No Hand Counting of Electronic Votes

In the Washington state gubernatorial election, the hand recount has begun, and Snohomish County -- which had nearly 100K votes cast on Sequoia electronic voting machines -- won't have to print up and count them all by hand, as had been previously thought by county officials. Instead, they will print up the totals from each of the 937 machines, and compare those to the grand total. (The statewide hand recount is expected to complete before Christmas, modulo court challenges.)

Comments

That wouldn't matter anyway

[b00m3rang]

Unless the printouts were done as each voter voted, there's no accountability. Of course printing out the total from the machine is going to give you the same total that the machine gave you.

There is no way to recount the electronic "votes"

What!?

[krymsin01]

Instead, they will print up the totals from each of the 937 machines, and compare those to the grand total.

Uh, and how does that help out? Maybe I'm being dense, but that doesn't seem like it'll diagnose any kind of problem that would matter...

Re:What!?

[KDan]

But it will save so much time! Think about it (but don't think too hard, you might hurt yourself) - no hand recount needed!

Daniel

Re:What!?

[sckienle]

Actually, this is exactly the process of recounting votes in the old pull the lever machines. They did not keep individual votes either. The recount was to make sure the process of tallying the votes "up stream" from the machines was correct; or really to check the math and communications of the humans doing the sums based on the reported numbers called into the election offices. The difference between then and now is that our parents trusted those machines, and we here on /. don't trust the electronic versions.

Re:What!?

[Shakrai]

Actually, this is exactly the process of recounting votes in the old pull the lever machines

The difference between then and now is that our parents trusted those machines, and we here on /. don't trust the electronic versions.

Except it's a lot harder for somebody to tamper with a mechanical machine that relies on mechanical rollers then it is for somebody to tamper with two lousy lines of code (out of a needlessly bloated program that probably has hundreds of thousands if not millions of lines) to tamper with the election results.

The setup on those lever machines are triple-checked by members of both major parties in a transparent process that is open to members of the public before they are used on election day. They are then sealed against tampering through a combination of locks, protective counters, one-time seals and other means before being transported to the polling places. Once there they can only be unlocked by elections inspectors -- at the end of the day these inspectors (two from each major party at each polling place) reseal the machines against tampering -- again with a wide open process that can be witnessed by anybody from the public, media or any major/minor political party who wishes to observe.

Compare that to an electronic voting machine where we are essentially trusting a private company who probably has an interest in the outcome of the election -- or in a less sinister motive (yet ultimately still as bad for our Republic) underpaid/undereducated programmers with deadlines to meet who probably cut corners all over the place.

I know of what I speak -- I am a certified Elections Inspector with the State of New York. I'll take the lever machines over electronic voting any day of the week. If we can't have pen and paper they are the next best solution as far as integrity goes.

Nice and ironic

[Anonymous Coward]

Related Topics: Compare prices on Republicans

It does matter.

[TheLink]

It's just a matter of how stupid/apathetic they think the voters are.

Hypothetical scenarios:
If the voters are stupid, then they'd print everything out and do a full manual recount.

If they are very stupid, then they'd do this.

If they are completely stupid, there wouldn't be a recount.

The end objective is to convince the voters that everything is fine and they can resume their normal programming.

Re:It does matter.

[b00m3rang]

Sure, but there's nothing to recount that's worth recounting in the case of the elctronic votes. The votes were cast electronically, tallied electronically, and stored electronically. If the votes are inaccurate or have been tampered with, the damage has already been done to the data set. Unless there was a printout made after each voter voted, verified by the voter that the paper version matches their electronic vote, then there is no way to recount them.

Re:No Hand Counting of Electronic Votes

[krymsin01]

Your hands would have to be very small, and electromagnetic...

If they actually were looking for a problem

[Unknown Poltroon]

woudnt it make sense to pick 10 machines at random(or something), and then do a hand count for each machine, and compare that to the electronic total? If they all match, than youre probably ok. THis is just stupid.

Re:If they actually were looking for a problem

[mothlos]

Um, no. What you are suggesting is a sampling method to find a significant degree of error. Unfortunately all sampling methods have a known margin of error associated with them. When you see results from most political polling you will have about a 4% margin of error and a 95% reliability. Meaning 19 out of 20 times the actual result will be within 4% of whatever they said it was, plus or minus.

The problem with this particular case is that the margin of victory is absolutely tiny (42 out of about 2.8 million or 0.0015%. Statistically to ensure that you are even 95% certain of a margin of error smaller than that would require counting almost all the votes anyhow.

Should they be comparing to the machine results? I think they should.

Should they be using ballots which have a very low degree of deterioration during recounts(and this is not covered in the Help America Vote Act by the way)? Definately.

Here, however, we are learning that people who voted on electronic voting machines don't even get the democratic benefit of a hand recount. Is this to say that somehow electronic voting machines aren't subject to error? How can that error be quantified if there is no voter verified paper trail? I smell a tasty lawsuit coming which will provide lots of fun for /. in the future.

You're not being dense

[roystgnr]

Because they've made recounting the votes impossible (the "vote" is whatever the voter got to look at, which for most electronic voting machines is an ephemeral pattern of lights on a screen), they're recounting electronic copies of the votes instead - the honest people are just hoping the copies match the originals and the dishonest ones are hoping nobody calls them on the distinction.

Re:Every recount must be done by 12/13 to matter

[RobertB-DC]

We're down to the wire on having any recounts affect any electoral college votes.
They all meet on December 13th to discuss and submit sealed votes.

But we're not talking about the Presidential election, not in this state at least. Washington state's gov race could go on for years, AFAIK.

Ohio, on the other hand, is another story entirely. And even if the electors pick Massa Dubya on Monday, the results must still be certified by Congress on January 6, 2005. If the Green/Libertarian recount push discovers that Ohio could have swung the other way, Congress will be forced to intervene -- and if they choose to go with the tainted results, Bush will have the distinction of having both his terms clouded by disputed election results.

I've contributed to the recount fund. I hope everyone here does as well.

But, there's NOTHING to recount!

[b00m3rang]

Let's say a person votes for candidate A, their screen shows candidate A, and the vote is recorded for candidate B. EVERY TIME you "recount" that machine, it's going to give you the wrong vote. Unless there's a printout that the voter can verify, and then place into a ballot box, ther IS NO REAL RECOUNT.