Reply #6: Your post sounds like there could NEVER be a machine you'd [View All]

[napi21]

feel comfortable with using. I just don't buy that. There will never be a way to guarantee an absolute perfect voting system, and there never has been.

Computers offer a lot of advantages that no other method can offer. With a computer, you can't ever have the butterfly ballot problem, you can't have duplicate votes for the same office, you can't have hanging chads. BUT I think what is needed is that source document I keep talking about. It could be the printed doc from the same computer the voter just used, that would print under a sealed clear viewer for the voter to see it, and then drop into a sealed secure box. THEN, several auditors representing all parties, would do random tests, the same as a CPA does with every Corp. audit, to insure there were NO errors. The way it's done in a corp. audit is that a sample of perhapse 10% is manually tested to insure all the data matches. The test ends there, UNLESS one error is found! If an error is found, the second test is expanded to 35%, and if any more errors are found, a 100% test is done!

I'm a firm believer in technology, and I really do think it's a good way to handle our elections, but the necessary controls must be incorporated as well.