Problem

Travis Roy travis at scootz.net
Wed Apr 21 10:53:01 EDT 2004


Mark Komarinski wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 21, 2004 at 10:37:45AM -0400, Travis Roy wrote:
> 
>>That was kind of my point. How do you know those things are not flawed 
>>in some way, or fixed? How do you know if it counted your vote 
>>correctly? Forget about new fangled computers, I'm talking about 
>>exsisting systems. What if something happened and it switches Dems for 
>>Reps or something like that.. Unless a recount is demanded we would 
>>really never know.
> 
> 
> Mechanical voting machines have the same problem (hanging chads?).
> At least in the case of mechanical voting or scanning, the original
> ballot still exists and can be counted.  In purely electronic
> voting, there is NO record other than a bunch of bytes.

Okay, but say you have a printout from the electronic voting machine. 
First, how many people are actually going to look at it to make sure 
it's correct before doing whatever you need to to with it, second, you 
have to make sure that it's not a cheap thermal printer or something 
that will be hard to read.

Just like Florida, there will probably STILL be problems even with a 
hard copy (not fully punched card).. If they pick the wrong stuff to 
print to we'll have very faded printouts or people that didn't realize 
they never checked the printout until it was to late.



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