Once we get VVPATs or VVPBs, what's next?

[Bill Bored]

At the request of BeFree, I am starting this thread to solicit ideas and "actionable intelligence" on what to do next in the plethora of states that have enacted, or are soon to enact, voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) or voter-verified paper ballot (VVPB) legislation.

It seems to me that short of 100% hand counts, the next steps are:

1. Mandatory Manual Random Auditing laws which would apply to both VVPATs and Op Scan ballots (VVPBs);

2. Laws that say how to handle any discrepancies found in such audits;

3. Laws that say under what circumstances a full hand recount of all VVPATs or VVPBs must occur;

4. Laws that say if and when proprietary software and firmware must be revealed to experts in or out of court;

5. Laws against privatization of our elections (and how to define it!).

In NY, we have most of this stuff on the books already and like most laws, they are subject to interpretation and amendment, but at least it's a start.

Note that I say LAWS here as opposed to BoE or SoS regulations that can change at the drop of a hat! I think this is an important distinction and SoSs should not be running elections in the first place, which is another law that should be put on the books in all 50 states!

Any other suggestions and more importantly, actions, that can be taken? Post them here, and get to work!

Feel free to cross-post this on the DU Activist Forum if you think it's worthwhile for anyone else besides us tin-foil hatters to get involved with! The more the merrier right?

Know your election laws.

Know the penalties for breaking them (are there any?).

And never give up!

[oscar111]

1. Next is what Canada, france, germany, italy have: PBHC Paper Ballots Hand

Counted.

The simpler,.. the fewer crannies in which geniuses invent new ways to steal elections.

Toss ALL MACHINES.

French get the counting done in an hour by doing it at each precinct.

They have enough elections, to have few items on each election IIRC. So no problem with "too many items to hand count".

DU guy "toqueville" knows all about how to do it.

============
from the beginning, seems machines were just to make theft easier, and make big profits for the factory cranking out machines.
We have been played for fools, suckers and rubes
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Seems highly parallel to how the rest of the industrialized world has long had free doctors, and we lag way behind. {in '91, swedish dr's made 25,000/yr, while US docs grabbed 135,000/yr. Today, 25 nations outlive us. } ---" we have been played for fools, suckers and rubes".
--Germans have had free doctors for over a century. Here, not even in sight yet.

[autorank]

2. Great list. Here are a couple more

6. Laws that mandate full access to any polling done on election day or exit polling of any type (if it's done a day after or so). The elections are our process. These exit polls need to be available in full to monitor fraud.

7. Laws that hand out stiff penalties. In my state, Virginia, if you commit a crime with a gun, you get sentenced for the crime and five years (no parole) is added for the gun! I say the same for election fraud. If you participate in election fraud, it should be a mandatory five year sentence.

[kster]

3. Start demanding

that our Government immediately stand up and put a freeze on any form of electronic vote counting and tabulating machines, Demand PBHC for 06 and 08, so we can clean out the attic (so to speak).

[kster]

4. Kick.nt

[BeFree]

5. Thanks, Bill

Now that we have some new laws, it is up to each and every one of us to learn those laws inside and out. Learn the loopholes, learn the lingo, learn how to spot when a BoE forgets to follow the law. My thought is that we can help too educate one another here.

In my state, the laws you mentioned have just about passed the legislature. True, they are a compromise to the Evote, but they were crafted at the behest of the BoEs from around the state who want an "Easy" way to count the vote. One thing we can do by staying on their cases is to make them come to believe Evoting ain't so damned easy.

The best law to have come out, imo, is the 3% random hand-to-eye count. But there are several loopholes in that and I aim to close those in my county, after I learn just how they plan on doing that count. Any advice from folks here will be welcomed.

There is also a clause about consulting a statitician and surely someone here has advice on how that works, eh?

This whole effort has been a grassroots effort with grudging support from our elected officials. However, we have made great progress, as noted by the crafting of laws moving in our direction. We have a foot in the door, now lets get our fingers on the handle and keep the door from ever being locked again.

[Stevepol]

6. I think the laws should be VERY strict.

I agre entirely that the mandatory audits MUST APPLY to optiscan as well as touchscreen print-outs.

The manual audits should match the machine count almost exactly, w/i only a few one way or the other, since there could be some mistakes in reading ballots or counting by hand or in misreading perhaps, but that difference should be VERY SMALL, only 5 votes or so, even with large numbers of votes. The ATMs are exact and the voting machines should be equally exact.

If the hand count and the machine count do not match (almost) exactly, then there should be an audit expanded to about 15% of all votes. If that one doesn't match (almost) exactly, then the whole election should be hand counted.

If the machines are found to have erred in one direction primarily, then that machine company should be open to severe penalties of a monetary kind (millions of dollars!! What price should be put on democracy? How valuable is your vote?) This could perhaps be made clear in any contracts drawn up with the vendors. ANY discrepancies will result in HUGE financial penalties. The state should be able to recover from these companies that have misrepresented their products and used their trust to defraud the voters. If individuals can be found to have hacked or patched or others fraudulently programmed the machines, these people should be subject long prison terms, and this should be made clear in the contract as well and BY LAW.

The source code for all computers that count votes must be available to elections computer experts and to national experts as well. This is a very bad legal precedent to have this off-limits.

[Bill Bored]

7. Audits should have to match exactly.

One vote per precinct might swing a close race. If any discrepancies are found, there must be more auditing until a change in outcome can be ruled out.

The most likely fraud not to be detected at all is concentrated fraud, on a few percent of machines or scanners. But fortunately, this could only swing enough votes to steal a relatively close election.

If random audits are clean, but the margin is close, I think more audits should be done until it's clear that the outcome cannot be changed by undetected discrepancies.

This paper by Kathy Dopp is a good place to start to study the problem and the associated spreadsheet is useful too:

http://uscountvotes.org/ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/Paper_Audits.pdf

I don't know why this isn't publicized more but I guess it's not about exit polls so...

[kiwi_expat]

8. This is a great list, Bill !

The only thing on my personal list that is missing here is the issue of TIMING. Perhaps you could add some "when"s to points 1-3. :-)

I also wonder why you use the word "audit" instead of "manual count" or "manual recount". Would you want the Mandatory Manual Random Auditing laws to include auditing procedures other than manual counts - procedures such as just comparing totals, for instance? I wouldn't think so.

Cheers.

[Bill Bored]

9. Depends on what's being audited.

If it's VVPATs or VVPBs, it's not just a total because in order to get the total, you have to manually count the ballots or VVPATs.

The timing is a good point, especially when it comes to the Presidency!