[ale] Re: Vote Today - Message from Marie

[Stanaland, Brian]

What I think would be best, if you have to use an electronic voting machine,
would be for the machine to produce a printout of your selections that you
would turn in.

-----Original Message-----
From: Joseph A Knapka [mailto:jknapka at earthlink.net]
To: ale at ale.org
Sent: Tuesday, November 05, 2002 11:20 AM
To: Stanaland, Brian
Cc: 'ale at ale.org'
Subject: Re: [ale] Re: Vote Today - Message from Marie


Stanaland, Brian wrote:
> Saw a story on Fox last night.  The machines do print out your selections.
> The paper stays in the machine, though.  At least it's another step in the
> right direction.  I sure would like to have seen the printout!

If you can't visually verify that the vote you cast was the one printed,
the fact that the machine is allegedly printing your selection is of
no value. Furthermore, even if you *could* confirm that the printout
matched your ballot, there's nothing stopping the machine from producing
a second, hidden printout with whatever votes the Hidden Masters want;
the printout you "confirm" might go directly into the circular file.
As long as what the machine says it recorded matches the contents of
*some* piece of paper, people will assume there's been no fraud.

Granted, there's a lot of paranoia in that scenario, but since
secure voting protocols exist, it's just stupid not to use them.

Cheers,

-- Joe (who will vote the old-fashioned way here in El Paso)

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