WE DO NOT TRUST VOTING COMPUTERS

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

Website http://wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl/English

[Snarkoleptic]

1. Electronic voting with no paper trail is the wrong leap of faith.

[patrice]

2. Instant-runoff voting on Paper Ballots counted in Public NOW!

Campaign finance corruption and Election Fraud are what got us into this mess.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

6. Instant Runoff Voting sounds good but

it gave computerized voting & 100,000 spoiled ballots to Scotland



The Scottish Elections in 2007

An Electoral Train-wreck. Scotland switched from hand counted paper ballots to computerized voting machines for the first time when implementing STV in May, 2007. They decided to use different electoral systems and voting procedures. The results of so many changes and a complex ballot resulted in a loss of 100,000 ballots and voter confidence. It is important to note that Scotland ranks better in literacy than the USA. Spoiled ballots impacted the poorer and lesser educated, but even some well educated voters had problems. On this page are news items about the May 2007 election, and at the bottom of the page some information on Scotland's literacy rate.

Not so much an election as a national humiliation Scotland’s voters were treated with arrogance and contempt
Melanie Reid Times Online May 7, 2007 ...More than 100,000 people – around one in 20 of those who voted – had their ballot papers rejected in the election: a figure so scandalous that analogies with hanging chads don’t really begin to describe it. Their votes were rejected because the forms were too confusing for them (let’s leave aside the tiny minority who spoilt their papers as a form of political protest). What is now crystal clear is that the poorer and more ill-educated the voters were, the more likely they were to put the wrong marks in the wrong places, and unwittingly invalidate their forms.

The biggest poll debacle in the history of British democracy sees up to one in ten votes thrown out
JAMES KIRKUP The Scotsman
"SCOTLAND'S status as a modern democracy was dealt a grievous blow yesterday by a scandal in which up to one in ten votes in the Holyrood election were thrown in the bin uncounted.

In a development that could bring into question the legitimacy of the Scottish Parliament poll, as many as 100,000 ballot papers were spoiled. That averages out as one in 20 votes but in some seats a tenth of the papers were spoiled. In about one in six constituencies, the number of spoiled votes was bigger than the successful candidate's winning margin.

..."Huge numbers of people have cast two votes in one column and none in the other, rendering both votes void. The ballot paper says 'you have two votes' and it appears this is where the confusion may have been caused."

...Why were so many papers spoiled? Voters had to put two crosses on their Holyrood voting papers - one for their constituency and one for the regional list - but it appears many wrongly put two crosses in one section. Simultaneously staging the council elections, in which voters had to rank candidates, also caused confusion.

...Jennie, Inverness: "I have a degree in politics, yet it took me half an hour studying the leaflets to understand the STV system for local council elections. I have never seen anything more cumbersome in my life."

The screw up Saturday 5th May 2007 The Sunday Herald ...Where "hanging chads" marked the Floridacount debacle,the Scottish polls' chaos was characterised by voters putting too many crosses in the wrong place on newly-designed ballot papers that were supposed to simplify the election of constituencies and list MSPs to the Scottish parliament....That the parliamentary vote was also taking place at the same time as the new systemfor electing Scotland's local councils - a single transferable vote system, where preferences are numerically ranked on the paper - didn't help.


'Serious technical failures' at polls
By Andrew Bolger, Scotland Correspondent May 5 2007

Officials yesterday acknowledged "serious technical failures" in the counting of votes for the Scottish elections as they announced a formal inquiry amid fears that as many as 100,000 ballot papers had been unwittingly spoilt by bemused voters

....Last month, computer scientist Rebecca Mercury, who gave evidence in the court case that followed the disputed vote in Florida at the US presidential elections in 2000, warned that the system lacked the safeguards to guarantee voter confidence.


...The papers for the parliamentary poll were changed to combine in one paper voting for the constituency member and for candidates on the regional list, where seats are awarded on a proportional basis. Under a new system of single transferable voting, electors also had to rank council candidates in order of preference. The move to STV was backed in 2004 as part of the coalition deal between Labour and the Liberal Democrat executive.


