ES & S lobbies for paper ballots over election security concerns

[CousinIT]

https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/19/politics/voting-machines-paper-ballots-congress/index.html

New York (CNN)The US's largest election equipment manufacturer has begun quietly lobbying Congress to force all voting equipment to create a paper trail, a sharp departure after years of selling paperless digital machines that can't be fully audited. The change of stance comes amid concerns over the security of elections following Russia's interference effort in the 2016 presidential election.

"There's a big recognition today that auditing is important, and to do a proper audit you need a piece of paper," Kathy Rogers, Election Systems & Software senior vice president of government relations, told CNN.
"I'll tell you it's a decision that came at a cost. We've lost a few sales because of it. But we think it's the right thing to do," Rogers said.

Voting experts resoundingly agree that while no system is perfect, the only way to reliably audit an election is to compare results with a physical tally of paper ballots.

President Donald Trump has appeared to agree when he told reporters last month that "going to good, old-fashioned paper, in this modern age, is the best way to do it."

[Sherman A1]

1. K&R

[House of Roberts]

2. So the machine can be programmed to print out the corrupt numbers?

How is that better?

The only machine system I think can work is to use paper ballots, that become the official voting record, using tabulators only for election night quick reporting, but the results have to be certified by hand counting of the paper ballots.

[Goodheart]

6. That's exactly my thought. Paper receipts are WORTHLESS.

I expect that ES&S wants to imbue credibility to what they know is their hackable electronics.

[Botany]

3. E.S.&S.?

The same company that has programed their machines to have electronic "backdoors" where the
data can be examined or altered without leaving any "fingerprints" and in some cases it can be
done remotely.

<President Donald Trump has appeared to agree when he told reporters last month that "going to good, old-fashioned paper, in this modern age, is the best way to do it."> Trump knows that the machines are dirty and put him into the White House.

Link to tweet

Alexander Torshin sponsor of Maria Butina looking @ an ES&S voting machine.

[CrispyQ]

4. Worried the hack won't go their way, perhaps?

[imaginary girl]

7. My thoughts exactly! Nt

[Snarkoleptic]

5. We need hand-marked paper ballots to secure our elections!

https://www.salon.com/2019/03/28/new-hybrid-voting-system-can-change-paper-ballot-after-its-been-cast_partner/

Unfortunately, there is no universal definition of “paper ballot,” which has enabled vendors and their surrogates to characterize machine-marked paper printouts from hackable ballot marking devices (BMDs) as “paper ballots.” Unlike hand-marked paper ballots, voters must print and inspect these machine-marked “paper ballots” to try to detect any fraudulent or erroneous votes that might have been marked by the BMD. The machine-marked ballot is then counted on a separate scanner.

Most independent cybersecurity election experts caution against putting these insecure BMDs between voters and their ballots and instead recommend hand-marked paper ballots as a primary voting system (reserving BMDs only for those who are unable to hand mark their ballots). But vendors and many election officials haven’t listened and are now pushing even more controversial “hybrid” systems that combine both a BMD and a scanner into a single unit. These too are now sold for use as a primary voting system.

Unlike hand-marked paper ballots counted on scanners and regular non-hybrid BMDs, these new hybrid systems can add fake votes to the machine-marked “paper ballot” afterit’s been cast, experts warn. Any manual audit based on such fraudulent “paper ballots” would falsely approve an illegitimate electronic outcome.

[7wo7rees]

8. Too little, too late

Let's move to StarVote with blockchain.