NOTICE: WHY "Ballot Marking Devices" Make Our Work SO HARD

[Land Shark]

WHY "Ballot Marking Devices" Make Our Work SO HARD

A brief comment on the confusion that is and will be created by the semantic and substantive debate about touch screens VS. DREs. (that's right, there is a technical distinction)

Brad Friedman, in the course of a longer piece pointing out how damaging and destructive and misinformed People For the American Way has been on voting issues, stated as follows in response to what he called inaccurate information that he favored a "ban on touchscreens" when he ONLY favors a ban on DREs. See http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4299 (original source of my quote below)

TO CLARIFY (and please read this carefully!): A DRE, by its definition, directly records the voters selections internally, inside the computer, onto computer memory, without allowing the voter to verify it. A DRE often uses a touch-screen interface. However, some touch-screen systems like the AutoMARK --- which are perfectly acceptable for disabilities voters who wish to use them --- are merely ballot marking devices or electronic ballot printer/markers with a touch-screen interface. They do not tabulate the vote or create an unverifiable record of the vote as DREs do. They simply assist a disabled voter and print out a ballot with their selections to be verified by the voter, and then counted by another means, such as op-scan or hand count.

This technical distinction is raised to the Fore by the support for Ballot Marking Devices, either new ones or converted and retrofitted touchscreens transformed thereby into expensive ballot printers.

Here's the problem: We have already seen Holt's office trash our educational investment in "ballots, not paper trails" by co-opting and confusing the term in the HR 811 bill to identify paper TRAILS which are never counted on the first count or released on Election night, they are only the subject of a possible audit. This is quite costly when you count up the time and setback it creates. Now, another educational setback appears with Ballot Marking Devices, namely that the public has been educated at GREAT EXPENSE in time and money that "touch screens" are bad, and now we must re-educate everyone that NO, it's only DREs that are bad, not touch screens (see Brad's comment above). Our ability to effectively go after the typical DRE in actual use today, like a Diebold Accuvote TSX or Sequoia AVC Edge, now depends upon teaching the American public a technical acronym term DRE and its distinction from just a "touch screen."

RESULT: Voters go into a polling location and see a touch screen and are confused as to whether it is Bad or Good. Both will likely have a printer of some sort whether paper trail or paper ballot since state laws often require this already, so knowing whether something is a touch screen or DRE rests on more technical distinctions of whether the ballot is electronic or printed out on paper.

This is real bad for clarity, makes it harder to educate people, and nukes our investment in the word "touch screens."

In the same article, Brad points out that people don't seem to check, according to a study, their paper trail very closely, probably because they figure they've been careful on the touch screen -- they consider THAT to be the area to be careful about their ballot....

I dunno, the differences would be slight with Ballot Marking Devices vs. true DREs. It seems to me that Brad, in recognizing that paper trails are much akin (in my rough metaphor) to grocery receipts that most don't check, has at least undermined, and perhaps destroyed, the argument for Ballot Marking Devices at the same time. People may check the paper there in somewhat increased numbers, But even if that increase went from the study I saw, where voters caught ZERO of the errors on the paper trail ALL THE WAY UP TO say 50% effectiveness in catching Ballot Marking Device errors, that still means that the other 50% of the errors or fraud slip through this system and become the GOLD STANDARD OF FRAUD, VOTER-VERIFIED FRAUD TO BE EXACT.

Whatever the percentage of people is that don't check the errors on printouts from EITHER touch screens OR DREs, that is the percentage of voter-verified fraud, a special species of fraud that is IMPOSSIBLE to complain about, because the voter APPROVED IT!! With voters in one study catching zero errors on the paper trail, it's not looking good on the percentage of errors that voters will catch using Ballot Marking Devices.

Welcome to the twisted world of voter-"approved" election fraud.

The duct tape for the mouths of all election activists has been prepared, and is awaiting our approval of Ballot Marking Devices.

PS If a DISABLED voter requires this technology, AND (this is important) the law makes clear that they are in a separate class for Equal Protection purposes, then I have no objection to Ballot Marking Devices. In that case, I regret both the circumstances that created the voters disability as well as the crappy technology we are throwing at them and telling them "it's all good."

[BradBlog]

1. Paul - Your "PS" is my point...

Paul - The PS at the end of your article above is precisely my point. If I was not wholly clear on that in my article (though I *think* I was), then my apologies. Here is how I responded to a similar comment you left in the comments section of the article at BRAD BLOG you refer to above:

Paul Lehto -

Using electronic ballot marking devices (touch-screens which are not DREs) for language minority folks is ridiculous. For the blind and disabled, however, it's not so ridiculous. At least, if that's what those groups *wish* to make available for *optional* use, one per polling place, etc., I think that would be a more than acceptable compromise.

That presumes all of the security issues are in place (secure chain of custody, disclosure of source code for both ballot marking device and op-scan used to count it, if that is used etc.) and that such voters are also allowed help, if they prefer it, to vote by the other available means either at the polling place or at home via absentee etc.

Given that my position, of late, has been inappropriately characterized as the "all or nothing approach" and making "the perfect be the enemy of the good", I'd say that my real position, as stated above, shows that such claims about my position are wholly incorrect.

I am willing to work with folks, even if the resulting system is not the one I might otherwise choose if I was King of the World. And, as you know, I've taken some heat for that position (including from you.)

Unfortunately, it's the Holts and PFAWs and Common Causes and MoveOns and VoteTrustUSAs who don't seem willing to work to find consensus among the EI community. That regrettable position has been very dangerous, and unnecessary, for the movement, in my opinion.

I think that's a very reasonable position, and we'd all do well to rally behind that point, rather than get caught up in a semantical debate in general. There is no reason to use ballot marking devices for the general population, and I believe that point was implicit in the full article (http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4299) which you are writing in response to.

[Land Shark]

2. Responding as I did on bradblog, I'm trying to get to the merits here

You say you will work with people, but if that involves supporting Ballot Marking Devices that disfranchise people and/or make for the perfect fraud because the mistakes slip right by the disabled and nondisabled alike, WHY O WHY would you want the disabled to suffer such an ignominious electoral fate???

In other words, why treat the disabled worse than the nondisabled, if you accept my premises above (which you do in the article above by referencing the studies showing that secondary paper is not checked only the primary voter interface is)?

Due to long habit, we believe our personal computer printouts if they pass a real rough check are exact, but with so many stakes in voting, there's no similar reason to expect that....

(Trying to get to the merits of Ballot Marking Systems here)

[kpete]

3. K&R