For the love of ________ (insert diety)

[Andy_Stephenson]

Pleasse stop asking for a goddamned paper trail. Ask for what you want!

a Voter Verified Paper Ballot!

When no statutory definition for a term exists, the first fallback in all courts is to consult the definition in Blacks Law Dictionary. a compelling case can be made for the fact that ballot is defined in Blacks Law Dictionary...Paper is defined in Blacks Law Dictionary but "Trail" is completely absent. Collectively the definition for ballot and the definition for paper generate a clear and easily understood legal definition of the paper ballot needed to ensure the integrity of our vote. Paper trail produces no such record.


Jesus, Mary and Joseph...

Rant off

[greatauntoftriplets]

1. Listen to him!!!!

He knows what he's talking about!

[Darkhawk32]

2. But Andy......

I use a paper trail here....

:hurts:

[signmike]

3. LOL -- the job's not finished...

...until the paper work's done.

[Andy_Stephenson]

4. That is the only place you should use a paper

trail.

thanks for the laugh.

[hootinholler]

5. And yer oh so cute with that trail tailing you.

BTW, Andy gots it right.

-Hoot

[fooj]

6. our country!

:loveya:

[hootinholler]

7. Howard..

Our father who art in heaven, Howard be thy name...

GDRFC,
-Hoot

[BamaBecky]

8. I got it! And I have been saying it that way and telling others to! We

really need bumper stickers.......:-)

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

9. God, Goddess, Creator, Ascended Masters, Archangels, Guardian Angels

and my poor belabored, spirit guides....... ;)

(The Reiki Master in me just couldn't resist)

[Wilms]

10. Don't forget "The Force". n/t

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

11. OMG Wilms! I new I left something out! To quote Mel Brooks.

"May the Schwartz be with you." ;)

:hi:

[MadisonProgressive]

20. Now that you mention it - I feel a disturbance in the Schwartz!

[NationalEnquirer]

12. What exactly is...

A voter verified paper ballot.
I mean, how does that differ than say a punch ballot or an optical scan ballot, or can they be the same thing as long as the voter can LOOK at it and know whom he has voted for?

[Andy_Stephenson]

13. voter verified paper ballot

says what it means.

Voter Verified

means...voter looked at it and confirmed his choices prior to voting

Paper Ballot...

Do I really need to define that?

Optiscan or punch card...as long as the voter has the ability to confirm his/her choices prior to placing the ballot into a ballot box.

[Ashamed_American]

14. Is it wrong to love a man (Andy)

that I don't personally know? What a minute, me being a man, I'm pretty sure in America right now that IS wrong.

www.blackeyedsundays.com

[Amaryllis]

15. Are you saying what I think and hope you are saying, which is bag the damn

electronic machines altogether and just go for paper ballots PERIOD, whether they are optiscan or punchcard, etc. ? Like in OR we have paper ballots that are scanned? When people talk about paper trail I always assume they are referring to e-voting, and having something on paper the voter could verify, and I thought what you meant was these need to be called BALLOTS i order to have any legal weight, but from this post where you talk about optiscan or punchcard, it sounds like you are just talking about paper ballots PERIOD? WHich is sure what I want.

[Carolab]

16. You are a little confused, I think.

Optiscan and punchcard ballots REQUIRE MACHINES/TABULATORS to count the votes. We don't want punchcards, that's for sure, with all the problems with design. And optiscan is meant to be "read" by a scanner/tabulator. There is a ballot prototype being suggested by the Open Voting Consortium. You just click on your choices and print out the ballot for confirmation. I believe they are proposing a hand count of these ballots as well. Go here for more information: www.openvotingconsortium.org Scroll to the bottom of this first page for the "web demo".

Personally, I don't know why we can't just check off our choice, put the ballot in a transparent box, UNDER SCRUTINY, and then hand count, IN FULL PUBLIC VIEW.

This isn't "rocket science"; it's been made (deliberately) WAY too complicated. NO MACHINES.

[In Truth We Trust]

19. You are absolutely right and I support your position Carolab

Paper ballots and Hand counts NOW!

[Amaryllis]

22. No, not confused about any of that. I understand all that. What was

confusing me was Andy's statement "Optiscan or punch card...as long as the voter has the ability to confirm his/her choices prior to placing the ballot into a ballot box." I was trying to clarify HIS position. It sounded like he was saying whatever method, as long as the voter can confirm his choice, which I can't believe he would be advocating with his background. In my mind, when people talk about replacing the term paper trail with the term paper ballot, they are still talking about voting machines. I really couldn't tell if he was saying paper ballots period and no voting machines, which is what I was hoping. I am not sure where Andy is at on tabulators; he said hand counting is very difficult in places like King County because there are so many splits. I don't know what a split is.

Believe me, I am fully aware of all you say. I am very active in Oregon working with a group to deal with our system, which many think is so great, but we have Diebold and ES and S tabulators, and Sequia scanners.
We have a lot of work to do. We have a very honest SOS and other election officials so our system has worked pretty well but it shouldn't be dependent on the honesty of our officials for security.

One of the things we are researching is the efficacy of hand counting because our ballots are so complex; between ballot measures and candidates for city commissioner and judicial nominees, etc. we can have thirty or some odd items on a single ballot, different from one county or district to another. We all want hand counting but I don't know if it is practical with that kind of ballot, but we have yet to find a system other than hand counting that we trust. So then the question becomes, do we change the ballot, and if so, how? Anyone have suggestions?

[Carolab]

27. Oh, I see....

Yes, Andy has me confused for the same reason(s).

Andy: Please explain yourself. Do you mean we should ABANDON machines in favor of hand counted paper ballots, or do you think we should use optiscan ballots and change the way the machines count them?

