On Tue, 12 Aug 2008 17:47:05 -0600 Kathy Dopp wrote:
Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2008 01:16:29 -0400
From: Dave Ketchum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [EM] Why We Shouldn't Count Votes with Machines
Responses concentrate on fact that present DREs and paper
ballots have problems, and do not consider fixing the DREs.
As virtually all (all I know) independent computer scientists (who do
not profit from certifying or working for VVV's - vulture voting
vendors) agree, it is *not* possible to "fix" DREs because their
fundamental design is flawed. I.e. Any machine cast or machine printed
record of ballots is not going to work.
"fundamental design is flawed"? If so, obvious response is to redo
the design.
The flaws of DRE paper roll ballot printers include (there is a much
longer list):
Studies show that fewer than 30% of voters check machine-printed paper
ballot roll records and fewer than 30% of voters who check (or about
10% of all voters) accurately proofread their machine-printed paper
ballot roll records to detect any errors, so that a programmer can
switch up to 90% of available target votes in a way that no audit can
detect.
I do not see how an auditor could know of and tailor the audit to the
particular ballots the programmer did not switch.
Also there is a "two strikes and you are out" rule that
prevents the most diligent voter from having a machine-printed paper
ballot record that matches the voter's choices. A voter can only
cancel ballot casting twice due to an incorrect printed paper roll
record. On the third try, the voter receives an error message on the
screen warning that the voter has only one more chance to cast their
ballot. On the third try, the paper roll ballot record whizzes
quickly inside the canister WITHOUT GIVING THE VOTER A CHANCE TO SEE
THE PAPER RECORD!
What does it matter? How come the redesign failed to attend to
properly recording the vote?
--
Any machine-printed paper ballot record will have the same flaws, and
electronic video, audio, or pictorial verification systems are even
worse.
Huh? There seems to be general agreement that present DREs need
replacing. I only ask that we try for usable replacements.
I also cannot get excited over the machine-printing you mention -
proper equipment should work correctly and not need such (except,
perhaps, to please nervous voters).
Shamos is considered a rogue among computer scientists and I am fairly
certain that Shamos does not have any degree in computer science, as
is true of most "experts" who support DREs.
The persons who rebutted Shamos' articles *do* have formal training
and degrees in computer science.
Crane's paper does not explicitly mention Shamos or its authors having
such a degree - it does mention involvement in voting.
For one Crane author, Edward Cherlin, I read of working on affordable
software and hardware for voting around the world.
Hopefully he is intending such to be adequate.
Do not know if such a degree was available when I was in college -
could not have learned much presently usable. Remember a tidbit about
weather forecasting. Could give a computer data to predict for
tomorrow - by the time program was done you could look out the window
and see if it got it right.
Remember a problem later at work - too much data for Fortran to
fit in available memory. Heard of a new language - Jovial. Available
staff was engineers who could hardly spell "program" and assembly
programmers who could hardly spell "compiler". I successfully
installed compiler and taught staff for project to use.
Later - task could not execute in available time - invented new,
faster, instructions then used in available computers.
Cheers,
Kathy
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED] people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek
Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026
Do to no one what you would not want done to you.
If you want peace, work for justice.
----
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
