Can we have this machine networked, and can it please be on an unsecured network? Asking for a comrade.
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This country is full of greedy morons.
Use a damn scantron, if you must use tech.
Stop treating voting like something you get to do by going to the app store, act like rational intelligent adults, and drop the bullshit digital crap.
Go back to paper ballots, or using a fucking scantron. I can’t fucking believe how basic this should be and how incredibly stupid the people running this are
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Just like you cannot bring a camera in and photograph your vote, no receipts for the voter. As I said, it’s a secret ballot, the only proof of vote locked in a box with no ability to tie it back to the person that cast it. No way for the voter to know what was on it after they leave beyond what they remember.
- Abusive spouse - Vote this way or else.
- Give me $10 for my vote receipt.
- Hand in your receipt or you’re fired.
- Tony asking to prove you voted the “correct” way or “something bad might happen to you”.
I’ll repeat, it’s a secret ballot for a reason. The exact opposite of a financial transaction that is not anonymous for specific reasons. Ballot auditing is comparing vote totals to ballots and not back to people. Financial transaction auditing is comparing activities back to actual people.
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We use that setup in NY. You mark with a special indelible marker. Pencil can be altered more easily after the fact, and apparently it doesn’t scan reliably.
The scanner scans the ballot twice. One to check that the ballot is readable, once to count it. It stores an image of the ballot (I think for each scan), and you get a chance to confirm on a little screen. When you lock in the vote it prints a paper record as well as storing the ballot data. So you can optionally print out a receipt as a 2nd copy of the paper record for the voter.
The ballot drops into a locked ballot box. The ballot box is a seperate piece from the scanner and they’re stored and transported separately to prevent the whole shebang from wandering off. Which was an issue with the all mechanical machines we used to use.
Preliminary counts can be pulled off the machines at the polling place. And the initial count happens when the scanner section lands at the board of elections, where counts are pulled from each machine. Recounts or final certification counts can be done from the physical ballots by running them through an entirely different system. And you can hand count the physical ballots themselves.
I don’t think we transmit counts, and our machines aren’t plugged into the internet or phone lines. At least not at the polling place. But I believe they’re capable of it. So the only place a connection becomes a thing is in transmitting a preliminary count to the BOE, after voting is already finished.
Paper records are an important redundancy with any voting machine. Like the ballot the machines scans they don’t identify the voter.
Receipts are printed for and directly to the voter so they can confirm their vote and know it was read appropriately. It’s how we’ve caught several vote switching problems. Even the receipt doesn’t have your name on it. Everything is tracked by a ballot number determined by which ballot you were handed/order in line.
At least here they don’t print by default you have to ask or push a big green button. First time I used the machines it was the button. The most recent local election it was made clear it was available by request. But the machine no longer prompted and there was no dedicated receipt printer or big green button.
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The confirmation screen (optional) is definitely a better option than a printed receipt. One way or another, the mechanism confirming things for the voter should not leave the polling place and should be seen only by the voter.
What you describe sounds like a more advanced and refined version of what I saw, the product of serious people rather than some app startup. The kind of company that doesn’t have a foosball table and espresso bar.
That’s been a prime attack vector: bloody MS Access databases sent over unsecure consumer-grade connections.
We all have to learn to be a little more patient, and take the time needed to get things right.
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I remember the good old days when computer scanning, you had to use pencil because it relied on the graphite to be able to detect it at all.
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Well the receipt is sorta a last chance to catch problems. Though the instances where that’s happened have been touch screen machines, mostly without paper records. And it is a (less reliable) additional layer of redundancy.
But they also help instill confidence, by giving people a token of proof that their vote was counted as entered.
Ultimately it’s not all that important, but it does have some purpose.
I think the option to request one is a nice compromise. People who are skittish about machines, or worried about their vote being rat fucked can get their own record. But there’s no expectation that a person voting would have one. I haven’t seen any since that first year on the machines really, and there were locked trash bins and shredders on hand. They apparently destroy misfilled ballots.
