Re: Hand Recounts of votes recorded on DREs
Barbara,
I believe I have the right to my opinion and you have not earned the
right to call me unpatriotic. I dedicated 20 years of service to
defending our democracy and would ask what your investment has been. I
have been interested in evaluating the issues based on science and
reason, not on paranoia. You call yourself a computer scientist and I
hear much "flat earth" rhetoric from you and very little reason.
Systems can be programmed to perform their functions with audit trails
to confirm the veracity of the results. There are many who have been
investing in the actual process of democracy for a long time and not
just throwing stones from the outside. The real lunacy is to presume
that the results "recorded" on paper are somehow less corruptible than
modern voting systems with checks to warn a voter of undervotes and
prevent overvotes when the vast majority of attempted election fraud has
been with votes recorded on the very paper you consider so perfect and
incorruptible.
The people working to run elections and produce voting systems that are
easy to use, reliable and produce accurate results are the ones who can
help us find ways to improve the process of recording votes. I only
hope that your name calling will encourage the committee to work hard to
prove you wrong. That we can develop standards that help produce the
next generation of better and more reliable and accountable voting
systems. Not go back to the "paper age" or was that the stone age? Oh,
and by the way the reason we are recommending testing and evaluation of
the voting equipment is to provide an acceptable level of assurance that
your unfounded accusations do not happen. It would be interesting if
you would compare the accuracy of the DRE voting systems with Mark Sense
and see which is more accurate. Maybe the ACM would be interested in
those results.
Sincerely Disappointed,
Vern Williams
Barbara Simons wrote:
> Pete's comment is so obvious I cannot understand why anyone would even
> question it. A "hand recount" of paperless DRE votes should come up with
> the same tally that the DRE originally produced, unless the DREs are really
> really broken.
>
> BUT, suppose there was a software bug (or malicious code) that corrupted the
> votes so that they were originally incorrectly recorded, as happened in
> Mahoning County, Ohio, where numerous voters reported that when they
> attempted to vote for John Kerry, the vote showed up as a vote for George
> Bush. We don't know - and can't know - whether or not those machine
> correctly recorded the intent of the voters, but if it recorded them
> incorrectly, then those same faulty records will appear in the printed paper
> versions.
>
> I find it amazing that anyone would defend a system that has the lack of
> transparency of paperless DREs.
>
> Since the standards produced by our effort are likely to be adopted
> nationally, we bear a tremendous responsibility. We have the opportunity to
> develop standards that will minimize the options for corruption and maximize
> openness and transparency. To do otherwise is irresponsible and even - dare
> I say it - unpatriotic.
>
> Regards,
> Barbara Simons, writing from Australia - which is why I have been unable to
> participate in email and phone discussions.
>
> On 12/5/04 16:43, "Pete Klammer" <pklammer@comcast.net> wrote:
>
>
>>A "hand recount" of paperless DRE votes is patently absurd, meaningless, and
>>futile.
>
>
--
Quote of the week...
"Posterity -- you will never know how much it has cost my generation to
preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it."
--John Quincy Adams
Vern Williams, CISSP ISSEP CBCP CHSP IAM
Senior Security Engineer / Analyst, SAIC
Senior Member, IEEE
Vern.Williams@IEEE.ORG
Cell: 512-635-5315
Any comments are my opinion and not the official position of SAIC.
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