to steal votes. And there is also growing evidence that the GOP has been doing that for several years now.

Here are some excerpts from an article by Denis G. Campbell and Charley James in the UK Progressive (and I urge you to read the whole article). The article claims that as many as 10% of Democratic votes are being switched to Republican votes in large precincts (it's only in large precincts because it would be too obvious in smaller precincts), and that this has been going on for years. This 20% change in votes is enough to swing a close election (but would fall short in a landslide election like 2008).

Why is Mitt Romney so confident?

In states where the winner will be decided by less than 10%, of the vote he already knows he will win. This is no tinfoil hat conspiracy. It’s a maths problem. And mathematics showed changes in actual raw voting data that had no statistical correlation other than programmable computer fraud. This computer fraud resulted in votes being flipped from Democrat to Republican in every federal, senatorial, congressional and gubernatorial election since 2008 (thus far) and in the 2012 primary contests from other Republicans to Mitt Romney.

This goes well beyond Romney’s investment control in voting machine maker Hart Intercivic and Diebold’s close ties to George W. Bush. Indeed all five voting machine companies have very strong GOP fundraising ties, yet executives (including the candidate’s son Tagg Romney) insist there is no conflict between massively supporting one party financially whilst controlling the machines that record and count the votes.

A retired NSA analyst has spent several sleepless nights applying a simple formula to past election results across Arizona. His results showed across-the-board systemic election fraud on a coordinated and massive scale. But the analysis indicated that this only happens in larger precincts because anomalies in small precincts can be more easily detected.

Retired NSA analyst Michael Duniho has worked for nearly seven years trying to understand voting anomalies in his home state of Arizona and Pima County. . .Said Duniho, “It is really easy to cheat using computers to count votes, because you can’t see what is going on in the machine.”

When Duniho applied a mathematical model to actual voting results in the largest voting precincts, he saw that only the large precincts suddenly trended towards Mitt Romney in the Arizona primary – and indeed all Republicans in every election since 2008 – by a factor of 8%-10%. The Republican candidate in every race saw an 8-10%. gain in his totals whilst the Democrat lost 8-10%. This is a swing of up to  20 point, enough to win an election unless a candidate was losing very badly. . .

The idea of examining large precinct results came via a link to a report written by Francois Choquette and James Johnson. Choquette became curious about South Carolina primary results in the February Republican contest. There a poll observer noted an unusually big gain of votes for Mitt Romney in larger precincts than in smaller ones. Choquette wanted to know why?

He examined and applied all of the normal statistical markers to see where a variance might occur: income level, population density, race, urban vs. rural, even party registration numbers. He found no correlation to explain why Romney votes trended upward while Paul and Santorum votes trended downward -yet only in large precincts.

Choquette then looked at all 50 states and found roughly a 10% switch in votes from Democrat to GOP. This was noted in every state except Utah, where the presumption was, as it was Mitt’s religious home state and very conservative, there was no chance of Romney losing and no variance was found.

Choquette even saw in Maricopa County, which is Phoenix and its suburbs, that in 2008 Romney used this technique against John McCain. But McCain beat him by too much for a 10% fraud gain to matter. McCain tried to do the same thing in the general election to President Obama but 9 million votes nationally were too many to make up. . .

This isn’t the first time Republicans have been charged with vote theft. It happened in the 2004 presidential election, in Ohio and Florida.

In Ohio, GOP consultant Michael Connell claimed that the vote count computer program he had created for the state had a trap door that shifted Democratic votes to the GOP.

He was subpoenaed as a witness in a lawsuit against then-Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, and lawyers for the plaintiff asked the Dept. of Justice to provide him with security because there were two threats made against Connell’s life by people associated with Karl Rove. But in Dec. 2008, before the trial began, Connell was killed in a plane crash outside Akron Ohio.

There were problems in Florida, as well.

A study by the Quantitative Methods Research Team at the University of California at Berkeley found that anomalies between Florida counties using touch-screen voting and those using other methods could not be explained statistically. Noting the higher-than-expected votes for Bush in three large Democratic counties, Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach, Michael Hout, a Berkeley professor who did the study said there were strong suspicions of vote-rigging.

