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California Bans Paperless Voting -- For 2006
bizpile writes "Gov. Schwarzenegger signed a law requiring that all electronic voting machines produce paper records of every ballot cast. Under the bill, signed Monday, voters will not be able to touch or keep the records. Instead, election officials will put them in locked boxes if a recount is needed. Legislators in nearly two dozen states have introduced similar bills and New Hampshire, Illinois and Oregon already have laws requiring paper backups. However, those states have few, if any, touch-screen voting terminals. The law goes into effect in 2006. Now if they could just figure what to do this election."
it should be happening in places like florida and other important/swing states, and all places that use voting machines that are as vulnerable as Diebold's pieces of junk...and this election is so much more important than the 2006 election in california ):
Under the bill, signed Monday, voters will not be able to touch or keep the records.
They'll be able to see them though, right? Right? Otherwise, what stops an incorrect electronic vote being backed up by an incorrect paper vote?
Instead, election officials will put them in locked boxes if a recount is needed.
So who decides when a recount is needed? If a voting machine screws up 10% of the time and the winning margin is 5%, how will that be picked up against the assumed scenario of a voting machine working correctly and the winning margin being 5% to a different candidate? If an outcome is so obviously false (e.g. twice as many votes as voters), then the paper trail isn't necessary, and if the paper trail is followed for every election, there is no benefit over normal paper voting.
Of course, everyone advocating for pen + paper voting in the first place (of which I am usually one) will point out, "yes, we've been saying this for years", it just seems that it's so completely and utterly without merit that I must be missing something obvious.
OK I realize that this may be a bit offtopic, but I've got Karma to burn, so here goes:
Arnold is doing a good job as Governor.
Uh oh...I've gone and done it now. I've thrown all my credibility out the window. I must be an idiot for thinking that an actor could be a good governor. I must be stupid for thinking that anyone but a professional politican could actually hold office, not to mention the top executive office of the most powerful state in the union.
To those politically ill-informed among you, I know this may come as a shock. I know that you enjoy following every reference to the Governor with some half-wit, cliche joke about how he's going to 'terminate' something, but guess what? He's actually doing his job well. Balancing the budget, reforming the workman's comp program, and lots of other little-published but much needed reforms (such as this one) are all what California desperately needs.
The framers didn't want America to be run by professional policicans. They wanted America to be run by it's people. Average citizens to step for a few years to perform a civic duty, and then go back to the private sector to get on with thier lives. That's what Arnold is doing. He's cleaning up other people's messes because it needs to get done. I'm sure he got lots of other motivations that are not nearly as noble, of course, but the fact remains that he's fixing a problem that needs to be fixed, and you have to give him credit for that.
Are they using thermal printers or dot matrix? I've noticed that thermally printed receipts tend to fade after a few weeks.
Unknown host pong.
The complete bill text is available at:
/ sb _1438_bill_20040827_enrolled.html
http://leginfo.ca.gov/pub/bill/sen/sb_1401-1450
Before going into the effects, let's talk about how recounts work:
There is already a California law mandating a 1% random "spot check" manual recount post-election. So that's one way.
Two, elections officials can do more recounting at their own discretion if they "smell a rat". It's not very common.
Three, the loser of a race can ask for a manual recount. If they STILL lose, they pay the cost of the recount.
There are reform proposals out there to increase the amount of post-election recount to somewhere between 3% and 5% and second, rather than random recounts, let party officials or candidates each offer "recount THESE precincts!" suggestions. They're more likely to know "where the bodies might be buried" if there's been cheating.
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The voter can't be allowed to prove later how they voted. That'll lead to threats if they "don't vote right" from union bosses, corporate bosses or whatever, or vote selling. Most proposals call for printing "under glass" so you can see the paper, you can hit a "cancel button" if it's not right, or you can approve it.
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Existing law says that the "will of the voter" is what really matters, and must be what post-election recounts are looking for. Therefore, while this bill (SB1438) doesn't specifically say that the paper trail is the "final ballot of record", that IS how they'll be treated if there's a discrepancy between the paper record and the electronic record.
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What this REALLY produces is a "voter verified paper trail" (VVPT). The bill uses the term "voter verified paper audit trail", but then *defines* that term explicitly:
"19251(c) "Voter verified paper audit trail" means a component of a direct recording electronic voting system that prints a contemporaneous paper record copy of each electronic ballot and allows each voter to confirm his or her selections before the voter casts his or her ballot."
It works as written, but we dodged a bullet here.
"Voter verified paper audit trail" is a term used by proponents of a "crypto audit trail" that does NOT allow the voter to confirm each individual selection at the polling place. Votehere and others have been promoting these "all crypto solutions" where the voter gets a "number" and can then confirm that their vote was recorded, but not what they voted for. Votehere is saying that the "background crypto" would form "proof" that the vote was recorded properly, and Diebold has been quietly promoting this as an alternative to a true VVPT.
Crypto is fine, but only if the basic code around it is "known honest". Diebold for one is doing "known DIShonest" code.
So thank the diety of your choice that the phrase "allows each voter to confirm his or her selections" is present in SB1438. We can do crypto ON TOP of a VVPT system but under SB1438, NOT in place of a VVPT.
Jim March
Member, Board of Directors, Black Box Voting (www.blackboxvoting.org)