[LINK] Bill proposes e-voting paper trail

[Peter Chen]

Hi Lyn,

The Victorian e-democracy inquiry (www.victorianedemocracy.info) looked at
this in the US:

Best practice assumptions tend to focus on this approach: The receipt is
printed out behind a perspex case, and the voter manually looks at it before
proceeding with loging the formal vote, or redoing it / notifying officials
of a problem.  Once lodged, the paper vote is deposited in a storage
container.  The voter never physically handles the paper.  So the other
interlocutors are right, its not a "receipt" as such.  There are a range of
variations (you get the print out and depost it in a special box only to be
manually re-counted if required), etc.

There are clear variations of this approach, including barcoding to speed
the re-count, etc.  The ACT machines don't use this approach, BTW, but use a
electronic counting approach with different redundant validation (counters
on storage servers, etc.).

Clear advantages:
- parity with existing practices, smooths technology adoption
- simple basic validation method (step 1 - do the # of papers match number
of entries on disk; step 2, - to they give the same result, etc.)

Clear disadvantages:
- printer problems, etc. (the US has had inordinate problems with logistics
associated with DREs, but note _the system is different_ these are
administered locally in the US, and practices of handling are very erratic,
reliant on temporary staff, etc.).
- cost
- slows voting process

Note vis vote buying - there have been some reported problems of people
taking photos of ballot papers with mobile phones as a voter co-ersion
method (eg. Vote for me, prove it with a MMS, and I'll [bribe] or I'll
[coersion]).

Peter 



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Dr Peter Chen
 Freelance Political Scientist
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-----Original Message-----
From: link-bounces at anu.edu.au [mailto:link-bounces at anu.edu.au] On Behalf Of
Lyn Watkins - Untangled Web Management
Sent: Friday, 11 February 2005 3:39 PM
To: 'Howard Lowndes'; 'Glen Turner'
Cc: 'Link'
Subject: RE: [LINK] Bill proposes e-voting paper trail


Subject: Re: [LINK] Bill proposes e-voting paper trail

On Fri, 2005-02-11 at 10:51, Glen Turner wrote:
> > Some states and counties already require a paper ballot receipt
> 
> A concept I've never understood.  Do you ask everyone to re-assemble 
> at the polling place with their reciepts to do a re-count?  Or is the 
> receipt to show your husband/local warlord/children that you voted 
> "correctly"?
> 
> The US elections are a first past the post system.  You could 
> physically count paper ballots in an evening.  Sure you vote for a 
> *lot* of positions, but I think that the results for the county 
> sheriff could wait until after the counting of the presidential 
> ballots.

Great Scott, how wrong can you be.  It's far more important that you know
which county sheriff you might have upset and is now going to be allowed to
harass you, as that can be immediate and local, whereas it takes time for
the President to get the black helicopters assembled.

:)

______________________

While I recognise the sarcasm (yes, yes, very funny chaps!) in the above
comments, surely the intended purpose of the receipt is reassure the nervous
technophobes that their vote has indeed been registered, and for the
intended candidate/s. Such a confirmation may have been helpful in Florida
to ascertain that the vote had indeed been cast as intended. (At leats you
can then throw the receipt away, ink on the finger (such as was used in the
recent IRAQ elections) physically assists the above mentioned
family/warlords/invading-I-mean-allied-forces in identifying and
'straightening out' those who disagree with their politics.

Warmest,

Lyn Watkins

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