General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsI voted yesterday on new voting machines, and I liked them
Dallas County has new machines and we're in the early voting stages of an election for constitutional propositions and some Lege replacement candidates.
Anyway, a paper ballot is generated when you arrive tailored to your specific precinct, it is then fed into one of the new machines. You then use the touch screen to select your votes. When done, the machine prints out the paper ballot previously inserted and you can double check to make sure everything you wanted is correct.
Then you take it over to a reader that compiles the votes and stores the paper ballots.
As far as I'm concerned, this is the best thing I've seen for ease of electronic voting and the security of having paper ballots if they ever needed to be recounted or audited.
ramblin_dave
(1,546 posts)Liberal In Texas
(13,556 posts)Which might prevent more mistakes on a particular machine going forward.
TreasonousBastard
(43,049 posts)diva77
(7,643 posts)the reality is is that the corporate owned machine will prevail.
These companies do not staff elections with "maintenance" crews to rush to the polling place to look into errors.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)You know, we can always read more about almost everything.
Liberal In Texas
(13,556 posts)BEFORE the vote. So there is a chance for the election worker to give the voter a new ballot on a different machine and to take the suspicious machine out of service.
Blue_true
(31,261 posts)just asking questions, I guess.
diva77
(7,643 posts)fact
Liberal In Texas
(13,556 posts)diva77
(7,643 posts)saved in the event of a recount
Liberal In Texas
(13,556 posts)The reader puts the ballot in a locked box. The security of the box of course is where vote tampering can happen.
Just like with paper ballots.
diva77
(7,643 posts)and/or the bar code once you place the paper into the machine after voting and physically having to appear where physical ballots are to stuff and unstuff ballot boxes in credible numbers spread out over many precincts.
questionseverything
(9,656 posts)without physically counting the ballots no one would ever know
since you have to have some evidence before you get a recount it is nearly impossible, besides the fact that it is expense and if the posted "results" aren't close enough ,you have to pay for it
when hc "lost" Michigan 2/3 of the ballots could not be counted because more votes than voters were reported in so many precincts..so according Michigan law meant the election night totals had to stand even tho they were physically impossible;
any paper is better than no paper but if the paper is not openly, transparently counted and reported it is still a trust me system
Liberal In Texas
(13,556 posts)the vote.
Unfortunately, that's is just going to happen in the present political climate. This new machine where we at least have a physical record of paper ballots available if there is a questionable result is a step in the right direction.
I understand any machine can be hacked and this isn't the point of the OP. This is a kind of hybrid which I think is better than no paper trail at all.
questionseverything
(9,656 posts)I am old enough to remember my parents going to the gym after elections to help hand count ballots
the kids ran and played in the hallways, the adults sorted and stacked the paper ballots out on the long lunch tables
yes it took a few hours but open honest elections are what democracy demands
it certainly didn't take days
Ms. Toad
(34,074 posts)You fix it. Any error you can see is before you cast your ballot. It doesn't matter whether the machine printed what you selected or not. If it's wrong, don't send it through the reader - reprint it, and keep reprinting it until it is right.
diva77
(7,643 posts)when using this device
Ms. Toad
(34,074 posts)If we can't even be bothered to check our vote, we deserve Trump.
diva77
(7,643 posts)Do you blame the butterfly ballot difficulties on voters too?
I'm done with this exchange. Best wishes.
Ms. Toad
(34,074 posts)The most significant butterfly ballot difficulties arose because improperly trained precinct workers did not realize that ballots were voting-booth-specific and sent voters to the wrong voting booth. There are no markings on the butterfly ballots or the stations that would ahve alerted voters to the critical error.
As for Express Vote layout - it looks pretty clear to me:
You initially said voters didn't check. Now you content the printout was difficult to check - it is not.
Voters have to care enough to take the simple step of checking the ballot before submitting it (a step not possible with the butterfly ballot).
questionseverything
(9,656 posts)the vote count does not have to match the actual count with a vote stealing software...saying we can check it later is not transparent or good enough
GET IT RIGHT ELECTION NIGHT
Volkswagen had a mileage software on some cars to report better mileage why don't folks realize the same thing can happen with votes
CaliforniaPeggy
(149,635 posts)I don't remember the exact details, but it looks a lot like yours.
It gives me hope.
Liberal In Texas
(13,556 posts)too optimistic.
CaliforniaPeggy
(149,635 posts)Blue_true
(31,261 posts)standard for crafting ballots and some big counties that tend to put too much on a ballot often screw up and become the center of recounts and court fights.
