Just want to take the opportunity to point out that optical scanners (which were used in NH) are, in fact, a much better option than DRE (Direct Recording Electronic), or touch screen machines.
With op-scanners, at least there are real ballots, which are recountable by hand. With DREs, there is literally no reviewable record,
even if there is a so-called "paper trail" or receipt-type record. I know a lot of DUers are hip to these details, but I wanted to provide some clarification for those who don't know.
The following is from an interview with Brad Friedman of bradblog.com, from the Buffalo Beast:
Do you recommend a hand count?
No—well a hand count is fine, but optical scan works well enough if we have the proper audits of those optical scan ballots. But the key here is that you need a paper ballot. No matter how it’s counted, you need a paper ballot.
So you can go back and look at it?
Not just so that you can go back and look at it; so you can count it in the first place. I mean, that’s what’s remarkable, even about this new Rush Holt legislation , which I should mention I worked on with their office, and hopefully was able to improve it quite a bit. That said, I still can’t support it at this time, because it will allow for DRE voting machines, which means we will have ballots that are never counted. But it’s quite remarkable to ponder the idea that folks like me are actually fighting for people to be able to mark a ballot, and then to have that ballot actually counted, by anyone at any time. I mean, it’s like I’m trying to convince the Democrats to invent the wheel or something.
The undervote story in Florida contrasts nicely with one I just read on your site about New Mexico, that minority undervoting there dropped 85% when they started using paper ballots.
You bet, and that’s one of the reasons I wanted to highlight that story when I got that information over the weekend. You’ve got these folks running around saying minorities are better served by touch screen. Well hello, this data tells you quite differently, so I was quite pleased when that came out.
I’ve read that these glitches nearly always skew Republican. Is that really true?
Well, they do, unfortunately. Not always, but quite frequently they do. I don’t call them glitches, by the way; I call them failures, and it’s a bit of a bugaboo of mine, because it’s always “glitches,” “hiccups,” “snafus.” But the reason these are happening is because we have a system where there is nobody, absolutely nobody minding the store. Nobody in America gets to test these machines from top to bottom. Don’t let anyone tell you different. Not the USEAC, the Election Assistance Commission, no one gets to test these machines that are used in our America elections. It’s an absolute scandal. This is secret software that is counting our votes in a public democracy. It an absolutely astounding thing when you look at it.
Now if this is true, why aren’t the Democrats putting everything they’ve got into correcting the situation? Why aren’t they bringing their full force to bear on this?
I have been digging and digging on this story and fighting with Democrats on this and fighting with Holt’s office on this. I recommend an article I wrote for Alternet.org called “False Choices in the Debate on Voting Technology.” It used to be the disabled issue: “Oh, disabled voters need to be able to vote privately and independently.” But that doesn’t explain why everyone else in the world has to use these DRE machines, and it doesn’t even explain why anybody has to use DRE machines, because there are also what are called ballot marking devices; these are essentially touch screen systems but all they do is print a ballot and then you take that ballot and count it with op scan, by hand, whatever you want. So those work equally well for disabled folks, so sort of don’t have that anymore. The latest argument, which is rather extraordinary, is this language minority issue, that somehow folks who don’t speak English as their first language are better served by touch screen than by op scan. It makes no sense. You can print out a ballot in Chinese or Vietnamese just as easily as anything else. But somehow or another these guys seem to be putting forward a rather disingenuous argument that minorities can read it on a touch screen better than on a piece of paper.
And as you said, the ballot marking software would work just as well for that anyway.
Yea, if you had to do that. But the problem is, when you use any kind of device like that—and this is what we saw week after week in ‘06, the primaries and the generals—when those machines break down, legally registered voters cannot vote. These systems are disenfranchising—left, right, black, white, I don’t care—when they don’t work, Americans cannot vote. And this happened, week after week. We saw thousands, if not millions of people that this happened to. And remember, if you’ve got let’s say five touch screen machines in a precinct, if even one of them breaks down, now your line is going to be increased exponentially, and election day is a work day and so forth. So these machines are just disenfranchising, versus a paper ballot system. With an op scan system for example, you can walk in and vote anytime. Doesn’t matter. If a machine breaks down, it doesn’t matter. They can either bring in another machine or save the votes in a secure box until later. But with these DRE machines, when they break, you can’t vote, and that is just a brutal menace to democracy in my opinion, and that’s why a lot of the folks who had previously supported the Holt bill in its previous iteration—in the last Congress it was called HR-550—a lot of those folks have said, “Well, given what we have now learned in 2006, I can no longer support a bill that does not ban DRE systems, period.”
buffalobeast.com/114/eeny_meeny_miny_moe.htm
:patriot:
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