Like I said I believe it’s disused. In theory it would just be used to transmit the data so the BOE could report early returns to media and what have. So if the transmitted numbers were attacked. There’s still the count on the machines, scanned images, paper record, and physical ballots.
That’s sort of the key thing. Multiple seperate layers so if something is altered in any way shape or form it can be detected by the mismatch. And you drop down to the physical ballots
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Missing one step:
- And most importantly, automatic random audits of a meaningful number of counting machines every election. Automatically more, if the are anomalies. Compare machine count to manual count within margin of error.
I’m not sure why it’s printing the first copy at all. You filled in a ballot with a marker. Scan it, show the results on a screen, confirm with a button and send the paper to the lock box, or reject button and spit it back out. There’s no need to print anything at all.
Paper records and receipts for voters are not the same thing. There most certainly should be paper records for the vote. Exactly as you describe is perfect. Tabulation machine validates ballot is filled out correctly and on confirmation locks up the ballot. Returns it on rejection. Combined with automatic audits of random tabulation machines, a statistically valid number, and you’re probably safe.
Unless you’re using a ballot marking device because the person is unable to use the black marker, there shouldn’t ever need to be a printer anywhere in the process. Which is good, because printers break all the time. The scanner is much more robust.
I’m still trying to understand why the first copy printed in your example. Wouldn’t it look exactly like the one filled in with marker?
Ahh, that’s a very different thing. If you’re using a machine to mark up a ballot, instead of using a marker on physical paper. Then, it makes sense that it prints out a ballot.
- This lets you read it, to see that the mark up machine did what you wanted. The print out should be user readable, not some bar or QR code machine on thing.
- This disconnects the marking device from the tabulation device and inserts a person in the middle to validate what the mark up device did. Single machines with no break in the path from entry to counting are evil.
- Without it, there’s no way to audit afterwards. Once printed, it should have the same process as ballots manually filled out and secured when counted.
It’s a poor compromise though. If you can bring proof of vote out of the polling location with you, optional doesn’t matter. All the same pressures would apply forcing coerced voters to select the option.
As long as there are rules and processes for doing those audits. Which should happen on samples all the time in good election procedures. Having audits as part of the standard procedure means any issues in the middle will be detected. The same reason they’re only preliminary results and not finalized the same night.
How many news stories have we seen where they have this stuff, but the “recount process” is just reading the numbers off the tabulation machine and ignoring the paper anway. 
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The conspiracy theorizing would have been even worse if the app sort-of worked and produced questionable results rather than failing outright. The party dodged a bullet there.
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Their parent company is ACRONYM, or as Futurama put it “A Criminal Regiment Of Nasty Young Men”
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That’s not a feature of the machines. Its what all those layers of redundancy allow you to do.
But I’d add multiple counts as a default. If I’m remembering it right only initial returns are pulled from the machines. To certify the results they re-run the ballots through seperate bulk scanners.
If there’s too much disparity between the two audits and recounts.
Redundancy. A lot of this is not about having an alternate record if one should walk off. The ballots are the only definitive record.
It’s potentially easier to invisibly alter an electronic record after the fact than a physical paper record, and requires different sorts of access. Its also more difficult to alter multiple records than a single record. So if there is a disparity between the paper and the machine count, you go back the the ballots. And you get a better read on what sort of problem you’ve got based on what the disparity is.
I’m not sure what the state of the paper record is at the moment. The machines were updated a bit ago. When we first switched they had a thermal printer mounted on the side, but there wasn’t last couple of times I voted.
IIRC the receipt had a little summary of your vote and an illegible image of your actual ballot. You could see part of the paper roll for the paper record at the time, appeared to contain the same info as the receipt.
These machines don’t work by storing an image of the ballot (though like I said I’m pretty sure they do) to be processed later. They basically record what was marked in what column and store it as numerical data. Potentially as both per ballot and a running total.