“No matter how many factors and variables we took into consideration, the significant correlation in the votes for President Bush and electronic voting cannot be explained,” Hout said. “The study shows that a county’s use of electronic voting resulted in a disproportionate increase in votes for President Bush. There is just a trivial probability of evidence like this appearing in a population where the true difference is zero—less than once in a thousand chances.”. . .

The results of Duniho’s analysis can only happen if votes are being stolen, and the only way that’s possible is if the computerised machines are programmed to steal them. Welcome to Zimbabwe.

More than 100 million Americans will cast their ballots thinking their vote will be fairly counted. It should be. Yet the crooks know they can safely flip up to 10% of votes without consequence. Anything more than that is statistically suspect.

President Obama won by such a huge margin in 2008 that even with this anomaly built into the system, he cruised to victory. This year the election is much closer. Can American democracy afford yet another election crisis placing three of the four last national Presidential election results in question or worse: The outcome was stolen, the outcome a victim of election theft?

There is a way to make sure votes are not being stolen. A return to paper ballots is the best answer, since they can be recounted again and again. It would slow the election returns, but that is a small price to pay for ensuring an honest election. At the very least, no electronic machines should be used that do not produce a paper trail. All electronic machines should produce a receipt for the voter and an identical receipt to go into a ballot box -- to be used if a recount is needed or theft is suspected. Trust has no place in an election. Verification is required.

Do You Believe Our Elections Are Honest ?

I asked whether you believe our elections are honest, because many people around the world don't believe their own elections are honestly held or counted. The Gallup Poll conducted a survey in 2011 (where they surveyed at least 1000 people in 125 different countries), and they found that worldwide only about 47% of people (46% of women and 48% of men) believe in the honesty of their elections.

In the countries classified as "full democracies" (Western-style democracies), that percentage went way up and most of those countries had a pretty good majority believing in the honesty of their own elections. Except for three of those "full democracies" -- and wouldn't you know it, the United States is one of those three countries (followed closely by South Korea and the Czech Republic).

In the United States, only about 48% of the population believes our elections are honest (44% of women and 52% of men). It would have been interesting to see how this broke down between the political parties, but the poll didn't examine that (being more interested in the gender gap on this question). I suspect a large part of both parties believe we have an honesty problem in elections.

I must admit that I am one of those people who has some serious doubts about the honesty of a lot of the elections in this country -- at all levels. First, we don't treat all our political parties equally. Some get no media coverage and are shut out of political events like debates (which means most people aren't exposed to their candidates or their ideas). This violates the very idea of fair elections.

Second, in most communities the election process is controlled by the dominant party in that area. This does not necessarily mean they are all dishonest, but it does let them do little things like not putting enough polling places, polling booths, or ballots in ares that they believe will not give them many votes -- all things that can easily be dismissed as honest errors.

But the most important reason I don't trust our elections, is the use of electronic voting machines -- especially those that do not generate a paper trail. Here is Amarillo, electronic voting machines without any paper trail are used. This means no voter can be 100% sure the machine counted the votes correctly as they were cast, no recount can be done in questionable races (as could be done with paper ballots or paper voting receipts), and it is very unlikely that any machine mistakes would be discovered (even if suspected).

The Republicans are in charge of the electronic machines here, but they would be just as untrustworthy if the Democrats were in charge of them. The simple facts are that machines do make mistakes, and these electronic voting machines are too easily corruptible -- at all levels. They can be tampered with while they are being built, while they are being prepared for an election, and even at the election site. Many computer experts have repeatedly shown this is an easy task to accomplish, and because of that, all electronic machines should print two receipts showing how the votes were cast -- one for the voter, and another to be placed in a ballot box in case a recount must be done.