Or are you talking about some other solution?

[Amaryllis]

24. Open voting consortium is still talking e-voting. Do you trust what they

are promoting? I just read their section on software...Chuck Herrin says there is no way to make e-voting secure.

[Carolab]

26. Yes, it is confusing. That's why I wanted others to see it.

Looks like it involves "computers" to me, too!

[sepia_steel]

31. Yes, Ma'am!

And that's exactly how it should be done!

[Zan_of_Texas]

18. Hey Andy!!!!

I was just wondering what trouble -- the good kind -- you were causing.

I heard Andy say this before -- oh, many moons ago.

The point is, "trail" can be twisted into god (etc.) knows what.
Something with Roy Rogers and a horse maybe.....

"ballot" would be LEGAL -- if there's a discrepancy between electronic whatever and the PAPER BALLOT, the PAPER BALLOT trumps.

I don't think all of us are in agreement exactly what the ideal system looks like yet. My view is:


Anything that is not human-observable throughout the entire chain of voting and counting is not appropriate or secure.

--Same day registration, as is done in Minnesota and other states.
{Study in Cleveland showed that 1 in 20 registrations did not make it onto the voter rolls accurately. If projected, this problem alone could have endangered 35,000 votes in the state of Ohio. http://www.caseohio.org/CaseOhio/Registration_Problems_Study.htm}

--Ink a finger as in Venezuela, to prevent voting twice that day.

--Absentee and overseas and military voting are problematic -- I admit to having no solution to these. However, internet voting is absolutely not an answer.

--Boot the DREs out of the polling places - no electronic tabulation of votes period. Use machines as paper ballot generators only.
Districts that bought them can sell them to districts that don't have them, so those districts can have one or two per polling place for disabled voters. (An accessibility expert tells me they don't work as well as some would have you believe anyway.)

--Boot the opscan and punch cards out also. The tabulation, especially with modem transmission, can be an invitation for fraud. Hand count in public, in front of video cameras. Like Canada and some European countries. This means the precincts must be manageable size, not many thousands.

--National holiday for voting.

--Felons not in jail should automatically be restored their rights to vote.

--Full-time election officials should not chair campaigns or campaign for candidates running for offices under their jurisdiction.

--Campaign finance - continue efforts to establish public financing, and keep corporate money out of campaigns.

{Here's more on that from "Taking It to the States," 01/20/2005, The Nation, by Katrina vanden Heuvel,
http://www.thenation.com/edcut/index.mhtml?bid=7&pid=2137 --
Promoting Clean Elections: In November, the Maine state legislature approved the Clean Election Act, which provides public financing to those candidates who refuse to use private donations or their own money to finance their campaigns. Well over 50% of Maine's legislators have run "clean money" campaigns. Voters in Arizona and Vermont have recently approved "clean money" ballot initiatives, and Arizona became the first state <http://www.stateaction.org/issues/issue.cfm?issue=CleanElections.xml> to elect a governor under the clean money system. }


Here's one good piece on what reform might look like:

How To Fix a Broken Electoral System In Six Easy Steps

by Bruce F. Cole
Published on Friday, November 19, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1119-29.htm

[bear425]

17. Andy, please help me here...

I will be going to my first Dem party meeting on Wednesday under the impression that election reform is the top issue. Our group, originally volunteers during the election, will be forming a sub-group in order to work on election reform.

I want to understand something: even if we have "voter verified paper ballots", won't that not matter if they are put through optical scan machines. It is my understanding that the only time the paper ballots will be counted by had is if the election is very close. With the optical scan machines, the outcome can be manipulated so that their will never be a need for a hand count.

Gotta leave the house now, but please shed some light when you can. Feel free to PM me if you care to. Thanks in advance.

[Beth in VT]

21. Andy, why do you think it's okay for the machines to do the counting?

Can they really be trusted?

[Amaryllis]

23. My question exactly. Is there ANY form of machine counting that is secure?

[4democracy]

30. Why not have each precinct count its own ballots?

A precinct is not usually that many people. A thousand votes could be counted in very little time by 6 election officals. If the precincts are bigger than that,just add additional ones or add officials to existing ones.

[crispini]

33. You're kidding, right?

We have THREE THOUSAND voters in our precinct, and we are about average for the metropolian area I am in. We had five judges and clerks in the last election, and it is HARD to find people to work the polling places. Polls closed at seven and we were still there until 8:30 and that's NOT doing a handcount, just closing out the optical scan machine and taking care of all of the paperwork.

How many people here took a day off work to go work their polling place in the last election?

[starmaker]

25. paper

no vote left unrecountable

lets not forget www.wheresthepaper.org

only way to check accuracy of machines is by counting all of the ballots
full audit is necessary to insure accuracy
why can't we count?

[Amaryllis]

28. Because voting machine companies don't make money and they can't

rig the elections so easily when we count.

[Melissa G]

29. One of the main problems with this election is that they stole it big

They stole it past the margin of error that would demand recounts. They stole it where Kerry did not have time to build a case for the recount and they stole it in way tooooooo many places. NEVER AGAIN can we let this happen. WE need verifiable voting at EVERY stage of the process.

[emcguffie]

32. Dear Andy --

I participate in DFA -- was Dean for America, now Democracy for America -- meet-ups, and a list serve. I put in your two cents about receipts vs. ballots -- although I didn't have your message, so I didn't explain -- and they slapped my wrist.

I hope you don't mind if I copy your post and send it to them.

They said, they have plenty of lawyers and plenty of computer experts. This is in New Jersey.

I think they "put me in my place".

[Bill Bored]

34. Easy big fella! See this thread...

<http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x303273>

And keep up the good work Andy!