"Grand Theft Auto" game and American democracy

[Land Shark]

For the longest time, it never occurred to me that computers used in American elections were likely to have, er, “undocumented features”, but then it also never occurred to me that pressing a few keys on Grand Theft Auto’s program would turn it into a porn program instead of a car stealing criminal adventure.

In both cases, there's lots of money to be made from providing, er, "undocumented features".

State regulators usually have a short list of features in a statute that are required for computer programs that secretly count votes, but I haven't seen any statutes that provide that NO OTHER UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES ARE ALLOWABLE. So, in a "free" country what the law doesn't prohibit it allows, right?

For example, press the yellow button on the Sequoia Edge twice, and you are in manual mode and can vote as much as you want. In fact, i have a manual for pollworkers telling the pollworkers that voters will have to be observed while they vote to insure they don't vote more than once. Undocumented features are a reality from the American public's perspective: the public simply has no idea....

[Eric J in MN]

1. Low tech voting has the best security.

Paper ballots, publicly hand-counted at the polling place on Election Night.

[Land Shark]

2. With results posted at each polling location and independently reported

such that any other person or party can add up the counts themselves in just as direct a fashion as election-central....