Security/verifiability of paper voting records

[CantGetFooledAgain]

I've become very concerned that the paper records, where they exist (i.e. everywhere except where paperless touchscreens were used) may themselves be vulnerable.

How hard would it be, after changing the election results in a GEMS system, to create a second paper trail that verifies those results? This second, counterfeit paper trail would be substituted for the real one and be used when a recount was requested.

What measures are in place to ensure that this kind of fraud does not occur, or if it does, that it can be uncovered through forensic means?

[BlueDog2u]

1. Good Question

To me such fraud seems infinitely more complicated. Messing with the GEMs tabulator only takes a few quick hacks by one or a few people. But preparing a whole set of false paper ballots seems vastly more complicated -- involving first producing a complete set of ballots and then marking them to correspond to the fake tabulations. That doesn't mean it can't be done, or that precautions need not be taken against it in this brave new world of fraud, but that if it were done, it seems much more likely to be discovered.

[CantGetFooledAgain]

2. Definitely very complicated, but essential to success

I agree that it would take a huge effort to do it, and what I would like to hear more than anything else are the reasons that it would be impossible.

But anybody that tampered electronically with the voting results would have to know that a legitimate recount would make the fraud clearly apparent. They would also know that recounts would be demanded, as they have been in Ohio.

If I were doing this, I would make damn sure that I covered my tracks.