Re: [ieee] RE: Hand Recounts of votes recorded on DREs
So it's now the voter's fault? What about elderly or inexperienced voters?
What about voters who have been intimidated in the past about their right to
vote. I am old enough to remember when African Americans put their lives at
risk if they attempted to vote in some parts of the South.
There have been several reports of voters trying repeatedly to get the
screen to accurately reflect their intention, but without success. Did all
of them notify the poll worker? Did the poll worker always believe what the
voter was saying?
What about the voter's right to a secret ballot?
You may train your poll workers to remove the machine from the line once
they know there is a problem, but you have no way of knowing whether or not
previous voters who used the malfunctioning machines had their votes
incorrectly recorded. Of course if there were a paper audit trail, you
could use it instead of the results from the suspect machine.
But there is no audit trail.
Regards,
Barbara
On 12/12/04 14:11, "Brit Williams" <britw@BELLSOUTH.NET> wrote:
> A poorly calibrated touchscreen is not a serious problem. Unless the voter
> is completely spaced out she will notice that the wrong name is lit. If the
> voter is experienced with touchscreen voting they will simply touch the name
> again to turn it off and vote for the correct candidate. An inexperienced
> voter will call the poll worker immediately. If the calibration problem
> persists, the voter will notify a poll worker. The poll worker will move
> the voter to another machine and, if necessary, recalibrate the voting
> station. I say 'if necessary' because in Georgia we only work on a voting
> station in the precinct if it is absolutely necessary. We train our poll
> workers to simply remove the machine from the line and then accumulate the
> votes from it after the polls close.
>
> Brit