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Paper for Voting
Legislation pending in Congress would ban the use of paperless electronic voting machines in the 2008 election. When John Dougall proposed the legislation in Utah requiring a paper audit trail, there were some naysayers. John’s looking pretty smart now since his legislation ensured that Utah didn’t buy machines it would now have to throw out or modify.
Posted by windley on December 8, 2006 10:45 AM
Comment from John Burik at December 12, 2006 8:00 PM
Phil,
I'm hoping the IT community and the statistics folks will be able to get through to the folks looking at the "voter-verified paper record" as a silver bullet.
In Ohio 2004 we passed legislation mandating a voter-veriifed paper audit trail (VVPAT) and kept paperless Diebold DREs out of the state. However . . . what we learned from extensive study of the spring primary in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) was that at least ten percent of the paper records (VVPAT rolls) were not usable. They failed to print, were over-printed, smudged, torn, and so forth.
While ANY paper record is better than none--certainly Allen in VA, Jennings in FL, and McKinney in GA would support that idea (fall 2006)--the paper record in the real world has not panned out.
Second--and this goes beyond the scope of your original post, the folks who put together the Holt bill (HR 550) have written into it a terribly ineffective audit.
My fear--having worked election reform for the past three years--is that poor legislation will make the situation worse, much as the first HAVA actually increased disenfranchisement via provisional ballots--the exact opposite of its intent (22% were thrown out in Ohio 2004).
So . . . I hope you'll keep following this issue.
--John in Cincinnati
Comment from John Burik at December 12, 2006 8:01 PM
Phil,
I'm hoping the IT community and the statistics folks will be able to get through to the folks looking at the "voter-verified paper record" as a silver bullet.
In Ohio 2004 we passed legislation mandating a voter-veriifed paper audit trail (VVPAT) and kept paperless Diebold DREs out of the state. However . . . what we learned from extensive study of the spring primary in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) was that at least ten percent of the paper records (VVPAT rolls) were not usable. They failed to print, were over-printed, smudged, torn, and so forth.
While ANY paper record is better than none--certainly Allen in VA, Jennings in FL, and McKinney in GA would support that idea (fall 2006)--the paper record in the real world has not panned out.
Second--and this goes beyond the scope of your original post, the folks who put together the Holt bill (HR 550) have written into it a terribly ineffective audit.
My fear--having worked election reform for the past three years--is that poor legislation will make the situation worse, much as the first HAVA actually increased disenfranchisement via provisional ballots--the exact opposite of its intent (22% were thrown out in Ohio 2004).
So . . . I hope you'll keep following this issue.
--John in Cincinnati
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