"Harold Burton" <hal.i.burton@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:hal.i.burton-EBD0BA.19365326102006@comcast.dca.giganews.com...

In article <OIOdnQhH3o_DqtzYnZ2dnUVZ_sSdnZ2d@comcast.com>,
FiveTwoAlphaOne <MikeOscarPapa.org> wrote:

Absolutely. It's a simple enough feature to have a paper log
that prints each vote on a roll which can't be tampered with.
When its all over compare paper tally with electronic.
If there are discrepencies, take the paper tally instead.

What do you do when the paper tally shows more votes than registered
voters?

<http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36425-2000Nov16?language=print
er>

you get some detectives in there and start investigating. why vote without
a record of your vote?

Harold Burton wrote:

In article <OIOdnQhH3o_DqtzYnZ2dnUVZ_sSdnZ2d@comcast.com>,
FiveTwoAlphaOne <MikeOscarPapa.org> wrote:

Absolutely. It's a simple enough feature to have a paper log
that prints each vote on a roll which can't be tampered with.
When its all over compare paper tally with electronic.
If there are discrepencies, take the paper tally instead.

What do you do when the paper tally shows more votes than registered
voters?

Then you fire a few election officials and do it all again
until the results are within the bounds of reason.

In article <1YidnbMJX_bEpdzYnZ2dnUVZ_o2dnZ2d@comcast.com>,
FiveTwoAlphaOne <MikeOscarPapa.org> wrote:

Harold Burton wrote:

In article <1161897218.665853.265130@i3g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>,
"Franklin Jefferson" <franklinjefferson@hotmail.com> wrote:

Not just a paper trail...

Yawn. "paper trail" makes a nice sound bite but means nothing, there
never was a complete paper trail, even with paper ballots, witness all
the stuffed ballot boxes the Demos used to steal elections.

Not if it's done properly.

Which it never is, that's why the Demos managed to steal so many
elections.

<http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36425-2000Nov16?language=print
er>

Yawn. "paper trail" makes a nice sound bite but means nothing, there
never was a complete paper trail, even with paper ballots, witness all
the stuffed ballot boxes the Demos used to steal elections.

