"What a Ballot Is" ~ Andy Stephenson - Democratic Underground

troubleinwinter

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Wed Jul-13-05 12:23 PM
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"What a Ballot Is" ~ Andy Stephenson

The following was written by Andy April 29, 2005. It is a draft, about which he said, "Just putting thoughts on paper right now. So in case something happens to me, god forbid...I have it down for others in the future."

What a ballot is. It is not merely a piece of paper it is me...it is my voice. Each of us should guard it more than we would our most prized or precious possession. That ballot protects our other possessions. Without it you have no say. Over the last couple of years I have been adamant about the need for a voter verified paper ballot. It has been the driving force behind what I have done and will continue to do. To me, my ballot is the most sacred sacrament of the secular religion we call Democracy.

I have traveled around this country meeting with Election Officials such as Mischelle Townsend. I sent her into a tailspin when I put a camera in her face. Mischelle Townsend as you remember was the County Registrar in Riverside CO. Ca. Mischelle is a drippy sweet kind of woman but underneath beats the heart of a true viper. Mischelle has unwavering faith in Sequoia Voting Systems. She is a huge proponent of paperless DRE's. Where is Mischelle now? Well last I heard she was at home tending to her father-in-law's knee. She spent her last day at work holed up in her office with the door closed to avoid cameras. David Elliot is another viper. David was the head honcho over at NASED. He was the one person most responsible for allowing DRE’s to be approved for use. David was another really bad guy. He told me that he would have liked to have been able to talk less formally “without the camera.” I am sure he would have. But hey…I wanted to keep him honest. David retired from service to the state to attend to a “nervous condition.” Another piece of work was Scott Konopasek. Scott was the Registrar in San Bernardino Co Ca. Scott was the man responsible for DRE’s in two places, Snohomish WA and San Bernardino CA. Scott once remarked that Bev and I were waging “Jihad”, but not in a “Palestine Israel sense of the word, but in more of a Northern Ireland sense of the word.” Excuse me but WTF? Scott is now a “consultant” I worry when former elections officials become consultants. The one thing all these people have in common is an undying faith in paperless voting. I would say that they were all crooked but that would get me sued so I won’t say it. But I had no faith that they were protecting the ballot.

Now I know that I have gotten off track here and talked about all the bad guys in elections but there are people protecting your ballot. Some examples are Freddie Oakley of Yolo County California, Ion Sancho of Leon County Florida and Kevin Shelly and Julie Anne Kempf formerly of King County Washington. These people are examples of people working hard to protect our right to vote and in the case of Julie Anne losing their job in the process. I have talked here about the people but not ballots up to this point. There is a reason for that. The first group of people is out to get your ballot the second wants to preserve your ballot.

There are currently many definitions and thoughts on the subject of ballots. Some would argue that paper records or paper trails can serve the same purpose as a paper ballot. All legislation I see coming from Washington these days talk of Paper records/trails that are kept in a similar manner as ballots. They are to be the official record of the election and are to be used in case of manual recounts. As an example of how hard this would be, let’s look at Diebold’s VVPAT. A long register receipt type “paper trail” is printed. Granted it is better than what does not come from their DRE’s now but it would be very difficult to “hand” count. So why spend money on it, if it does not really do what we want it to do? It is similar but not the same as a ballot. Imagine a 75 year old trying to read the small type on that paper trail. Some, such as our first group of people would argue that an electronic version of the ballot is ok and perfectly acceptable. David Dill explains that voting on DRE’s is like handing your ballot to a man behind a curtain, telling him how you want to vote, he fills in your choices and you never see the ballot again. This is UNACCEPTABLE! Our ballot must be human readable we must be able to discern our own choices and not leave it to a machine interface. Now this is not always possible as in the case of the blind but there are technologies that help the blind to vote in secret that produce a ballot. Equipment such as Automark produces an optical scan or human readable ballot. The ballot is printed on a heavy weight 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper with standard markings. Any human or optical scan machine can read these ballots and they are ideal for hand counts should the need arise.

Now there are many people that say we should be all hand counted paper all the time. In an ideal world we would do that. But realistically that is not going to happen. Elections offices in most jurisdictions if not all, are under funded. Elections officials struggle with tight budgets and in most cases do a damned good job with what they have. Not all elections officials are bad and many want to run good clean elections. Keeping the system honest is up to us. With proper auditing and truly random recounts optical scans are the safest and most accurate way to count an election. The trouble starts when the votes are sent via electronic means to a central tabulator. I would also add that the tabulator needs to be as secure as Ft. Knox because after all our votes are more precious than gold.