Reply #6: the solution is simple [View All]

[garybeck]

here is the forumula to prevent hacking AND rigging of elections, period. Here is what you need:

1) Voter verified paper audit trails (VVPAT). Whether it's a touchscreen machine or an opscan, there has to be a piece of paper that the voter looked at and verified that it is correct. We already have it with the opscan systems. With the DRE (touchscreen) machines the companies are starting to offer it but we still have far to go with the DRE machines. Either way, there needs to be a paper trail.

2) Mandatory Manual Random Audits (MMRA). A certain percentage of the precincts need to be audited manually. That means people hand count VVPATs from the precinct. If the total is off from the machine count, then a larger area must be hand counted.

3) Precinct level public reporting of election results. citizens need to be able to obtain the totals for each precinct, so they can add them up and compare them to the state totals.

That's it. With those three things in the system, it is almost impossible to hack or rig an election.

There are those who insist that open source code is a requirement also. I am also a supporter of open source code, but I submit that if you have those three things the open source code is not as important as audits. Diebold and the like could write all the rigging software they want, and not allow anyone to see the code; if there are audits they will get caught.