Why Wouldn’t We Want a Paper Trail?
By Montag | Related entries in ElectionsMichael in New York at AMERICAblog writes about a USA Today story on efforts to require a ‘paper trail’ as a safeguard with electronic voting.
I say throw out all the machines and use a paper ballot — lots cheaper and dead-accurate. But for God’s sake, people, make sure your check mark is legible. And how about passing laws that says election supervisors must be non-partisan and unaffiliated with ANY campaigning by either party? And not a nincompoop, either?
AMERICAblog: More States Demanding Paper Trail For Voting
This entry was posted on Thursday, August 11th, 2005 and is filed under Elections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
August 11th, 2005 at 8:48 am
1. Paper ballots are not more accurate than machines… whatsoever.
2. I don’t know how it is in other areas, but in Pennsylvania it is difficult to find people to run for the office of election worker, and about a third of polling places must appoint people. They are paid roughly $100 for the day’s work. If they were to be non-partisan I doubt anyone would run.
August 11th, 2005 at 10:33 am
I think those are called “absentee ballots”. Oregon uses them for all votes, seems to be working for them.
August 11th, 2005 at 1:01 pm
I agree with undertoad, if you are that non-partisan then you probably don’t vote anyway… why would you tie up your entire day on voting day if you don’t care enough to spend 20 minutes casting a vote?
Karl, Isn’t Oregon where there is the Governor debate going on, or is that Washington? You know what I’m talking about, where they had 2 recounts and then delcared the loser the actual winner only to find out that there were hundreds of ballots that were counted erroniously which would have switched the results…
Personally I think that there are always going to be problems because nothing is perfect. I do agree with trying to make it less susceptable to voter fraud and would like to see some steps taken with that in mind.
August 11th, 2005 at 2:00 pm
debsay: That was Washington state.
I’ve always been in favor of a system that works something like this:
1) The voting machine includes a touchscreen to cast your ballot, a built-in printer to generate hardcopy ballots and a built-in shredder to destroy them (in the event of a problem or change of mind). The concept is similar to the automatic wagering machines available at many parimutuel horse and dog racing tracks.
2) You cast your votes electronically, and when you’re finished the machine prints out a hardcopy ballot that indicates your individual votes (both by name and by a scannable code, such as a bar code). The hardcopy ballot would also include a detachable receipt (more on this later).
3) Before finalizing your votes you would be instructed to review the choices on the hardcopy and confirm that they match the candidates you intended to vote for. If there’s a mistake, or if you change your mind, you can place the ballot into the shredder, and that would automatically re-start the voting process. Otherwise you would touch a “Finish” button on the screen to record your vote electronically and end the session.
4) As you leave the voting booth you would also hand in your hardcopy ballot, but would detach and keep the aforementioned receipt. Both the ballot and the receipt have would matching ID#s and/or bar codes to identify the ballot. (The same code would also be associated with your electronic vote.)
5) The hardcopy ballots are counted by machine (using the scannable codes on the ballot) and the tallies are compared to the electronic tallies. If the two tallies match, no worries. Otherwise, since each vote has an ID# attached to it, any discrepancy can be traced to specific ballots. Those ballots wouldn’t be counted, but instead those ballot numbers would then be publicized through the media and the voters who cast those ballots would be allowed to re-vote at a later date (preferably later in the same week) – which is where the receipts come in. Their purpose should be fairly obvious by now.
August 11th, 2005 at 2:12 pm
You’re thinking of Washington with that governor’s race. (Not that it would be impossible for something similar to happen in Oregon.)
There are a couple of ways for voting to go wrong. The first is for the voter to make a mistake that affects the count (fail to punch out the chad completely, make too light a mark, mark the ballot in the wrong place because it’s confusing, and so on). This type of error is what makes computer-assisted voting appealing, because the computer can prevent most of these mistakes. If the voter doesn’t vote for a particular office, the computer can ask for confirmation: “Do you really not want to cast a vote for President?” No dangerous ambiguity of an unpunched chad with a microscopic dent in it. If the voter isn’t sure what they’ve voted for, the computer can present a summary of votes at the end, asking the voter to confirm. The computer system can prevent overvoting, confirm the voter’s intent for undervoting, and (if well designed) lessen voter confusion about what they’re voting for.
The second way for voting to go wrong is for the counters to screw up, deliberately or accidentally. Lost ballots, faulty counting methods, and/or outright fraud. Here the computer can be more vulnerable, because computer counting is less transparent. It’s invisible to the eye; there’s no physical ballot for confirmation.
So the basic problem is that improving problem 1 makes problem 2 worse (and improving problem 2 by reverting to paper ballots just brings back problem 1 again). As far as I can tell, everyone panicked after the 2000 election, decided paper ballots (particularly the dreaded Votomatic) Just Simply Won’t Do in Our Modern Age, and dropped us straight into the drink with systems that haven’t been adequately thought out nor tested enough. I was actually kind of surprised that there weren’t any total meltdowns during the 2004 elections.
August 11th, 2005 at 2:25 pm
If there is only electronic tallying, what will prevent the owner of the voting system from manipulating the count? People trust the familiar, and it’s easier to believe that paper ballots are harder to cheat with because there could be a recount by different people. If the only record of the vote is electronically stored, it’s hard for them to believe that it wasn’t manipulated. That’s part of the fear of electronic only voting. Who has access to the code to see if it’s impartial? What checks are there to see that the totals of the individual machines match the totals reported? Cheating is probably easier to catch with a paper trail than without one.
August 11th, 2005 at 5:01 pm
Ahh, I love the smell of debate in the evening…
To weigh in here…Canada uses paper ballots where they mark a big X with a pencil. It works for them.
I guess the bigger question is that voting methods are so incredibly varied that even the organizations that go into war torn countries to validate suspect elections, can’t even validate our elections because the methods are so different. Somehow, that seems really odd even though it’s completely constitutional.
August 12th, 2005 at 9:50 am
Jaed, that all sounds nice, but the prospect of going to vote and being confronted by Clippy… (”It looks like you are trying to vote for President. Can I help?”)