The paper record is that data, printed as a physical document. Recorded at the point the ballot is “entered”.
I think that’s what you’re misunderstanding. Nothing’s printing a ballot. It’s printing a seperate paper record of the count/ballot info. A copy of what’s stored and processed in the machine so you can reconcile and check things later. It stays at the polling site/in whatever the hell prints it. The original ones were mounted on the vote counting station, and stayed attached to the machine. Dunno what they do now, as I did not notice the printer last time. It’s no longer visible/accessible, but apparently we’re still creating paper records.
The receipt is basically just a copy of the same offered to the voter rather than stored and kept away from filthy humans.
Just as an example of alternatives:
Voter numbers the ballot with a pencil. Voter then personally puts their ballot through a slit into a large sealed cardboard box which is under constant observation by both AEC officials and volunteer scrutineers from the candidates.
At the end of voting, the boxes are opened (again under observation by all parties) and the votes are counted. The AEC official reads the vote, observed by the partisan scrutineers, and if anyone objects to the interpretation the vote will usually be moved to the category of informal votes (i.e. not counted, although they will be reinspected if the election is close enough for them to matter). The AEC official has the ability to ignore an objection if they decide that it is baseless; however, the scrutineers have the ability to raise a public stink if this power is abused, and may take them to court for an administrative ruling if they feel the need.
No machines involved, full paper trail. Physical interference with the ballots extremely difficult. Voters with literacy difficulties or physical limitations are allowed to call for assistance in filling out the ballot.
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#LearnToCode
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Hand counting paper ballots is expensive. Time consuming to the point where multiple counts are often prohibitive. And it’s incredibly open to manipulation. There is a long, long, long, long history of ballots walking off. Being discounted. Being deliberately miscounted. Being accidentally miscounted. Being altered. Especially where easily erasable pencil is involved.
Often times by or with the involvement of the very officials trusted to watch and scrutinize.
Machine counting is faster, more accurate (if properly administered), and significantly less expensive. The best implementations (as I described above) involve a lot more methods to prevent, identify, and rectify the stuff I outlined above.
Which is nice if the objectors don’t have ulterior motives. Wouldn’t it be nice if interpretation didn’t factor in.
1 paper trail. What do you do when it walks off? Would you even know?
There is a long history telling us otherwise, particurly in the US.
I’d also like to point out that the US has more than 10 times Australia’s population. Even without all our stupid, there’s an order of magnitude more complexity and expense involved in actually dealing with votes.
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It is under constant observation by all parties. It has never in the history of Australia “walked off”.
Australia has effectively 100% voter turnout, significantly reducing that gap. And Australia is substantially less wealthy per capita, and vastly less wealthy in aggregate, than the USA. If we can afford it, so can you.
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I’ve lived a couple places in Florida, and I believe the state uses the Scantron you mentioned state wide.
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You’re not seriously claiming that in all of Australian history there’s never been a bit of election fraud. No disappeared ballot boxes, no stuffed ballots, nothing discounted when it shouldn’t have been? Never been a time when all those parties maybe agreed on something. Like maybe about who was very bad and shouldn’t have their votes counted…
Even at 55% percent turnout in 2016, 5.7x as many people voted in the US than Australia’s entire population.
For one you have to plan for more. For another, what you’re describing is what we used to do. And it lead to a whole hell of a lot of fuckery, often undetectable fuckery. I for one think it’s probably a good idea to deal with known problems.
The machines in my state at least are used to count, and basically double up records of the ballot. The ballot is still the ballot. And you can still go and count it all in school gymnasiums and get in a fight about how that vote for Al Gore was really meant as a vote for George Bush if you need to.
I know! Let people vote at home electronically, and then make a plug-ins for Alexa, Suri and Google for it. It’ll be great with blockchain and everything!
“Alexa, who do the people listening think I should vote for?”
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