Paper ballotts NOW!!! Hand counts NOW!!! N/T

[In Truth We Trust]

[firefox]

1. Why?

Congress spent $4 billion to remove the paper ballot with a sweeping "reform" bill. Kerry did not sponsor a bill in the Senate to amend the bill to require a paper trail nor any other member of the Senate before the election. Even in the House only a small group signed on to a reform bill that had the intention of restoring the paper trail. Must have been driven by fears of a paper shortage or to save the world's forests.

bal·lot Audio pronunciation of "ballot" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (blt)
n.

1. A sheet of paper or a card used to cast or register a vote, especially a secret one.

[feelthebreeze]

2. This is what we are fighting for....

In NY it is Paper ballots and an in precinct optical scanner to tabulate the votes. We are fighting hard and will not give up. Your post is right on the money.

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

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[firefox]

4. You are just missing the elephant

It is the most basic of things that there be a paper ballot. Even the electronic machines in South America produced a paper ballot. It requires no thinking to see that something is wrong without a paper trail. It is a no-brainer.

Other problems are other problems. But there was one basic problem with voting in the last election- paper trails that had been there for centuries were gone and it sure as hell was not progress. The issue has nothing to do with the outcomes. It is the problem that is in your face concerning voting equipment.

You are the one taking it to an area of spin.

[tritsofme]

5. There's a huge difference between paper trails

and the ridiculous notion that all ballots should be hand counted.

[Name removed]

6. Deleted message

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[firefox]

8. It is a different issue that presented by this thread

First, don't get a drug warrior and Empire builder that does not say that he will only be different from Bush is style but not substance. But that belongs in a seperate thread.

[poverlay]

10. You should be impressed

with the resolve of people who fight for your right to vote. As it now stands, you really have no idea whether or not your vote is worth anything. If you really believe our current voting system is trustworthy, then you are the one having a fantasy. The obvious gerrymandering is bad enough.
The glaring, impossible voting anomalies should have tearing out your hair.
You should be extremely impressed with a person who stands up for your rights, when even you won't~and that's putting it mildly...
If your vote isn't counted, nothing else matters.
Erring on the side of caution regarding something so very important is not pretend, it is the only thing that is real.
Besides, if it's no big deal, why not do it?

[Donna Zen]

7. My town votes with paper and pencil

All of the votes are hand-counted and we've never had anyone question our count. It is all very secure.

My town is about the size of an precinct.

For the money the US has spent, the entire country could pay competent poll workers for 100 years.

You are being lied to.

The vote must be both secret and verifiable...paper is the only way to meet the legal requirement.

[cestpaspossible]

9. Like this?

http://data.opi.state.mt.us/bills/2005/billhtml/HB0297.htm

http://data.opi.state.mt.us/bills/2005/billhtml/SB0302.htm

[Donna Zen]

11. I know that was not directed at me but

the answer is "no". I vote with a number 2 pencil and paper...that's all. It takes about an hour and a half to count and is strictly monitored. I've worked the polls and can assure you the count is accurate to the vote.

[cestpaspossible]

14. You obviously have no idea what is in the links in my post

why don't you try reading what you are replying to, it would really increase the signal-to-noise ratio if you would attempt to produce less random static.

[Carolab]

12. It's the TABULATORS.

I just wrote to my representative about all this for the umpteenth time and he wrote back including a copy of Minnesota's bill that allows for paper ballots (which we already have) and that allow disabled to vote (they are looking at VoteMark here).

I wrote him BACK on his feedback form and told him he had NOT answered my letter, which concerned the SECURITY PROBLEMS inherent in precinct/central tabulators.

I asked him what the legislature intends to do about the issues of a lack of open source software and also about vulnerability to hackers. I directed him, AGAIN, to some links to study up.

Paper ballots ARE NOT ENOUGH. We have to either GET RID of tabulators or ENSURE they are secure through open source software, vigorous random audits, etc.

These legislatures are insisting on machines. This is NOT going away!!! SO, we have to work on SECURITY and AUDITS.

[Donna Zen]

13. correct

[cestpaspossible]

15. The whole point of a paper ballot is that you can do a hand recount

duh.

And open-source doesn't do anything to guarantee security... haven't you heard of Ken Thompson's C compiler Trojan Horse.?