And just to give you Democrats out there something to worry about, it seems that the voting machines used in some states are controlled by former executives of BAIN CAPITAL, who are supporters of Willard. Here is how the blog The Daily Dolt puts it:

Hart InterCivic is a national provider of election voting systems that are used in swing-states Ohio and Colorado, as well as in states we don’t really care about so much because we already know how they’ll turn out (e.g., Texas, Oklahoma, and Hawaii). Private equity firm H.I.G. Capital, LLC bought out a “significant” portion of Hart in July of 2011, and now the majority of Hart’s board directors are employees of H.I.G. (It’s not entirely clear how much of the voting machine company H.I.G. owns, but the financial advisors responsible for the transaction state that “Hart Intercivic was acquired by HIG Capital.”)

H.I.G., in turn, has ties to Bain & Co. and Mitt Romney directly:

• H.I.G. was founded by Tony Tamer, a former Bain employee and bundler for Mitt Romney’s campaign.
• Of H.I.G.’s 22 American directors, 21 donated to Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign. One person made no political donations at all;  one person donated to both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama; the remaining 20 directors donated exclusively to Mitt Romney in 2012. (See below for links to donations.)
• Of these 22 American directors, seven of them (nearly one-third) are former Bain employees. Now, we should note (as a reader helpfully pointed out), this is Bain & Co., where Mitt Romney used to work way back when and then left in order to start the affiliated Bain Capital. The connection is therefore a little more tenuous, but we still find H.I.G.’s overwhelming allegiance and financial support of the Romney campaign surprising (not that it’s surprising that a private equity company would lean Republican, but this level of support is pretty unusual).

• Four of H.I.G.’s directors, Tony Tamer, John Bolduc, Douglas Berman, and Brian D. Schwartz,  are Romney bundlers along with former Bain and H.I.G. manager Brian Shortsleeve.

• Two of H.I.G.’s managing directors, Douglas F. Berman and Brian D. Schwartz, were present at the $50,000 per plate fundraiser where Mitt Romney made his notorious ”47%” comments.

• H.I.G. employees currently make up the majority of the Hart InterCivic’s five-member board of directors. Two of these three directors of the voting machine company, Neil Tuch and Jeff Bohl,  have donated directly to Mitt Romney’s campaign.

• H.I.G. is the 11th largest donor to Mitt Romney’s campaign. H.I.G. employees have given $338,000 to the Romney campaign, outpacing even Bain Capital itself, which gave  $268,000.

• (Sidenote: Are we the only ones to notice that every single one of H.I.G.’s 22 American directors is white and male? Not related to the Mitt Romney issue, but sheesh.)

Now, to be fair, besides the fact that H.I.G. employees make up the majority of Hart’s board of directors, we don’t know exactly how much control H.I.G. is able to exert over the voting machine company’s day-to-day operations. Plus, it seems like it would be pretty difficult to mess with the software without anyone finding out about it. Moreover, just from a cost-benefit standpoint, it doesn’t really make sense that these H.I.G. directors would commit a felony and risk their super-lucrative careers just to get their Bain bro elected.

But that said, this still makes us a little… uncomfortable. For instance, what if irregularities or honest mistakes are suspected (and this is a real possibility: Hart InterCivic has previously had some pretty major malfunctions in its voting systems)? The documentation will then be in the hands of Hart/H.I.G.

So, what do you think? Do you trust ALL of the election officials in your county or state? Do you believe the electronic voting machines never malfunction or are never tampered with? Do you have an absolute faith that our elections are honest?

New Election - Same Old Problem

A new election is fast approaching and here in Amarillo we have the same problem that plagues cities and counties across the nation -- a voting system that is accountable to no one (not even the people that run it).   We have an electronic voting system that has no paper trail.

As I see it, this type of voting system has three major flaws:

1. There is no way to know that your vote was correctly counted (or even counted at all).   The best that can be done is to determine that the same amount of votes were tabulated by the machine as the number of people who signed in to vote.   No one can be assured that their vote was tabulated as they wanted it to be.   We just have to trust the machine to do things correctly, and frankly, I've seen machines mess up far too much to ever have that kind of trust in any kind of machine -- especially a machine performing an important function like tabulating votes.