In Florida I would like to see a statewide law that no municipal issues, municipal office races or county issues or county offices can be on a ballot that has statewide, State Rep and State Senate, and US Congressional races on it. The law would clean up ballots that people get during statewide and national races. In my city and county, city and county races and ballot issues are done on dates other than when statewide races are done, I wish every county in the state followed that rule.
California_Republic
(1,826 posts)Some counties are further ahead than others
Some print off a tag that lets you go online and validate your vote
TreasonousBastard
(43,049 posts)I have no real idea if one is better, but yours seems to have some advantages over ours.
lunatica
(53,410 posts)When I worked at UC Berkeley they used scanners for teacher evaluations, exams and anything where you filled out bubbles. Theyve been around for decades and they will tally up all kinds of data such as percentages, actual count, medians, etc., within one document or among various documents.
TreasonousBastard
(43,049 posts)Before scanners, I remember tests where the proctor had an overlay of the bubbles that had the correct answers cut out. Made it ridiculously easy to mark multiple choice or T/F exams.
csziggy
(34,136 posts)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hursti_Hack#Hacking_a_Diebold_machine
Maybe the new scanners are more secure, but until they can be audited by third parties, we will never know.
lunatica
(53,410 posts)There should always be paper ballots, no matter what is used. It should actually be a law.
diva77
(7,643 posts)please see post #15 on this thread
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100212610089#post15
csziggy
(34,136 posts)To show why they were not a clear indication of the voter's choice, as required by state law. All the ballots had been kept, but only the unclear ones were posted to show why they were not counted.
This is one reason that Sancho wanted to know if the scanners used to tally the totals were accurate or if they could be made to show inaccurate results. His original election to Supervisor of Elections in Leon County was won because he promised clean and accurate elections. (The previous supervisor won because his mother didn't announce her retirement until the last day of qualifying so only her son who worked in her office knew that there would be an opening. Then his first election, the old lever machines were not set up properly and it was hard to figure out who you were voting for or if your vote was counted - some names were opposite lines rather than levers. The next election, Ion Sancho ran and won.)
Unfortunately, Ion Sancho has now retired, after thirty years of giving Leon County elections we did not ever question. One of the workers in his office has now won the job and I hope he is as good at running the elections as Ion Sancho was.
questionseverything
(9,656 posts)anything else is smoke and mirrors
GET IT RIGHT ELECTION NIGHT
otherwise the chain of custody is broken
fierywoman
(7,686 posts)Blue_true
(31,261 posts)are stored in the machine after the vote tally. If there is a challenge, the ballots are first re-tallied by machine with the machine verified with all parties having representatives present. If the machine recount doesn't settle the issue, then the ballots are hand-counted, with all parties in the election present.
Our side seems to have fallen in love with the notion that an invisible-hand can over-come our vote. In fact a larger issue is that not all of us get off our asses to participate in issues of governance when decisions are being made. We can rather easily defeat election cheating, we just need to give enough of a damn to put in the time required to accomplish that goal.
lunatica
(53,410 posts)that only a handful of Americans actually listen to the news. I worked in a decidedly left leaning, liberal, progressive UC Berkeley where liberal ideas have traditionally gone to be born. A definite hot bed of liberal thinking if there ever was one. I worked in Administration and my experience of working there for 20 years and in various departments is that the only people who are current on politics are the Faculty and some Graduate students. Very few undergrads were able to take the time to do anything but study, and as for the thousands of staff people, it was even fewer who kept up with politics.
I considered the staff to be a pretty accurate cross cut example of the general population, so they were examples of people In my neighborhoods. Their knowledge of what goes on in politics is as superficial as it comes. They read the headlines and that was it. And when things started trending badly with Bush they pretty much exhibited an attitude of defeatism and claimed there was nothing anyone could do about it.
All I can think is that in regular places all over this country its even worse. There is a class based defeatism that believe that those with power always win. And in a strange way they also believe that this is as its always been and always will be. That the rich and the privileged always win.
Blue_true
(31,261 posts)start attending city council meetings and voting in every election. The saying "the sqeeky wheel gets the grease" when applied to public affairs didn't just pop into someone's head, people observed actions and outcomes and concluded that those that made their voice heard got their way.
bearsfootball516
(6,377 posts)I used one to vote in the municipal primary in May. It was fantastic.
diva77
(7,643 posts)on this thread.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100212610089#post15
LAS14
(13,783 posts)diva77
(7,643 posts)diva77
(7,643 posts)A corporation, ES&S, originally financed by the wing-nut evangelical Ahmansons and owned and run by rethugs? Do you expect them to run fair, clean, transparent elections?
