Computers do well at performing the tasks they are properly told to
perform - better than humans given the same directions. Thus it would
make sense to direct the computers and expect them to do what is
needed accurately.
Still, we sometimes wonder exactly what the computers have been told
to do.
I keep remembering a case where it took me some studying to sort out
how a computer program seemed to perform magic:
Got a diskette and was told it could not be copied - because the owner
of the program wanted to get paid for each new diskette the program
was copied to.
Curious, though not intending theft, I copied all the records to
another diskette and tried running it.
New diskette knew it was not an original, and refused to run. Looked
at records on the diskette - there were no instructions in the copied
records to do such a test - anyway, presumably the records had been
copied accurately, so their content could not indicate this was a copy.
Look more carefully - there was an odd collection of odd words. Turns
out that, when it was time to check, this collection became
instructions to look at the noise next to a particular record on the
diskette and see if the "password" was there, as it would be on the
original. After making the test, put those instructions back into
their hidden form.
Dave Ketchum
On Apr 28, 2012, at 9:28 PM, Paul Kislanko wrote:
That wasn’t Dave who said that, it was me.
My point was that what is it you’re going to count by hand? The tape
printed out by the machine I voted on?
If I didn’t hand-fill-out a ballot you’ve no way to know whether the
ballots you’re counting by hand match what I told the machine was my
vote.
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]
] On Behalf Of Michael Ossipoff
Sent: Friday, April 27, 2012 9:55 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [EM] Dave Ketchum: Handcounts
Dave:
You said:
And that gets to why I think "hand counting" is no longer useful as
"verification" - what is there to "hand count" when there are no paper
ballots except those printed by the machines that we're auditing?
[endquote]
Handcounting was used even before there were voting machines!
I kid you not.
Mike Ossipoff
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