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No Hand Counting of Electronic Votes

Posted by pudge on from the score-one-for-sanity dept.

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.)

6 of 56 comments (clear)

  1. That wouldn't matter anyway by b00m3rang · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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"

  2. What!? by krymsin01 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    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...
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  3. Nice and ironic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Related Topics: Compare prices on Republicans

  4. Re:No Hand Counting of Electronic Votes by krymsin01 · · Score: 3, Funny

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

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  5. Re:If they actually were looking for a problem by mothlos · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  6. But, there's NOTHING to recount! by b00m3rang · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.