[Apologetics] Re: Electronic Vote Systems

[Stuart D. Gathman]

On Sat, 9 Oct 2004, Art Kelly wrote:

> I was concerned about punch card systems and scanned
> ballots long before Florida.

Whatever your problems with punch cards and scanned ballots,
they have one fundamentally important feature required by law in Florida and
many other states:  there is something to recount.

Virginia used to have electromechanical systems.  The votes were counted
by electro-mechanical counters like on pinball machines.  When placing
your vote, you heard a satisfying 'thunk' as the counter got incremented.
If it didn't go "thunk", you knew the machine was broken, and could 
complain.  You relied on the buttons being wired to the proper counters,
but that is something that observers from both parties could check at
the polling places.  The vote counts were manually read off the counters (like
an odometer) at the end of the day, and submitted to the next level for
summary.  While you didn't have individual ballots to count, you had 
physical objects which held a very stable record of the counts, and the
voter had reasonable feedback.

The problem with the new electronic systems is not that they are electronic,
but that their design provides no accountability or auditing.

-- 
	      Stuart D. Gathman <stuart at bmsi.com>
    Business Management Systems Inc.  Phone: 703 591-0911 Fax: 703 591-6154
"Confutatis maledictis, flamis acribus addictis" - background song for
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