Don't drink the koolaid. Lots of people have spoken out about these diabolical devices, but the "mainstream" media has failed to report on this. Here are some links to visit so that you are not duped into thinking that these ballot marking devices are "good."
------------------
Important info:
Ballot-marking devices (BMDs) are not secure election technology
https://bradblog.com/?p=12525
SNIP Longtime election integrity expert MARILYN MARKS, whose nonpartisan Coalition for Good Governance is suing the Peach State to force them to do away with their unverifiable Director Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines, joins us to warn about the proposed new scheme to replace them with similarly unverifiable touch-screen Ballot Marking Devices (BMDs) and why she sees that as "going from bad to worse."
"People today at least understand that their system is unverifiable, unauditable, and really a lot of guesswork," she tells me. "Unfortunately, this new system that they are so determined to find a way to put in, kind of has the look, from a distance, of a paper system. But it really is just as unverifiable."
Marks explains that the new legislation introduces computer-printed ballots with barcodes on them, which cannot be read by humans. Deceptively, the paper ballots produced by the new touch-screen systems also include a summary of the voters' votes in human-readable form. But, it is the unreadable and impossible to verify barcodes --- rather than the human-readable voter selections --- which are used by the system's computer optical-scanners to tally results. "What can be embedded in those bar codes may be very different from the human-readable list that is printed out," she says.
Even if the barcodes weren't printed on the paper ballots, Marks explains, the computer-marked ballots would still be unacceptable and unverifiable as reflecting any voter's intent after polls close on Election Night, as Jennifer Cohn recently detailed in a must-read article at The BRAD BLOG. Marks offers action items for preventing the passage of the bill, for those both in and out of the state of Georgia (as summarized here in this Twitter Moment.) SNIP
Most recent items:
Link to tweet
?s=20
Read column & listen to podcast here: https://bradblog.com/?p=13169
There is a lot more out there about Ballot Marking Devices (BMDs) and/or election integrity.
3 sites to visit & explore:
coalitionforgoodgovernance.org
bradblog.com
fairfight.com
Liberal In Texas
(13,556 posts)and the software should at least not be proprietary. ES&S has been one of the suspicious companies.
The paper ballot I cast had the votes written out in easily readable English. The barcodes are most likely for the machine to read.
Any system can be set up to be abused. Even purely paper ballots can be "stuffed" and be dishonestly counted.
However, I agree this isn't perfect or all it should be but it's a step in the right direction.
diva77
(7,643 posts)devices. I hope you'll have a chance to check out links I posted above.
It is detrimental to our democracy (what's left of it) to advocate for these machines; and the problems go much deeper than just "voting" on them.
Liberal In Texas
(13,556 posts)Any tech can be forged, faked, altered.
In this case at least we have paper ballots to audit.
EleanorR
(2,393 posts)Last edited Tue Oct 22, 2019, 06:20 PM - Edit history (1)
Moreover, as explained by Stark, the machine does not mark the ballot at all until the voter decides whether to exercise that option, which means that the machine receives advance notice of which ballots are AutoCast and thus safe to fraudulently mark.
Another election expert, Computer Science Professor Andrew Appel of Princeton University, subsequently confirmed the existence of this stunning defect and dubbed it Permission to Cheat. Appel further reported that the ExpressVote XL and Dominion ImageCast Evolutioninclude the same defect.
Moreover, even if AutoCast is disabled so that all voters must print and inspect their ballots before casting them, Appel says these machines could still be programmed or hacked to fraudulently fill in undervotes (races that voters left blank) with no possibility of detection in a manual audit. According to Appel, this is because the machines again route the machine-marked paper ballots under the printer head (the part of the machine that marks the ballots) after theyve been reviewed and cast. This additional defect is called a Ballot Stuffing defect and has been confirmed by Professor Richard DeMillo, Georgia Techs former Dean of computing and director of its Information Security Center.
https://www.salon.com/2019/03/28/new-hybrid-voting-system-can-change-paper-ballot-after-its-been-cast_partner/
matt819
(10,749 posts)My voting machine is a piece of paper and a pencil. I'm confident that my vote is counted correctly.
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)Hortensis
(58,785 posts)going to polling places and removing ballots from the boxes while people stood there and watched, unable to take him on. It wasn't that long ago.
After 2016 I'm not sure we'd advanced after all, but new machines that hopefully would need the resources of a nation-state to maybe hack are a very necessary step.
diva77
(7,643 posts)computerized vote grifting machines. Better to invest in video camera security, and screened non-partisan security, amongst other things.
