A Damaging Paper Chase In Voting (Washington Post)

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

Here's an example of the kind of lame-ass arguments being made against paper ballot verified voting:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/07/AR2007090702030.html

A Damaging Paper Chase In Voting

By Timothy J. Ryan
Saturday, September 8, 2007; A15

When early jet aircraft crashed, Congress did not mandate that all planes remain propeller-driven. But this is the kind of reactionary thinking behind two bills that would require that all voting machines used in federal elections produce a voter-verifiable paper record. These bills -- the Ballot Integrity Act (S. 1487), and the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act (H.R. 811) -- are understandable backlashes to the myriad problems encountered in the implementation of electronic voting.

Paperless Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) machines, those where votes are entered into computers and stored only in computer memory banks, have encountered numerous failures and no longer inspire public trust. The response proposed in these Senate and House bills is for all such machines to produce paper receipts that voters can examine to ensure that their votes were correctly cast. The goal -- a double-check of the machine tally -- is worthy. Unfortunately, paper records are no panacea for the shortcomings of machines, and mandating paper removes the incentive for researchers to develop better electronic alternatives.

For proponents, the rationale for paper verification is simple: Voters have no way of knowing that a machine faithfully records their votes in its memory banks. If a machine were compromised by a hacker, for instance, its screen could be made to confirm the voter's intention to vote for "George Washington" while actually registering a vote for "Benedict Arnold." As such, machines must be made to produce paper records that voters can examine and election officials can retain. After an election, the votes in a machine's memory banks could be quickly tabulated, but they could also be compared with a tally of the paper ballots. Any discrepancy between the two could be an indication of tampering.

Paper verification looks good on, well, paper, but it is not the cure-all some of its proponents believe it to be. More than two centuries of U.S. elections have shown us that paper is at least as susceptible to chicanery as electronic records. Paper ballots can be modified, counterfeited or destroyed with relative ease. It is not at all clear that they constitute a more reliable medium than electronic records.

...

Timothy J. Ryan is a research assistant with the AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project.

The article actually starts out okay in these first few paragraphs, explaining, properly, why we should be concerned about the crappy Diebold variety voting systems, but go to the link and read the rest, it's short... then the strawmen begin. Because it's possible to tamper with paper ballots too, I guess they are no good eh? Then he cites disadvantages of paper verification without explaining why we shouldn't strive to have it anyway until better alternatives exist, if ever, talking only about the weak position that if we enshrine paper verification in law, it will remove some sort of free market incentive for scientists to develop alternative means. :eyes:

He talks about the fact that recounting paper ballots would be time consuming in the event of a close or contested election, but doesn't seem to consider the fact that in such a situation, arriving at an accurate result is the paramount consideration, and not being done in time for CBS to report the result by midnight.

The elephant in the room is that ANYONE truly interested in fair elections, no matter what side they might be a partisan for, should want proper ability to verify the result of a vote in the event of problems or controversy. To not want this, or to oppose this, suggests one believes that any cheating that might occur will be in the favor of one's own "team".

The readers posting in the comments section linked at the bottom of the article properly pile on the derision that this crappy article so richly deserves.

For years now the ease with which HAVA/Diebold slid into the system has really troubled me. Democrats, being at a political disadvantage at the time, should have scrutinized this and the nature of the planned systems closely and immediately identified the glaring problems (proprietary systems, no paper ballot to check, companies mostly aligned with Republican interests) and raised holy hell and prevented it ever happening, just for their own political self interest if nothing else. To have done nothing would seem to suggest either collective idiocy and incompetence from the entire party, or, more disturbing, being in on the game somehow. Perhaps some kind of collective post 9/11 cowardice and fear of challenging anything coming from the Republicans could account for it, I just don't know.

[RC]

1. "It is not at all clear that they constitute a more reliable medium than electronic records."

Ah, how about parchment, the forerunner to paper?

Parchment has been around for thousands of years. New findings can still be deciphered.

Now look at all the electronic storage systems. How many records are obsolete and cannot be read now because the machines don't even exist to read the records anymore?

[MissWaverly]

2. rigged machines = rigged elections

Florida was rigged thru deliberate manufacture and distribution of faulty ballots to dem areas, 2004 was rigged with the so
called metro surge for Bush, it never happened. Unless we have mechanisms to count votes by ballots w/o
secret privately owned software & perform recounts & prosecute election rigging, it's going to continue.
I have read that 6% of the Democrats today support Bush. In November of 2004, 16% of the Democrats supported Bush.
So how did he win? Democrats out-number republicans by almost a 2 to 1 majority. The only way they
"win" is through vote suppression, caging, manipulation of voter rolls and ballot box stuffing.

[TahitiNut]

3. There is no other civil document where, by law, it's validty cannot be assured by asking the person.

(With the limited exception of a Last Will and Testament.) It's a little thing we call a "secret ballot" that makes it unique and obviates many of the comparisons used by brain-dead noccons seeking to subvert democracy. Thus, there must be a degree of assurance in the process itself that EXCEEDS those applied to all other legal documents. Yet the assholes like this AEI drone would never allow such more mundane documents (like those that are notarized!) to be handled electronically without some tangible record.

We're clearly a nation of morons to even entertain such specious crap like the AEI is peddling.

[eppur_se_muova]

4. Only with electronic voting is it as easy to change a million votes as to change one.

It's a lot of work to change paper votes, and the greater the amount of work, the greater the chance of getting caught. No improvements in the technology will change this.

[BeFree]

5. Yep

All it takes is two lines of code... essentially an email worm, if you will, to alter millions of votes.

The only reason we have bushco is that paper was either not counted or was not used in those two elections. It all boils down to the lack of cheap paper... this last few years of hell.

Instead we've sent billions to a few companies that make the electronic counters; and they delivered us into hell.

Damn anyone who tries to keep us riding that hell bound train.