Alternative to DRE's

[Tiggeroshii]

What are the alternatives that include paper trails for handcounting to the current DRE's in use? What devices are better and more reliable than DRE's being considered? Something that is also certifiable under HAVA(usabele by disabled people),with voice narration, etc?

[Eric J in MN]

1. In Minnesota, we use optical-scan ballots statewide.

Voters fill in ovals on paper.

Blind voters can be assisted by AutoMARK machine at each polling location, which helps them to fill out the same pieces of paper.

Eveyone in a precinct feeds the piece of paper into the same machine after filling it out.

For auditing, one or two precincts per county are randomly chosen for hand-couning the major races.

[bullimiami]

2. registered paper ballots. they can always be machine scanned.

BUT the machine count has to include random audits to verify accuracy AND the final say always has to be a hand count of the original ballots INCLUDING the intent of the voter (ie circled instead of filled boxes, wrong pen/pencil, marked + write-in type overvotes etc...)

[galloglas]

3. Gee! An easy test!

You ask:

What are the alternatives that include paper trails for handcounting to the current DRE's in use?

HAND COUNTED PAPER BALLOTS!

What devices are better and more reliable than DRE's being considered?

HAND COUNTED PAPER BALLOTS!,(and virtually any other system imaginable)

Certainly all systems where the electorate can watch the votes being counted. All other systems where the ballot cast is something tangible, like paper, as opposed to digital electronic impulses which can neither be seen, nor recaptured.

Something that is also certifiable under HAVA (usabele by disabled people),with voice narration, etc

HAND COUNTED PAPER BALLOTS!

You probably know this already, Tigger, but HAVA allows for elections to be held with strictly paper-based handcounted systems (read MythBreakers).



Still, I'm really uncertain what you want to know.


Your last sentence reads "Something that is also certifiable under HAVA(usabele by disabled people),with voice narration, etc?".

This seems to be making a link that does not, in reality, exist. That being "certifiable under HAVA" and "usable by disabled people". Certifiability under HAVA has NOTHING to with something being "usable by disabled people".

You do realize that a paper ballot, printed in braille, is easily usable by the blind, but, as a "paper ballot" does not fall under the HAVA mandates regarding accessibility to the disabled?



The entire HAVA law SEEMS to be about making the DREs, OpScams, etc., as accessible to the disabled as they are to the able-bodied.

But that cannot be so. It presumes the entirely unwarranted notion that all of the electorate (save the disabled) wish to cast their votes ("non-tangible electronic ballots") on machinery created by for-profit corporate interests, who also own the proprietary software, which both casts and counts these "invisible ballots".

I may have been out of town at the time, but I don't ever recall being asked to what third party I wished my Constitutionally guaranteed franchise to vote transferred to.

Perhaps you recall it?


And, given our fourth consecutive bi-annual electoral trainwreck, predicted by the "prophetic" advocates of HCPBs, crashing into the railway station exactly on schedule, does the question not arise with both the able-bodied and the disabled, "WHY are we doing this ????


It would seem, if one buys the logic under which HAVA was foisted onto the American populace, that being inclusive of the disabled is a good thing... that is, as long as the Integrity and Honesty of the entire electoral process ais not destroyed in that effort.

And, I would maintain, that is precisely what has happened!


At what point in the electoral process, in an attempt to be inclusive of the disabled (truly ironic, as the Federal bureaucracy has routinely cuts pieces out of, and protections from, the ADA act, since the day it was passed), does the process actually "disable" all voters, "disenfranchise" all voters.

I would suggest it has already come about when there are 18,000 "undervotes" in Fl-13 due to the loss of the 18,000 "electronic impulses" that should have been counted in order to determine who would represent the (approximately) 700,000 people who live in that district!(Gee! Was it all an accident??)

How many blind voters, "confidentially" casting their vote, does it take to ethically balance the scales with nearly three quarters of a million people, living in a Congressional district, desiring their own right to be represented in the "People's House"?



If you are defending HAVA, please answer the above question.


If you are simply unaware, then consider this: mechanical (as opposed to electronic) devices could easily be fabricated to mark a paper ballot for a disabled person, which could be hand counted in the same manner as all other paper ballots. No need to convert all ballots, and counts, to "electronic forms".


But, if you are saying, "But, mon amí, it is already a fait accomplí! We must now live with this!"
Then I would reply, "Oh, yeah?? And by whose authority? Whatever has been done may be undone!"

And it should be.