[Carolab]

16. I'm NOT talking about open source for paper trails!!!

I'm talking about CODE FOR TABULATORS that count PAPER BALLOTS.

Ever hear of optical scanned paper ballots?

WELL, they USE ELECTRONIC TABULATORS to count them and we don't know HOW they are COUNTED, nor do we have assurances that they are SECURE and safe from hacking.

DUH.

[Joebert]

17. I want to see open source for everything.

There should be open code for tabulation, voting, recording, transmitting, printing, everything.

That code is frozen X months before the elections. That code is mandatory on all voting terminals.

The tabulation is done locally, county wide, state wide, country wide. Three times.

If a count happens wrong once, the paper produced is broken out and counted, the machine is immediately audited for code/hacks, if anything is unusual, all county machines get audited. If more than one location in the county is suspect, then the state's machines are audited, etc.

Eventually, there should be a way, for those who want it, to be able to view their vote online to ensure it's what they submitted.

[Carolab]

19. Right.

The vote viewing on line though is problemmatic owing to the "privacy" and vote selling issues.

Definitely everything should be open source AND there should be VIGOROUS RANDOM AUDITS at the precincts and at the central office tabulator levels.

[Joebert]

21. How do you get non-partisan people to do the tabulation/auditing...

That becomes the next question.

All sides will consider the people doing the auditing to be biased.

How do we get civility to rule?

[Carolab]

34. I believe, and Dean has also said, we need state initiatives.

We need to work with our state legislatures to change the rules.

[cestpaspossible]

18. Again your post is pure static, all noise no signal

there is no actual factual information in your post, nor is it in any way related to the real world. Reading it much like tuning your radio to a point where no station is broadcasting, and then turning the volume all the way up.

http://data.opi.state.mt.us/bills/2005/billhtml/HB0297.htm

[Carolab]

20. Sorry, but you are 100% wrong.

I have made a study of optical scanned ballots because we use them here in Minnesota.

Don't tell me I don't know what my state is doing and how. It's insulting.

We have both precinct and central tabulators that run on Diebold code and the DB is Microsoft Access--exactly like what Bev Harris demonstrated on Topic A when Dean was hosting.

READ THIS:

http://www.chuckherrin.com/paperballots.htm

<snip>

Have we lost our frickin' minds? We don't even have paper receipts, much less ballots! And it's not just the touchscreens - that's something else that a lot of people are missing. You have to take a step one level back in the tabulation process to the computers that actually do the tallying. That's where votes from touchscreens, as well as optically scanned AND absentee ballots come together to be counted. Don;t get me wrong - these touchscreens suck- but the problem is bigger than just that. Lemme tell you about just one of these systems. It's the General Election Management Software, or GEMS, made by Diebold. You know Diebold, the folks who hired felons, the ones that make ATMs but say they can't put printers on voting machines?

These GEMS machines run on that most secure and stable operating system- Microsoft Windows. Mostly Windows 2000. GEMS is designed to work with Office - it says so on Diebold's site. These machines are connected by modem pools, network connections, or the Internet, and they receive the vote data from the reporting precincts, where it is then "counted". If you would like to see the security of this software, I'd like for you to go to www.chuckherrin.com/hackthevote. I will walk you through how easy it is to change tens of thousands of vote, then show you the time stamped reports and audit logs to prove that it doesn't leave a trace. It's so easy, it's not even really hacking. Anyone who has used MS office has done this before. It's incredible, and Diebold and elections officials have known about it for years. Internet memos reveal that being able to change votes in the backend databases "have gotten people out of a bind," and Gaston County, NC and King County WA are specifically mentioned as having done it in the past. This is known criminal activity, that has gone without action, for years. In my first demo of changing votes in a fictional election, I was able to change 11,963 votes in a couple of minutes, and in my second, called speed-hacking the vote, I changes over 1.6 Million votes in 6 minutes, while generating 3 timestamped "official" reports and audit logs showing no trace of wrongdoing. Computers made this possible. Computers enable criminals and those with evil intent to do more than ever before. Before we started using computers, you couldn't hack paper ballots at a distance. Well, now you can.

How hard would it be for one person to change 11,963 PAPER ballots? How long would it take? Could they do it from a distance?

