Voter Verified Paper Ballots, or VVPB

[kster]

(One more run for the new DUers).

Paper Ballot Concepts In a Computerized World

Time, Access to equipment, Observation, Evidence

– They won’t mean what they used to

Snip....3. The proposed law requires voters to have an opportunity to verify and change their votes before the ballot is cast. Regrettably this only refers to the screen display and the paper printout of the voter’s choices (the voter-verifiable paper ballot, or VVPB). The proposed law assumes that the invisible, electronic ballot in the computer is the same as what is displayed on the screen and what is printed on the VVPB. If you voted on a simple paper ballot with a pencil (or a ballot-marking machine for voters with special needs), you wouldn’t have three potentially-different versions of your ballot. If the VVPB were the ballot of record, it wouldn’t matter if the screen and the electronic ballot were wrong, or if the electronic ballot was falsified just after you press the “OK” button. This is because what you verify on paper is what would be counted, and the paper can’t change itself and observers can prevent a wrongdoer from tampering with it. But our proposed new law makes the electronic ballot the ballot of record, even though no one can verify or observe it, but a wrongdoer in some remote place can modify it at his leisure after it is cast.

Snip....The proposed law requires vendors to submit a copy of their software for escrow, to be examined under court supervision in case of litigation. But since no one can control what software is in the machine during elections, escrow software may be of little use in an investigation of irregularities.



Electronic voting surely brings us into a topsy-turvy world, and our law and our Boards of Elections aren’t ready for it. Citizen activists are pushing for adoption of an alternative technology that our proposed new law allows, paper ballots with optical scanners and ballot-marking devices for voters with special needs. The advantage of paper ballots is that everyone understands how they work. Observers can observe. The ballots won’t change while they sit in a ballot box. Wrongdoers would need to show up personally to get their hands on the ballots, and we could catch them at it. No one could falsify an entire state election in a few nanoseconds. We should go with the paper ballots.

http://www.wheresthepaper.org/PaperBallotConcepts.htm