BBV demonstration in my workplace!

[KamaAina]

Among other things, we sponsor a support group for elderly people who are blind (or have low vision). They arranged for our Office of Elections to demonstrate Hawai'i's new BBV machines.

Ask yourself, "Why isn't MY state doing it this way?":

* Our machines come from Hart Intercivic. Not ES&S, not Sequoia, and most certainly not Diebold. The subject, er, just happened to come up :-) and the chief elections official (a holdover from the pre-Lingle era) replied that he thought the Diebold exec's statement about "delivering the election to the pResident" was "stupid and arrogant"!

* Ours are being used only to assist voters with disabilities. That IS what they're supposed to be for, under HAVA, right? We're going to have one or more machines in each precinct, but the other booths will still have paper ballots, read by an optical scanner.

* The Hart Intercivic machines store an image of each ballot, much like your document server at work does. It's not quite a paper trail, but it's something.

I can also tell you that several members of the group (and agency staff :-) ) raised concerns about vote security and so forth. The word is getting out there!

[burythehatchet]

1. I Looooooooove Hawaiians

:hug:

[Zan_of_Texas]

3. Better than average.

Hart has stayed out of the limelight, unlike Diebold. That doesn't mean their stuff is trustworthy. It doesn't mean they don't have highly partisan individuals involved, either. Hart InterCivic is a privately-held company, but one of their major investors, Tom Hicks, is also one of the biggest cheeses at Clear Channel Communications, which owns 1200 radio stations and has engineered pro-war, pro-Bush rallies.

None of the electronic voting is trustworthy without a paper ballot confirmation that the voter can see.

And, none of it can be trusted without COUNTING that paper, in surprise random robust audits. In public.

The same is true of optical scan. Optical scan, like an SAT test where you fill in a bubble with a pencil or pen, is counted by machines. The machines can be programmed.

Gotta have surprise, random, robust counts by hand to make sure even the optical scan is doing it right. They can be rigged!

Go to www.votersunite.org to read more. The real solution is there.

The Hawaii solution you cite is better than the average state, but it's not all the way there.

[ramblin_dave]

2. The so-called ballot image is a fraud,

don't be even partly satisfied with it. If hacking occurs then this image is bogus too and having it means nothing. Insist on getting a printer to print each ballot during the voting even if vision impaired persons can't see the printout. Others who use the machine will see it and keep the system honest.

[Zan_of_Texas]

4. Yes. Dave is right too.

A ballot image inside the machine (and they say they have records in TRIPLICATE) can be manipulated.

[KamaAina]

5. Hmmm... it's coming to me now...

you'd have to be better prepared than the average hacker, armed with phony ballot images to upload...

but then, no average hacker would be doing anything like this...

:scared: :scared: :scared:

[ramblin_dave]

6. The image isn't really an image

The voting machine manufacturers use the words "ballot" and "image" for PR purposes, to make buyers think they are getting something equivalent to a paper ballot or at least the image, like a photograph, of a ballot. But the image they speak of is not like a jpg or gif file image. All they do is store records of each voter's set of choices so thay can be printed out or viewed together, perhaps formatted to look like a traditional ballot. But there is no actual image in the machine. A hacker would only need to change the stored records with no need to upload any type of image file.

[harmonyguy]

7. These ballot images you speak of.....

...what are they an image of?

Stop and think about his for a moment.

Are they an image of a piece of paper that you voted on?

I'm guessing that they probably aren't, in which case, if there is no piece of paper to image, then what exactly IS the image of? Is it a computer generated representation of the way in which the computer interpreted the voter's intent, based on the computer's programmed instructions?

Is there any reason to believe that would it have any more integrity than any other report generated from the same machine?

Does the voter have the opportunity to verify that what IS recorded on the image is in fact what they selected, or do the images possibly get printed long after the voter has left the polling station?

If the voter gets to see the printout and confirm its validity before depositing it in the ballot box, and if the now voter verified paper ballot is counted by hand for any recounts, THEN yes, it's a step in the right direction.

If the images are generated by the computer, you'd be amazed at how they can be manipulated, without anyone being 'armed with phony ballot images'.

HG