Some of you have been on this site for over a decade.

[Kelvin Mace]

387. We had brought up the issue of "foreign" influence

on voting machines back in the day when we uncovered the fact that a portion of the code in Diebold machines was written by an Eastern European with a felony conviction.

In a position paper I wrote back in 2006 (I think) I stated that the US Government should actually make the machines and write the code itself, that voting machines were "sensitive" technology that had NO business being made by "private" concerns, foreign or domestic. Several projects were discussed in the LINUX community to write an open source voting system, but it simply petered out

That is one area I wouldn't mind getting back into myself, but somebody has to get me a grant, since my days of self-financing are over. While I worked in the movement I never took any money except to cover gas and hotels, despite being offered a few jobs by voting machine companies and their lobbyists to help "fix" the problem. I refused these offers since it meant my actions immediately would be impaired by taking a paycheck from the people I was trying to reform. So, I always paid my own way. These days I am not as young as I was and can't afford, literally, that kind of work.

Anyway, even that suggestion (taking voting machines away from the private sector) was fraught with controversy as the more conspiracy minded folk thought we would be playing into "their hands", so what do you do?

The lack of a national standard on voting machines is still a problem, but not one I see getting solved in the current political environment.

In NC we established a model law that other states have followed, some closely, some not so closely. But realize that no paper-based system, whether it is hand-counted or computer counted is worth a damn without strict audit controls. In accounting, it doesn't matter if you are writing in a ledger like Bob Cratchit or running on Quickbooks, unless someone is auditing the books, the numbers can be fiddled. Same thing applies for elections.

So again, ultimately we have to ask how successful were we? Well, we (about a 10-20 DUers, the number varied over time) took on the entire U.S. voting machine industry, with billions at their disposal and more lawyers than we had by about 200:1 (when we had a lawyer). We endured ridicule, legal threats, criminal threats, press indifference and public ignorance. After we were done, one company had left the business entirely, selling its voting division for a fraction of what it paid. Studies had been conducted on various voting machines at prestigious universities backing up our finding. Laws were re-written and new ones written to address the issue. And just as importantly, the story was covered in ALL major electronic and paper media and the public as a whole became more aware of the problem.

The major problem these days is public apathy in the face of more overt threats to voting like Citizens United and voter suppression by the legislatures. Again, why risk a felony rap to tamper with the vote when you can stop the people you don't like from voting in the first place?

So, we are back to the question: Did we win, lose, or draw in the Great Paper Ballot War? I am, admittedly biased, but I did "serve in the war" and was a consequential participant in a few memorable battles. I see it as a win, with that war being pretty much over but for the mopping up. In the meantime, the Great Voter Suppression War is now the hotly contested war, with my war fading in importance. If we emerge victorious from this war, we made find ourselves fighting Paper Ballot War 2: Electric Bugaloo as the emphasis returns to impeding accurate vote counts.

...if the average person can not oversee every part of the election process with no special expertise it is not free, fair or democratic

Well, what the "average person" can do has changed over time. At one time (within the last century even) You had voters who could not read nor write, which would have made them unable to oversee a election, even when the ballots were counted by hand. The next generation of voters will be far more computer literate than previous generations. Anyone who insists all ballots must be counted by hand is being unrealistic unless they can explain how we will change all 3,000+ legal standards for conducting elections (when I served on the NC Select Committee on E-Voting I was given a the book of NC's laws that govern elections. It was over 800 pages long, and the law we brought into existence added about a half dozen more pages).

Until that question answered, it is logistically impossible to count the ballots accurately and in a timely manner, thus computers must be used. If they are to be used, making sure that no one has their "thumb on the scale" is not that hard to do, but requires LOCAL voters to fight the battle. Those of us who fought the Great Paper Ballot War set the ball rolling by getting the issue national attention, digging up plenty of evidence that paperless voting was a bad idea to be avoided and even getting actual laws changed/written to address the problem. The responsibility for dealing with this problem at the county level is now in the hands of the citizens of those counties.

So, that is why I believe our part (the folks who worked on this issue for about 6 years on DU) is done, and we can call it a win.