Reply #7: I am a poll worker in one of those red counties

[Marnieworld]

Last night I received my training. It broke my heart to see that there is paper in the machines but voter verified ballots aren't printed. It's like a register tape. At the start of the day we will print a tally that lists zero votes. At the end of the day we print out another report of the votes for each candidate. There is no modem, no memory card. All of the votes are recorded on to the hard drive. The only problem is that there is no way to verify the results. The programming could be that every third vote for Obama is switched to McCain and there is no way of knowing that. We can only verify the number of votes cast. That is all. At the end of the night we write out the results on a giant piece of paper and it is these written results based on the reports from the machines that are used to tabulate vote totals. The machines aren't even touched on election night and perhaps never if there is no recount. The end voting report can be programmed in advance I bet just inputting the total number of votes at the end as a factor in a calculation. It's a big sham. We just have to hope that it is legitimate. It's very depressing.

I'm there to help people vote and I guess to keep my eye out for shady patches in the day or clear machine malfunctions but without that VVPAT it all seems so pointless. There should be one way to vote everywhere and always verifiable. I'll never understand why not. As if elections should be faith-based?

On edit: I forgot to mention that all machines were Diebold. :cry: