4 ms·

Glad you liked the mark/sense system, but California voting systems are not state-wide, but are county by county. The county I reside in used to have a system l

Glad you liked the mark/sense system, but California voting systems are not state-wide, but are county by county. The county I reside in used to have a system like that you describe (perhaps made by Eagle?), but has now moved to a display screen and paper tape system. The nice things about the mark & scan systems are that the voter gets immediate notification of an unscannable ballot: stray marks, mis-marks, overvotes, and similar issues are correctable in real time by the voter, perhaps by exchanging the spoiled ballot for a new one, and destroying the spoiled ballot. The scanned paper ballots are also available to be rescanned for a recount or audit. Creating a voting system for a many-race election that is intrinsically resistant to manipulation is harder that it first appears. I used to (circa 2000) think that electronic voting would supersede paper ballots in a few years. Now I think that paper ballots have a simplicity and durability that outweighs the apparent convenience of electronic approaches. source: elections official in two states, voter registrar in one.

burlesona 8y ago
Interesting, I didn’t know that it varied by county. Man what a complicated system we’ve got.
- mobilefriendly 8y ago
  It is a feature, not a bug. Variation in the system makes it harder for a single exploit or actor to rig the entire system.
  - threatofrain 8y ago
    DOS'ing yourself is also a vulnerability. If doing any kind of repair is so expensive and solutions are blunt, people might just find it so unpalatable to not do it.
  - SkyMarshal 8y ago
    I understand that notion but I’m not sure it’s true. It also may make it easier for large multinationals like Diebold to divide and conquer and sell their unauditable digital voting machines to more of the electorate, piece by piece.
jellicle 8y ago
Right. You can get all the supposed advantages of each system, if you want. Use a touchscreen, fill out a ballot, hit the print button, receive a paper printed ballot, inspect it for errors, drop it into a scanning system that scans and retains it. Importantly, the optical scan is done not by reading any sort of barcode printed on the paper but by reading the same English letters as the voter is inspecting. All the convenience of electronic systems, hand recount is available and easy. Hand audit some of the machines after every election to ensure accuracy. Doesn't matter how messed up the touchscreens are, since the paper ballot can be inspected by the voter before being cast. No such thing as hanging chad or butterfly ballot problems. Zero bad ballots. Voters who skip races will be doing so intentionally. "LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR: NO VOTE". If they turn that in to be scanned, that's what they wanted.
- ethbro 8y ago
  As far as I know, this is similar to the systems Georgia is looking at deploying in our upgrade. Having a paper audit trail has become a fairly big cause, so I'd be surprised if the legislature recommends solutions that don't satisfy this.
  - dmckeon 8y ago
    Good luck with that: https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/how-voting-machine-lobbyists-undermine-the-democratic-process https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/how-voti...
SkyMarshal 8y ago
>Creating a voting system for a many-race election that is intrinsically resistant to manipulation is harder that it first appears. Isn’t that somewhat contradictory to the rest of your comment? The mark & scan machines work well and have for decades, and not just in voting but in standardized testing in various contexts (school, drivers license tests, etc). It seems the voting machine element of the equation “intrinsically resistant to manipulation” is pretty much solved, if election officials would just keep what’s worked well for decades rather than transitioning to shiny new digital toys with no paper trails and poor security.
- dmckeon 8y ago
  Fair call, I should have stressed that "system" is more than just marking and counting ballots. Operating a well-run election means staffing polling places with elections clerks from different parties (or no party) so they act as cross-checks on each other, making sure that spoiled or unused ballots are a) not counted, and b) accounted for, helping random citizens who are at the wrong polling place, or are not on the registry for some reason (registered elsewhere, changed their name, etc.). In the worse cases it means dealing with voters who want to read the ballot aloud to their partner, or camp out in a voting booth for 30-40 minutes, or who are disruptive in some way. To be fair, the last general election here (Bay Area) had 21 races with 43 total significant candidates, plus 12 referendums/measures, for 67 items to count per ballot - this is not a good "count by hand" situation. In the long run what people really want and need is an election system (including voting machines, ballots, voter rolls, polling places, staff) that gives them a sense that their votes count.
  - SkyMarshal 8y ago
    Yeah, the people part of the system a hard problem, no argument.

burlesona 8y ago

Interesting, I didn’t know that it varied by county. Man what a complicated system we’ve got.

mobilefriendly 8y ago
It is a feature, not a bug. Variation in the system makes it harder for a single exploit or actor to rig the entire system.
- threatofrain 8y ago
  DOS'ing yourself is also a vulnerability. If doing any kind of repair is so expensive and solutions are blunt, people might just find it so unpalatable to not do it.
- SkyMarshal 8y ago
  I understand that notion but I’m not sure it’s true. It also may make it easier for large multinationals like Diebold to divide and conquer and sell their unauditable digital voting machines to more of the electorate, piece by piece.

jellicle 8y ago

Right. You can get all the supposed advantages of each system, if you want. Use a touchscreen, fill out a ballot, hit the print button, receive a paper printed ballot, inspect it for errors, drop it into a scanning system that scans and retains it. Importantly, the optical scan is done not by reading any sort of barcode printed on the paper but by reading the same English letters as the voter is inspecting. All the convenience of electronic systems, hand recount is available and easy. Hand audit some of the machines after every election to ensure accuracy. Doesn't matter how messed up the touchscreens are, since the paper ballot can be inspected by the voter before being cast. No such thing as hanging chad or butterfly ballot problems. Zero bad ballots. Voters who skip races will be doing so intentionally. "LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR: NO VOTE". If they turn that in to be scanned, that's what they wanted.

ethbro 8y ago
As far as I know, this is similar to the systems Georgia is looking at deploying in our upgrade. Having a paper audit trail has become a fairly big cause, so I'd be surprised if the legislature recommends solutions that don't satisfy this.
- dmckeon 8y ago
  Good luck with that: https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/how-voting-machine-lobbyists-undermine-the-democratic-process https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/how-voti...

SkyMarshal 8y ago

>Creating a voting system for a many-race election that is intrinsically resistant to manipulation is harder that it first appears. Isn’t that somewhat contradictory to the rest of your comment? The mark & scan machines work well and have for decades, and not just in voting but in standardized testing in various contexts (school, drivers license tests, etc). It seems the voting machine element of the equation “intrinsically resistant to manipulation” is pretty much solved, if election officials would just keep what’s worked well for decades rather than transitioning to shiny new digital toys with no paper trails and poor security.

dmckeon 8y ago
Fair call, I should have stressed that "system" is more than just marking and counting ballots. Operating a well-run election means staffing polling places with elections clerks from different parties (or no party) so they act as cross-checks on each other, making sure that spoiled or unused ballots are a) not counted, and b) accounted for, helping random citizens who are at the wrong polling place, or are not on the registry for some reason (registered elsewhere, changed their name, etc.). In the worse cases it means dealing with voters who want to read the ballot aloud to their partner, or camp out in a voting booth for 30-40 minutes, or who are disruptive in some way. To be fair, the last general election here (Bay Area) had 21 races with 43 total significant candidates, plus 12 referendums/measures, for 67 items to count per ballot - this is not a good "count by hand" situation. In the long run what people really want and need is an election system (including voting machines, ballots, voter rolls, polling places, staff) that gives them a sense that their votes count.
- SkyMarshal 8y ago
  Yeah, the people part of the system a hard problem, no argument.