Transparency and Accountability are the Life Blood of a Democracy. "Andy Novick"

[kster]

The best option for democratic elections remains a full manual hand count of all paper ballots: only then can regular citizens know, without having to rely on experts or government officials, how their votes were processed and counted. However, in light of the fast track the State Board of Elections is pursuing to begin certification testing of these vendors' machines and given the current resistance within government to prepare citizens to hand count their ballots, there is only one computerized voting system New York can consider: A publicly-owned, open source paper ballot optical scan voting system combined with sufficient public in the hands of the people.

Open source code optical scanners begin to restore some of that transparency which would be eliminated by private vendors who bar the public from access to any source code information. The advantage of open source software is that it is available for public inspection by anyone with some level of computer literacy, not just those designated to see the escrowed source code pursuant to a non disclosure agreement. While this is still not the full public scrutiny that manual hand counting would allow, in that the general public still needs to rely on experts to scrutinize the source code, it is clearly more desirable than excluding the public from access to the very information that directs all functions of the voting machines, including vote counting.

Transparency and oversight by the public is enabled by releasing the ballot images of our scanned paper ballots for public inspection and requiring a partial hand count on election night, thereby allowing for a check against the invisibility created by the computer while providing for an inexpensive and comprehensive audit by the public as well as by election officials.

The systems offered by the major vendors deprive the public of transparency and hence the ability to monitor/oversee their elections. Only a publicly owned and controlled electoral process can be considered constitutionally acceptable.

http://www.wheresthepaper.org/AndiNovick070730PubliclyOwnedAndControlled.htm

[lligrd]

1. That Was Back When We The People Were In Charge

The PNAC has relieved us of that duty.

[Kurovski]

2. K&R. (nt)

[Stevepol]

3. Our public officials and particularly the officials in our elections division need to

send off for some "smart pills."

When it comes to fair and transparent and verificable vote counting, they long ago lost even the minimal granule of common sense or intelligence they were granted at birth.

If somebody could invent a viagra for the brain and send it to our elections officials, the whole country would be forever grateful.

[kster]

4. You are right on, ballots stay at the polling place no one person or company owns the ballots

We all own the ballots every American together owns the ballots , ES&S, Diebold and Sequoia can count the ballots throughout election day to get a fast count, they can take their machines out of the polling place election night, but they are NOT allowed to take OUR ballots out of the polling place until we, (WE) hand count ALL the paper ballots by hand, And any blogger or politician that tells us otherwise is BULLSHITTING.

If we allow the vendors to take their vote/counting machines out of the polling place along with OUR (OUR)paper ballots, we are INSANE, The Buck Stops, here, and NOW!!!

Hand Count the Optical scanned and or any Paper Ballots, before the ballots are allowed to leave THE POLLING PLACE.

Anything less is un American, and or a disservice to our kids futures. PERIOD!!

Are we gonna let the CROOKS take advantage of OUR kids futures?