No. But they can now, and not even leave a trace. Don't believe me? That's fine - check out my site and I'll show you exactly how to do it.

There's a lot more info on my site and elsewhere on the web than I have time to tell you now, so let me sum up what I, as a computer security professional and a voter, would like to see from our elections officials and our elected officials.

I want paper ballots.

This is NOT an unreasonable request! And don't give me that bullshit about "we've already paid for them, we need to use them". You made a mistake, and people will understand that. People understand making mistakes, as long as you do the right thing afterwards. But I have some auditor friends from Author Andersen who can tell you what happens when you try to cover your mistakes up. I'm not asking for anything special- just do the right thing.

I want paper ballots!

If my shiny new car breaks down, I don't sit in it and wait for it to work just because I've paid for it. I call the manufacturer out and say "What the hell is wrong with this thing?", and then I use some other, proven method to get where I need to go. The engineering on these machines is horrible, they are not built to any industry standard, and they are not tamper-resistant, they are tamper friendly. It's not just Diebold - they all have problems, and NONE have been certified using industry standards.

<snip>

[cestpaspossible]

22. Then you must be too since we don't disagree in any way at all

but you wouldn't be aware of that because you are totally unaware of what I am saying, you aren't responding to my comments, you don't even know what I think about anything and it's obvious that you still haven't read the contents of the links I posted.

I feel like I am talking to an air raid siren.

[orleans]

23. I completely agree!

[ProudToBeLiberal]

24. this is getting old nt

[In Truth We Trust]

25. I don't understand your comment; what is getting old? Could the insistance

on election integrity be considered just a trendy thing whose time has past or are you referring to the fact that three major election cycles have now come and gone with ever increasing fraWdulent results be getting old?

[cestpaspossible]

26. Well look at the thread

it calls for paper ballots, and when I posted a new law passed in Montana guaranteeing just that, a couple of folks responded hysterically, instead of rationally.

It's the hysterics that are getting old - as typified by your excessively hysterical TITLE!!!!!

[Name removed]

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[Hippo_Tron]

28. I'd settle for voter verified paper trail, IF

Any candidate could request a hand recount. The dark blue and dark red states that aren't going to be close will be counted by computer and likely nobody will ask for a hand recount in those states and thus we'll know the results of those quickly after the polls close. In the swing states, candidates will be entitled to the voter verified paper trail being counted, which should override the tally done by the machines.

[Carolab]

29. Suggest you read what Chuck Herrin says about paper trails.

See link above in my earlier post #20:

He is completely against them, because you don't know if what the machine is printing out is REALLY how you voted.

Think about it: there is a receipt. That receipt is NOT tied to you in any way, shape or form. So how does anyone know that any receipt/paper trail is an ACTUAL record of how they voted? It's just what the MACHINE says you did.

[Hippo_Tron]

30. VOTER VERIFIED paper trail

You read what the machine prints out and then if you are satisfied, you place it in the ballot box. At least that's the system I think would work best.

[Carolab]

31. Again, you don't know, in a recount, that those paper trails are real.

Someone could just substitute YOUR receipt for ANOTHER receipt printed by the machine, and YOU won't know!

Think about it.

The machine totals can be manipulated AND paper receipts can be as well, in order to match. It happened in Ohio with punch cards, and it can happen with paper "trails".

Furthermore, most of the legislation in the states requires that a recount only happens in a close race; the SOS is NOT going to agree to recounting by hand otherwise because it's "time consuming" and they would argue: WHY NOT COUNT BY HAND IN THE FIRST PLACE, THEN?

[Hippo_Tron]

32. The same can be said for paper ballots

Somebody could substitute your ballot for another.

[Carolab]

33. That's true but it would be a LOT harder

because someone would have to go through the trouble of remarking a whole mess of ballots with all those little filled-in dots on them and even with an "AutoMark" that's a lot to go through and probably wouldn't happen without detection anyway. WHEREAS, a paper trail can easily be created/substituted just by printing a new one out on a printer.

[FrenchieCat]

35. We'll only get "fake" reforms

as long as the Republicans have the majority. To think we will be getting anything else is like thinking that Bush will be impeached for his many crimes; won't happen anytime soon.