2. There is no way to do a recount if it is suspected that the votes were not properly counted.   With paper ballots it may have been a long and hard job of tabulating the results, but they had the advantage of being able to be recounted as many times as necessary to get an accurate count.   And that count and recount could be supervised by members of all interested parties to insure the count was fair and correct.   No so with the electronic machines.   You can ask the machine to recalculate, but you will just get the same answer whether it is correct or not.   And if by some odd chance you get a different answer, how would you know which answer was the correct count?

3. The electronic voting machines, like all machines, are vulnerable to tampering by humans. Now I know that the companies who sell and service these machines will be quick to tell everyone how secure and tamper-proof their machines are.   What would you expect them to say?   Their jobs and income depend on people trusting these machines.   But the fact is that electronic voting machines can be tampered with both in the warehouse and at the voting precinct -- by workers and by voters.   It would take someone with some pretty good knowledge of electronics, but how hard is that to find in this modern world?

I will admit that I am a left-wing voter who lives and votes in a county dominated by conservative Republicans, and I simply don't trust the people in charge.   They may be the most honest people in the world, or they may not be -- I have no idea.   But I ask my conservative friends (and yes, I do have some), what if the tables were turned and the county was controlled by left-wing Democrats?   Would you trust them to always be honest in counting votes?   

The sad fact is that there are both honest and dishonest people in all parties, and no one should be put in the position of having to trust in officials who cannot prove their tabulations are correct.   Votes are just too important.   They determine who will be elected to make the important decisions that affect all of our lives.

Although I may not like it, I can accept being on the losing end of a vote tabulation.   That is just part of living in a democracy.   What I hate is the thought that it might be due to a machine malfunction or official hanky-panky, and with the no paper trail electronic voting machines no one could ever know.

Isn't it more important to have a count that can be verified and trusted than a count that can be tabulated quickly?

Was The Massachusetts Election Stolen ?

It's over in Massachusetts and soon they will be sending a Republican to the Senate to fill the seat of Edward Kennedy. But the excellent web site Black Box Voting has raised some questions about the accuracy of the election returns. It seems there is a significant discrepancy between hand counted ballots and electronically counted ballots.

This is a very unusual anomaly for a fairly held election. For instance, when the hand counted ballots and the electronically counted ballots were compared in Maine's recent election, they showed very similar percentages on the gay marriage question. This is the norm, but it is not what happened in Massachusetts.

That state had 71 hand counted location, 91 ES&S locations, 187 Diebold locations and two locations with some kind of optical scanners. Here are the results for the different kinds of locations:

HAND COUNTED

Coakley 51.12%..........Brown 47.77%

Coakley 32,247..........Brown 30,136

ES&S COUNTED

Brown 53.64%..........Coakley 45.31%

Brown 332,812..........Coakley 281,118

DIEBOLD COUNTED

Brown 51.42%..........Coakley 47.61%

Brown 791,272..........Coakley 732,633

When you add this to the locations that reported late (2 1/2 hours or more), it is cause for some raised eyebrows. The hand counted locations had 8.45% of their locations reporting late. The ES&S locations had 13.2% of it's locations reporting late, including two locations that were the last locations of any kind to report statewide. Diebold had 12.83% of their locations reporting late.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't one of the main selling points for electronic voting the fact they they would be counted and reported much faster than hand counted ballots? Why didn't that happen in Massachusetts? Both types of electronic voting machines had a larger percentage of late ballots than the hand counted ballots.

All of the electronically counted locations should have been reported in less than an hour. What was happening in these precincts that made them take over 2 1/2 hours to report their results?

None of this actually proves that Brown did not win the election, but it is enough to raise some questions. Did Brown win the election? We may never know for sure, because Coakley wimped out and conceded before all the votes were even reported. Personally, I would feel better about the results if a hand recount had been requested.

Are "Super-Precincts" The Wave Of The Future ?

I have to admit the concept of "super-precinct" voting is an interesting concept. In this type of voting, a voter could go to any precinct in his county of residence to vote instead of having to vote in his home precinct. This would obviously make voting much more convenient for voters.

