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> Any and all voting machines /must/ only ever be used to mark ballot papers that are filed in the usual way and can be counted in the usual way if there is any

> Any and all voting machines /must/ only ever be used to mark ballot papers that are filed in the usual way and can be counted in the usual way if there is any doubt whatsoever. I'm pretty sure that's exactly what the machines used in this election do. Some counties use touchscreen ballot marking devices that print a ballot for scanning, others have the voter fill out their ballot with a pen and then feed that into the scanner. Of those two variants, I believe election security experts prefer the latter type. But as far as I know all voting machines used in the US do use a paper ballot as the permanent record. Didn't help, here, since when they recounted those paper ballots the argument shifted to "well you have to re-check the signatures on the envelopes, those could've been fake ballots", or "well there was a lot of traditional fraud with mail-in ballot harvesting and dead people voting". But the same people were still saying the machines cheated, too -- especially whenever they were talking to a receptive audience. I'm all for more openness in elections and publicly auditable data (and open-source voting machine code), but let's not pretend that it would've changed much here. People believed the election was stolen because they wanted to believe it was stolen.

harry8 6y ago
Have voting machines shifted completely to 100% of them being machines used to mark traditional ballots that are stored and can be recounted in the traditional way? "Pretty sure" isn't the appropriate standard for an election. If not it's not close to being good enough and muddies the waters. All of them /must/ be. Without exception. Every single encroachment of the integrity of and understandability election affects all of them. The confusion matters. "Oh but it's actually ok in this case." is a totally different point that is irrelvant here. Fertile ground for conspiracy where there need be none is fertile ground. Donald and Neera for two of many examples have exploited that fertile ground for personal political gain. Condemn both for their craven and vile dishonesty. Fix the issues.
- rspeele 6y ago
  You're correct that "pretty sure" isn't the appropriate standard for an election. However, "pretty sure" isn't the standard any state uses to approve voting machines, just the standard I use to post comments on HN. And indeed, I was WRONG. https://verifiedvoting.org/verifier/#mode/navigate/map/ppEquip/mapType/normal/year/2020 https://verifiedvoting.org/verifier/#mode/navigate/map/ppEqu... The dark red category is "DREs without VVPAT for all voters". That's direct-recording electronic voting machines, without voter-verified paper audit trail. The voter enters their vote on a touchscreen and doesn't get to see the paper ballot that records it (and the recording may never be on paper at all). That sucks and I agree that type of machine should not be used. I have to admit I was surprised that those machines are still allowed in any state. My research into the voting machines, thus far, had been focused entirely on the swing states in this election -- because those are where the Trump campaign and allies have alleged fraud. Those are Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. None of those use DREs without VVPAT, and Nevada is the only one that uses DREs at all instead of BMDs or hand-marked ballots with a scanner. But I get your point. After all, a voter in Louisiana who voted for Trump on a DRE could make the (reasonable enough) assumption that the machines are the same everywhere else, and be more susceptible to the claim that Dominion machines stole the election undetectably in Georgia.

harry8 6y ago

Have voting machines shifted completely to 100% of them being machines used to mark traditional ballots that are stored and can be recounted in the traditional way? "Pretty sure" isn't the appropriate standard for an election. If not it's not close to being good enough and muddies the waters. All of them /must/ be. Without exception. Every single encroachment of the integrity of and understandability election affects all of them. The confusion matters. "Oh but it's actually ok in this case." is a totally different point that is irrelvant here. Fertile ground for conspiracy where there need be none is fertile ground. Donald and Neera for two of many examples have exploited that fertile ground for personal political gain. Condemn both for their craven and vile dishonesty. Fix the issues.

rspeele 6y ago
You're correct that "pretty sure" isn't the appropriate standard for an election. However, "pretty sure" isn't the standard any state uses to approve voting machines, just the standard I use to post comments on HN. And indeed, I was WRONG. https://verifiedvoting.org/verifier/#mode/navigate/map/ppEquip/mapType/normal/year/2020 https://verifiedvoting.org/verifier/#mode/navigate/map/ppEqu... The dark red category is "DREs without VVPAT for all voters". That's direct-recording electronic voting machines, without voter-verified paper audit trail. The voter enters their vote on a touchscreen and doesn't get to see the paper ballot that records it (and the recording may never be on paper at all). That sucks and I agree that type of machine should not be used. I have to admit I was surprised that those machines are still allowed in any state. My research into the voting machines, thus far, had been focused entirely on the swing states in this election -- because those are where the Trump campaign and allies have alleged fraud. Those are Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. None of those use DREs without VVPAT, and Nevada is the only one that uses DREs at all instead of BMDs or hand-marked ballots with a scanner. But I get your point. After all, a voter in Louisiana who voted for Trump on a DRE could make the (reasonable enough) assumption that the machines are the same everywhere else, and be more susceptible to the claim that Dominion machines stole the election undetectably in Georgia.