Not just a paper trail, but also software that is verifiable-- the
software that counts the votes and reports the results should not be
secret.
This shouldn't be a partisan issue-- both sides should be concerned
that elections need to be open, and verifiable. Once the election is
over, there should be no grounds for one party to claim that the
results were fraud; it is in everybody's best interest to make sure
that this does not happen, by making sure that the vote counting-- and
the vote counting software-- is completely open and above-board.
from http://www.mndaily.com/articles/2006/09/27/69135
Voting machines need paper trail
September's primary illustrates the problems with new voting
technology.
fter two consecutive presidential elections ended in contention - most
dramatically the 2000 election, because of ballot irregularities - many
states and cities have switched to new voting technology to help ensure
"hanging chads" never again enter American political discourse. But, in
doing so, many have rushed ill-prepared into a system without
fail-safes to guarantee that every vote is counted properly.
The primaries in Ohio, Arkansas, Illinois and Maryland reported serious
malfunctions in the new machines. Some rebooted for no apparent reason,
others recorded votes for a candidate different than they were cast.
A study by Princeton University discovered that AccuVote, a product of
Diebold Election Systems - on which as many as 5 percent of Americans
will vote this fall - was easily broken into and contaminated with a
virus that would manipulate vote totals.
Representatives of Diebold have tried to silence these reports with
legal action and have refused to submit their products to additional
testing, but by now it is clear their products are deplorably
inadequate and don't come close to the security guarantee that is
necessary to justify their use.
About 40 percent of registered voters will use some kind of electronic
voting system this fall. Some states, Minnesota included, require
voting machines to create a paper trail, to provide assurance against
fraud or failure. There is no good reason not to institute such a
policy nationwide. Physical records of votes would be invaluable in a
contested election.
Updating voting technology to reduce irregularities is necessary, as
proved by the 2000 and 2004 elections. Indeed, electronic voting can
generate results faster and more accurately than previous systems. But
this paperless electronic system isn't good enough, especially
considering the fundamental flaws of some machines that have been
exposed in this year's primaries. We shouldn't substitute one bad
system for another.
Some attribute this quote to Josef Stalin: "He who votes decides
nothing; he who counts the votes decides everything." Let's be sure we
count correctly.
see also
http://www.abcnews.go.com/WNT/Technology/story?id=2596705&page=1
"Electronic Voting Machines Could Skew Elections."
By JAKE TAPPER, REBECCA ABRAHAMS and EDUARDO SUNOL
Oct. 22, 2006 - Cheryl Kagan, a former Maryland Democratic
legislator, was shocked when she opened her mail Wednesday morning.
Inside, she discovered three computer discs. With them was an anonymous
letter saying the discs contained the secret source code for
vote-counting that could be used to alter the votes cast through
Maryland's new electronic voting machines.
"My understanding is that with these disks a malicious person could
skew the outcome of an election," Kagan said.
Diebold, the company that makes the voting machines, told ABC News,
"These discs do not alter the security of the Diebold touch-screen
system in any way," because election workers can set their own
passwords.
But ABC News has obtained an independent report commissioned by the
state of Maryland and conducted by Science Applications International
Corporation revealing that the original Diebold factory passwords are
still being used on many voting machines.
The SAIC study also shows myriad other security flaws, including
administrative over-ride passwords that cannot be changed by local
officials but can be used by hackers or those who have seen the discs.
The report further states that one of the high risks to the system
comes if operating code discs are lost, stolen or seen by unauthorized
parties - precisely what seems to have occurred with the discs sent
to Kagan, who worries that the incident indicates the secret source
code is not that difficult to obtain.
"Certainly, just tweaking a few votes in a couple of states could
radically change the outcome of our policies for the coming year," she
said.
Worry That Elections Could Be Hacked
Computer experts and government officials have voiced serious concerns
that if these machines malfunction, no paper record will exist for a
recount. Even worse is the fear that an election could be hacked.
Princeton University researchers using an Accuvote TS - a touch
screen version of the Diebold machine - showed how easy it would be
to deploy a virus that would, in seconds, flip the vote of any
election.
"We're taking the vote-counting process and we're handing it over to
these companies - and we don't know what happens inside these
machines," said Edward Felten, a professor and a researcher at
Princeton's Center for Information Technology Policy, which ran the
study.
Diebold called the Princeton study "unrealistic and inaccurate."
But many computer scientists, including cyber-security expert Stephen
Spoonamore, disagree, pointing out that the Accuvote TS was used in the
2004 presidential election and is still used in at least four states
- including all machines in Georgia and Maryland. Spoonamore said the
hack attacked the operating system layer of software and would affect
any touch screen machine built by Diebold.
Diebold argues that the software from the 2004 elections has been
updated to fix any possible security problems. But Spoonamore is not
convinced, saying Diebold's "system is utterly unsecured. The entire
cyber-security community is begging them to come back to reality and
secure our nation's voting."
There is also the matter of computer glitches. In primary elections and
test runs this year, there were glitches with electronic voting
machines from Diebold and other companies.
Machines malfunctioned in Texas, where 100,000 votes were added.
In California, directions for voters with vision problems came out in
Vietnamese.
And in Maryland, screens froze and memory cards went missing.
Gov. Robert Ehrlich, a Republican running for reelection, advised
residents to vote by absentee ballot because he had no confidence in
the machines.
"I don't care if we paid half a billion dollars or $1 billion," Ehrlich
said. "If it's going to put the election at risk, there's no price tag
for a phony election or a fraudulent election."
Many are concerned about how the confusing technical issues will be
handled by poll workers, who tend to be senior citizens and who are not
necessarily tech-savvy.
Electronic voting machines were supposed to be the solution to the
paper ballot problems from the 2000 presidential election. But to many
critics, America's voting system has gone out of the frying pan and
into the fire.