Review: Voting machines accurate

[Omaha Steve]

Review: Voting machines accurate

Published Tuesday February 22, 2011

LINCOLN (AP) — A hand count of ballots in 33 Nebraska voting precincts that use optical-scanning equipment found errors in only three.

Nebraska Secretary of State John Gale ordered an audit of the November 2010 general election results from randomly selected precincts. More than 7,800 ballots were hand-counted in a House of Representatives election, a community college race and a county race.

Gale said the audit found errors in three precincts. In each case, a discrepancy was discovered in one race, on one ballot. Gale said Tuesday that the review confirmed that state vote-counting technology has a “minuscule error rate.”

Votes on races in two of the precincts were marked too lightly for the machines to count. In a third precinct, one ballot should have been rejected because it wasn’t initialed by officials.

[rgbecker]

1. Optical-scanning of hand marked ballots seems to be the best system.

The electronic, no receipt machines on the other hand are impossible to verify, recount or otherwise assure they haven't been tampered with.

At least that's the take home of the debate's status as of this date, the way I see it.

[Wilms]

5. Does it matter if there's a paper ballot if you're not allowed to count it?

That's the REAL take home of the debate's status as of this date, the way I see it.

NY: Appellate judges deny Johnson-Martin recount (Bush v. Gore revisited)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x516998

[mike_c]

13. optical scanning IS counting....

My county uses optical scanners, at least in my precinct. I've never heard of any problem with them. It's a simple technology that has been proven in lots of uses for decades.

[Omaha Steve]

14. Depends on who programmed them

Or who has access to the central tabulator.

[mike_c]

15. optical scanners are simple to check...

...as this article implies. You just run a stack of known test ballots through the machine and compare the results. This is completely different from touch-screen machines that make no permanent record of the event other than the tabulation, which the voter is unaware of (or which can be faked for the voter if necessary). Although of course one COULD rig optical scanners as easily as any other vote counting machine, they always offer the option of checking and recounting as long as the paper ballots are archived.

Likewise, any discrepancies between ballots and tabulator counts, or between optical scanners and tabulator counts are just as easily checked. Catching malfeasance on optical scanners is just too easy for the simple reason that each vote originates with a paper ballot. Touch screen machines are a whole other matter, of course. But I'm not very worried about my county's optical scanners.

[Wilms]

16. Not sure why you surmise that you not hearing about a problem means there isn't one.

These issues have been addressed by a lot of credentialed individuals who came up with a different conclusion. There's more.But you can start with these.

First. You can't use software to check software, which is what your "test stack" represents. (Not that test stacks are without value, but I digress.)

The term "software independence" (SI) was coined by Dr. Ron Rivest and NIST researcher John Wack. A software independent voting machine is one whose tabulation record does not rely solely on software. The goal of an SI system is to definitively determine whether all votes recorded are legitimately or by error.<1>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_independence

Second. It's indeed possible to hack an optical scanner and not be detected.

At the Last HOPE conference, University of Pennsylvania researchers who led EVEREST's analysis of ES&S e-voting technology described exploitable security vulnerabilities in almost every hardware and software component of ES&S's touch-screen and optical-scan systems. Some of these flaws, Clark said, could allow a single voter or poll worker with bad intentions to alter countywide election results, possibly without election officials ever knowing that the results had been tampered with. "There wasn't an attack that we tried that we weren't able to carry out," she added. "We learned that every current e-voting system has serious exploitable vulnerabilities."

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=electronic-election-day

Gee. Isn't that why everyone wants a paper ballot to recount. :shrug:

[mike_c]

17. I don't think you understand....

We HAVE paper ballots. We vote on them. The county elections folks keep them. Optical scan machines are not the same as the touch screen machines most of the fuss is about. Optical scan machines are simple counters. They work like the test graders and such that schools have used for a generation or more. They're quite reliable. AND they can always be checked against the paper ballots that they count.

[Wilms]

20. Mike, pardon, but it's you who doesn't understand.

The links I offered are a sufficient primer, if you'll let go of your erroneous assumption.

As to "can always be checked", the the 2010 election for NY state senate race SD7, where control of the senate switched to repub as a result, could help you understand.

Then of course, there's Bush v Gore. "can always be checked"? :rofl:

Think, man. THINK!

[BeFree]

2. Great News

Someone may come along and claim that counting just 7,800 ballots (of what 600,000?) is a 'minuscule' audit, and they'd be right, but the fact that audits have taken place is good news.

If we are going to have to count on the computers not being rigged, then audits are the only force we have to keep the computers and the Anonymous programmers honest.

Believe it or not, there are places that don't do ANY audit. They just accept what the computers tell them by faith and faith alone.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

3. "...in a House of Representatives election, a community college race and a county race."

Lol!

[moondust]

12. In Nebraska.

Virtually a one-party state. Unlikely to generate much interest in paying big bucks to some hackers to shift the numbers from conservative A to conservative B.

[Wilms]

4. I wonder why the headline says "accurate" when the fact is they weren't.

A “minuscule error rate" would mean, according to the VVSG, 1 in 500,000. Sounds like it failed.

[mod mom]

6. They only rig when they have to. Maybe NE is so red, they didn't bother.

[Gold Metal Flake]

7. What is 18181, Alex?

[HubertHeaver]

8. A zip code?

[Gold Metal Flake]

9. Seek.

[BeFree]

10. 18181

A voting system in Texas @ 2002 spit out those numbers as totals. I think it was the same number for three different races.

At the time it was evidence of computer malfunction, or as we call it a glitch.

[elocs]

11. Here is a good site about voting machines, describing them and what each state uses:

http://www.ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/State_by_State_Voting_Equipment

Now my state of Wisconsin is listed under:

States That Use Direct Recording Electronic Voting Systems and Require Voter Verified Paper Audit Trails

These states employ Direct Recording Electronic Method in their voting systems and require a Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail when conducting elections.

Although where I live, La Crosse (population 50,000) we use optical scan machines with a paper ballot which you simply connect the black line beside the candidate's name. Simple, and there is a paper ballot to be recounted if needed.

[backscatter712]

18. More precisely, they can be accurate when programmed to be accurate.

If programmed to deliver an honest count, these machines can be very accurate.

If they're programmed to cheat, they'll cheat.

One advantage of optical scan systems is that the ballots are simultaneously hand-readable and machine-readable. So a hand-count can be used as a check to keep the machines programmed to be honest, but a hand-count is laborious, and there are legal obstacles that prevent hand-counts from being used very often, opening up opportunities to cheat.

We need to look at End-To-End Verifiable systems again, which have a whole slew of checks integrated into the process designed to catch cheating.

[upi402]

19. 9%, 10% no problem long as they go to Republicans

:puke: