BBV: California law for paper ballots bars voters from touching them.

[Eric J in MN]

http://www.verifiedvoting.org/article.asp?id=2437

California law for paper ballots starting in 2006 will bar voters from touching them.

The ballots will all be printed behind a plastic box.

I disagree with that design.

If the same company provides the machines and electronic sign-in, it can sign-in voters who never showed up and print phony ballots.

I prefer the AccuPoll design, where the voter places the ballot in a ballot box.

www.accupoll.com

[Hammie]

1. I propose a hybrid system

Where the voter makes selections by means of a pointing device based on a menu of options and the machine encodes the response on a non-volatile memory device that the poll workers secure in a secured container for later tabulation and verification, if necessary.






Oh yeah! We already had those, they were called punch cards. Then some dipshits in Floriduh couldn't figure out one of the simplest machines a modern human is likely to encounter and all of a sudden, mysterious, proprietary, black box voting machines spring up like mushrooms after a rainstorm.

[BevHarris]

2. Punch cards are also counted by computer

and the programming of that system is fairly unaccountable, with almost no auditing. That being said, I've been told (second hand) that when feeding punch cards into the counter, you're supposed to fan them, and during that process you can actually see the voting trend unless the race is very close.

The point you make about tampering by rigging the digital sign-in, and then having the machine produce extra paper ballots for phantom voters, is a very good one, but I think is something that can be handled by retaining current paper poll books and the current canvassing procedures.

The poll book sign-in shows how many people signed in to vote. The number of ballots should match.

That's why it is so very interesting, now that Voter Verified Paper Ballots are the trend, that Diebold designed a way to eliminate the paper poll book. Close one door, over here a window opens.

Bev

[Andy_Stephenson]

3. Hmmm

the statement of principal may need updating.

[shance]

4. Hi Bev - so does this mean essentially we are back to square one?

Suggestions on where Californians go from here?

[Eric J in MN]

5. Bev - have you written an article on electronic sign-in? nt

nt

[BevHarris]

6. Yes -- if you scroll down, it's still on the web site

http://www.blackboxvoting.org

It's about doing away with the poll book. That was documented on a transcript of Diebold explaining why it designed new encoders, in a Cleveland interogation.