In addition to voter convenience, there are also some other advantages to the super-precinct concept. When it has been tried in the past, it has resulted in a higher turnout of voters and it has saved the county some money. The money-saving results primarily from not having to outfit and staff as many voting centers.

The only real drawback to super-precincts is that the voting would have to be done on electronic voting machines, and many people simply don't trust the electronic machines. I'm one of those people, primarily because there's no way to conduct a recount with an electronic machine -- it will simply regurgitate the same numbers a second time.

However, there is a cure to the problem of the recount. If all electronic voting machines would produce a paper receipt showing the votes cast, then a recount count be done using the paper receipts (thus verifying or exposing the electronic total). By viewing the receipt, the voter could also be a little more sure his vote was entered correctly into the machine.

I am sort of on the fence about this concept. My own county uses voting machines that do not print any kind of paper voting receipt (and I hate these machines). If these are the kind of machines to be used, then I am opposed to the super-precinct voting system. This would just make it easier for someone to "fix" the voting on a county-wide level.

However, if the machines used produced a paper receipt that could be used for recounts, then I could probably be convinced to support the concept.

E-Voting Can't Be Trusted !

In another week, voting will start in one of the most important elections we have had in many years. With our economy in the dump, our healthcare system broken and a never-ending war being waged in Iraq for no good reason, it is extremely important that every single vote be counted just as it was cast. But will that happen?

I'm not at all sure it will. Here in Amarillo (and many other cities in Texas and the nation), we are at the mercy of electronic voting systems. It doesn't matter whether we vote on election day or whether we vote early, the ONLY voting option we have is to vote on an electronic voting machine -- without any kind of paper trail.

I have written about this in the past and it still has not changed. The fact is that on the machines being used in Amarillo, there is absolutely no way to know if my (or your) vote was counted correctly or not. If the machine had been tampered with, or just accidently went haywire, there is no way for the voters to know. We are forced to just have blind trust in these machines, and the honesty of all the election workers and officials.

For someone like me, who has trouble trusting anyone I don't know and most people I do know, this is totally unacceptable. I want a voting system that can be publically double-checked.

Making matters even worse, there is no way to do a recount on these electronic systems. You can ask it to retabulate, but it will just keep giving you the same answer whether that answer is correct or not. Shouldn't all elections be capable of being recounted and mistakes eliminated.

Anyone who has dealt with machines for very long knows that there is no perfect machine that cannot screw up (in the primary in Tarrant county an extra 100,000 votes were counted than were cast). And anyone who has dealt with people for very long knows that not everyone is honest, and even those who are make mistakes. I personally would like to do away with all electronic voting, but at the very least these systems must be fixed to leave a paper trail so the totals can be checked.

I am not alone in not trusting electronic voting. Dan Wallach is an associate professor and Director of Rice University's Computer Security Lab. He will be testifying before a legislative committee about electronic voting, and he doesn't have a lot of faith in the systems either.

Wallach says anyone with a screwdriver and a couple of minutes can hack a single voting machine. After the election, that machine will communicate with the main computer system and very possibly spread a virus throughout the system. This virus could alter or throw out votes, and do so without being detected.

Have our voting systems been hacked in the past? WE DO NOT KNOW! As Wallach says, “There is also no evidence to suggest the absence of an attack like this having been attempted, because if somebody was successful, you’d never know. That’s not the sort of thing that gives you warm fuzzies.”

He goes on to say, “In terms of technologies we have available today, the best technologies we have involve paper. These electronic machines we use in the state, they generate no paper record so if they misbehave you have no way of either detecting it or correcting it.”

Wouldn't you like to be able to trust our election returns? I certainly would, but there's no way we can trust these machines without a paper trail. We must pressure our elected (and appointed) officials to outlaw all electronic voting systems without a paper trail. That is the only way we can be assured of a fair vote.

Electronic Voting Machines Cannot Be Trusted

The electronic voting machine pictured above is like the ones that are used here in Potter County. Potter County voters do not have the option of using anything else. You either vote on this machine or you don't vote.

If you are a regular reader of this blog, then you know how I feel about this machine. I simply don't trust it. It does not have a paper trail, which means there is no way to double-check the election results.