No system is 100% perfect, but the computers can finesse votes on a wholesale level with 1 person-- ie a few here, a few there in different precincts with algorithms and an excel spreadsheet. Ballot box stuffing and unstuffing is more on a retail level -- and, for example, you'd have to deploy people at each precinct to steal an election.
lapfog_1
(29,205 posts)unless a set of humans read it and tally by "hand" the results.
Speaking as an original black hat ( I was young, it was a way to prove my chops as a hacker, never caught ) converted to white hat computer hacker.
Just sayin.
Liberal In Texas
(13,556 posts)Better than a system with no paper and only electronic totals. I think that is obvious.
lapfog_1
(29,205 posts)if someone hacks the voting machines, I would expect they would hack it just enough to be 2 things...
inside the margin of error of the most accurate poll
and
outside the amount that would trigger a paper ballot check.
So if the poll was +/- 4% and 2% was needed for a recount... I would hack enough votes to swing the election by changing just enough votes to make the new "winner" win by something like 3%.
It has been my contention that Repukes, in certain swing states, have been hacking elections since 2000.
By something like 5%.
The only reason Obama won was that he energized so much of our base that we overcame that 5% bias (both by voter machine hacks and by voter suppression of likely Democratic voters).
Same with the midterms last year.
Eventually, even the Repukes know that population trends are against them... which is why I worry about things like Trump losing but refusing to leave.
JCMach1
(27,559 posts)fierywoman
(7,686 posts)then program the input to the count at the wish of the powers that be?
BumRushDaShow
(129,096 posts)and that has come under a lot of controversy with respect to the procurement process, the company's previous unreported lobbying, and whether the machines would truly be secure... and of course now Jill Stein has inserted herself into the process.
questionseverything
(9,656 posts)if it prints out a ballot with readable choices, if the ballots were hand counted openly and transparently that could be ok
but thrusting any software to count votes is insane
BumRushDaShow
(129,096 posts)was that the printout would include a readable version of the candidate/question choices that were selected by the voter (and I believe the printout would most likely also have a barcode representing that for the machine reader), which the voter would have time to review before submitting as their final "vote". But the ballots wouldn't be "hand counted" at the end of the voting day (but would preserved and be hand-countable if necessary to compare against the machine count - am guessing if there is some question about the machine count).
One of my issues is imagining the machines running out of paper and/or ink to print out the ballot someone cast or the printed ballot gets jammed in the machine when trying to print and then poll workers struggling to resolve that issue, effectively holding up a line of people waiting to vote. This would be a situation where provisional ballots should be required so that voters can get their vote cast and go on about their business, regardless of the malfunction, and their completed "provisional" paper ballot be considered an "official and valid final ballot" as their vote.
One of the justifications given by the city Commissioners who selected this was that as a "paper ballot-generating electronic system", it would supposedly be more handicap-accessible by using a touch screen, than requiring a "hand-marked" ballot that requires use of a pencil (or whatever is used to fill ovals or check boxes), which may be difficult or impossible for those with arthritis or other deformity of the hand to mark. As I understand, those who are handicapped and unable to use the touchscreen, would have assistance to cast their vote (as has been done in the past).
Our city is broken down into 1692 polling divisions/precincts, each that represent a population block between about 8000 - 10,000 residents, with probably about 1/3 - 1/2 eligible/able to vote, so hand-counting only would be a significant and time-consuming effort if made part of the routine.
questionseverything
(9,656 posts)the software makes the choice, or the last person to direct the software makes the choice
yes hand counting takes time but it is the only way CITIZENS get to oversee their own elections
even if only the federal races were hand counted that would be an improvement
TheFarseer
(9,323 posts)A scantron machine but the computer prints it rather than filling it in with a pencil? Am I getting it?
BumRushDaShow
(129,096 posts)that the candidate/question selections would be made on a touch screen device and then that device produces a human-readable printout of the votes cast (apparently with a barcode - or I guess more accurately, a "QR code" representing the selections). That printout can be reviewed by the voter and if satisfactory, then (I believe) the voter would take the printout to a different machine to submit the completed paper ballot as their final vote.
Our November election would be the first time using these here in Philly (assuming court cases currently underway don't hold it up). Other counties in the surrounding Philly area are using different paper-ballot systems now - e.g., Montgomery County, PA started using the traditional "hand-marked" paper ballots during the May primary, where the completed ballot gets fed into a scanner machine.
hunter
(38,317 posts)Votes represented by electronic bits are even easier to manufacture or delete.
There's really no reason for these machines to exist unless someone is up to no good.
Elections are not television sporting events. We don't need to know the results as quickly as we can, what we need is elections that are as secure as we can possibly make them.