Comments on: Sacramento to tally votes centerally

By: Follow up to Sacramento central tallying « All About Voting

Follow up to Sacramento central tallying « All About Voting — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 15:54:31 +0000

[...] 25, 2008 · No Comments The SacBee gives us some follow-up information to the decision to tally votes centrally in Sacramento: mproper maintenance of some of Sacramento County’s voting machines – and the tint of the [...]

By: Tom Poe

Tom Poe — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 05:19:59 +0000

Good points, but maybe not the complete picture. Just about anyone can participate in the public scrutiny of electronic voting systems that utilize an approach such as that used in Australia. On the point about verifiable voting, I think it would be worth pursuing, but my personal belief is, to undo the damage done by our present administration who is responsible for eliminating our right to vote.

By: AllAboutVoting

AllAboutVoting — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 05:07:23 +0000

Requiring open software in voting machines is not enough. There is no good way to be assured that the software running on the machine is the same as the software that was approved. For good integrity you need to either have an active public watching every move carefully or to have a system where voters can prove that their votes were accurately represented and counted even in the presence of counters and talliers that are untrusted. The later is trivial is a secret ballot is not required. It is possible to have it and preserve the secret ballot as well. See Ben Adida's excellent presentation on verifiable voting.

By: Tom Poe

Tom Poe — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 04:28:51 +0000

Can we mention that proprietary voting systems are, by definition, unable to be subjected to public scrutiny? Australia demonstrated that, and decided to protect the voters’ right to vote by requiring all electronic voting systems to use open software. They put their elections software on the Internet, and made it freely available for anyone to download, modify, and use for their own elections. Now, why do you suppose the U.S. won’t permit electronic voting systems that permit public scrutiny from being used in our elections? Why does the U.S. insist on having only electronic voting systems that are proprietary, and eliminate the voters’ right to vote? By the way, you voters in Sacramento look real foolish standing in line to vote in an election where your vote is counted in secret by proprietary voting systems.

By: Tom Poe

Tom Poe — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 04:23:51 +0000

That is total garbage! These folks are unbelievable! We won’t permit the precincts to count the votes by hand, and report the total count at midnight. We”ll have all votes trucked to a secret room, and hold a secret vote count, and report the results the following morning, because we have to run them through proprietary voting systems that enable vote count manipulation that is undetectable. You folks in Sacramento look real foolish, standing in line!

By: AllAboutVoting

AllAboutVoting — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 19:22:01 +0000

Kim Alexander on this:

http://calvoter.org/news/blog/2008_01_01_blogarchive.html#8346006591992454113

Given the situation, this is a good decision. In-precinct optical scanners are not a “mission critical” component of Sacramento county’s voting system. The central count scanner and the Automark accessible voting units did pass the logic and accuracy tests and are ready to be used on February 5.