Frankly, it does not matter whether the election workers are honest or not, if the machine malfunctions, there is no way to ever be sure the votes have been counted correctly.

I know that the county uses these machines to speed up the vote count. However, there are other ways to do this. There are other electronic counters that actually count paper ballots, and can report the results of an election just as quickly. Also, if there are ever any questions about the electronic count, the paper ballots are there and can be hand-counted.

Voters and candidates can trust a machine that counts paper ballots, because these ballots can be re-counted. But how can anyone trust a machine with no paper trail of any kind? I don't care how great you think these computer voting machines are, they just can't be trusted.

Machines malfunction. That is just a fact of life. Voting is too important to be trusted to a machine prone not only to malfunctions, but also to hacking.

We must get rid of these machines and get a system the voters can trust, even if we have to go back to handcounting ballots. PDiddie over at Brains and Eggs has written an excellent post on this matter, and I urge you to read it.

What good is a system that can't be trusted?

How Can I Trust The Machine ?

Ever since I moved to Amarillo, I haven't felt comfortable about voting. You see, Amarillo is very proud of it's electronic voting machines (like the one pictured above). They are quick to tell you how safe and efficient these machines are, but I have a lot of trouble believing it.

These machines have no paper trail. How can I be sure the machine is counting the votes correctly? The answer is that I can't be sure, because there is no way to check it. They can check it against the voter sign-in sheets to verify that the right number of votes were counted, but there is no way to verify the votes were counted correctly.

A machine is only as good as the person running it, and the people who run the elections up here are Republicans. I'm sure there are some honest Republicans out there (at least I think there are), but frankly I've seen too many Republican dirty tricks in my life to blindly trust them. And it would be too easy to "fix" the machines.

At the very least, there must be some kind of paper trail, so the totals can be checked if there is any doubt. How can there be a valid recount on a machine that has no paper trail? The machine will just keep giving you the same numbers no matter how many times you ask it, whether those numbers are correct or not.

Until there is some kind of verifiable paper trail, I will never be able to trust that my vote was counted correctly, and that bothers me a lot. We should be able to trust the system -- but I don't.

Voting In Potter County

I guess I've just always been lucky in the past. I've been voting for many years (since 1968), and I've always been able to vote on a paper ballot. Sometimes that ballot was hand-counted and sometimes it was optically-scanned, but there was always a paper ballot which could be referred back to in case of a recount.

Yesterday, I voted for the first time in Potter county and I was not given that option. If you want to vote in Potter county, you must do it on an electronic machine with no paper printout. This made me very uneasy - how am I to trust that my vote was counted correctly?

The only assurance possible with this kind of electronic voting is that the same number of votes were counted as were cast. No one, not the Voter Registrar, the Secretary of State, or anyone else can assure you that the votes were counted CORRECTLY!

Furthermore, these machines make recounts a moot point. If the machine didn't count the votes correctly the first time, then it will not do it correctly the second time either. It will simply repeat the initial count it made, whether it was correct or not.

I have heard some say that the electronic machines are more accurate. I simply do not believe it. I have been a poll-worker and participated in the hand-counting of ballots. There are four or five people each totaling the count and their totals must match, or the count is re-done until the totals do match. Even then, the paper ballots are there for as many recounts as neccessary.

I have also heard that the machines cannot be "hacked" or rigged to give a false count. This is not true. It is just a lie told by the company to sell more machines and believed by fools too lazy to do their homework. It is far too easy to cheat with these machines. Go to the web site Black Box Voting.org and see for yourself just how easy it is.

We must return to paper ballots. It is the only way the people can be assured the counting is honest and reproducable. It doesn't matter much whether the ballots are hand-counted or scanned (although I would prefer they were hand-counted).

At the very least, the electronic machines should produce a paper printout showing the votes cast. The voter could then verify this and place the printout in a ballot box. Then if electronic error was suspected, the printouts could be used in a recount.

Voters must have confidence that their votes are counted correctly, or they will have no incentive to vote. What is the purpose in casting a vote that can be "hacked" and changed?