The voting machines: Scotland switches to computerized voting - Scottish officials followed the advice of "experts" including the non profit "The Electoral Reform Society" and switched from hand counted paper ballots to computerized voting in May '07 to support STV, a form of Instant Runoff:

3.3.1 Experience of counting STV elections elsewhere led the Scottish Executive to examine the feasibility of counting the ballot papers electronically. Following a procurement exercise in late 2005 DRS Data Services Limited (DRS) was selected as the preferred supplier to provide the equipment and support necessary to support such a process. DRS provided the e-counting services in the Greater London Authority / London Mayoral Elections in 2000 and 2004. DRS also involved Electoral Reform Services (ERS) in their proposals – ERS having extensive experience of STV elections. http://www.pkc.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/F26CB0C8-EE76-46CD-953A-43B39495261B/0/07271.pdf ("Electoral Reform Services" is related to the Electoral Reform Society, a non profit whose goal is to spread IRV).

The Scotsman provides more background on the voting machines used in the 2007 election:

Hitches in the electronic counting system delayed several declarations. Why was it brought in and how much did it cost?
With a complex council voting system being used for the first time, ministers decided a computerised system would be quicker. DRS landed an £8.9 million contract to "e-count" elections in Scotland.

What is DRS? Based in Milton Keynes, DRS was set up nearly 50 years ago and has run electronic vote-counting systems in London, Norway and Mali. Former Labour leader Neil Kinnock is a non-executive director. The company says he was not involved in the awarding of the contract.

An Analysis

Dominion was just one of several voting machines tested in Scotland. Here are excerpts of a report created by the Open Rights Group regarding problems with the machines and the election.

May 2007 Election Report

Findings of the Open Rights Group Election Observation Mission in Scotland and England main page:
http://www.openrightsgroup.org/e-voting-main/

for all links go to
http://www.instantrunoffvoting.us/scotland.html

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. That's a bit misleading; the problems were greater in the parliamentary AMS election

not the local council STV election. See the reprot in to the election here: http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/electoral_commission_pdf_file/0011/13223/Scottish-Election-Report-A-Final-For-Web_27622-20316__E__N__S__W__.pdf

As far as the STV election goes, it says:

If the STV electoral system is here to stay, the electronic count cannot be
reasonably abandoned. While there were some problems with the electronic
count on the night of 3 May 2007, such as the database malfunction specific
to the DRS system that occurred at some counting centres, there is little
doubt that the electronic count facilitates the counting of STV ballot papers
and, in this respect, is preferable to a manual count. It is important to note
that our assessment has not found any evidence that the electronic count
contributed to the number of rejected ballot papers.

All this considered, we would recommend that electronic counting continue for
future combined parliamentary and local government elections or local
government elections alone when the STV system is being used.

The actual rejection rates were:

Parliamentary election (Alternative Member System) - constituency ballots: 4.75%; regional ballots: 2.88%
Local council election (Single Transferable Vote) - 1.83%

Some think that some confusion arose because, although on separate sheets, people voted at the same time for the Scottish Parliament, using 'X's, and for the councils, using the ordered '1', '2', etc. marks.

But the actual STV vote was not the problem. Note that most of the article you quoted is actually about the parliamentary election, not the council one.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

10. Scotland had 100,000 spoiled ballots - thats a coup d'état

whether on purpose or not.

But a perfect why to hide deliberate tampering with an election,
under the cover of mass confusion.

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. Who do you suspect of wanting to tamper, eith in 2007 or in the future? (nt)

[Towlie]

3. Even a paper trail is no guarantee.

The most egregious aspect of the voting machines currently in use here in the USA is that the software that runs them is "proprietary". To hide the inner workings of voting machines from American citizens is outrageous and unacceptable.

A truly acceptable electronic voting system is possible but doesn't yet exist. Such a system has to do more than simply be absolutely secure, it has to be secure in a transparent way, so that the general public can know that it's secure. It has to inspire confidence in all but the most cynical skeptics.

[mirrera]

4. KICK and REC!!!!

[vanboggie]

5. K&R

I totally agree that the stolen elections are the reason we're in this mess. It was only the beginning of BushCo destruction, and the gutless wonders sitting on the supreme court santioned theft.

[snot]

7. YAY NETHERLANDS!

[dreamnightwind]

8. another K & R

We need us some Netherlands right here in the gool ol' USA!