Reply #113: The ATM Analogy is Imprecise

[Bill Bored]

If the ATM (the bank) provides me with a receipt, that's my proof of the transaction. The onus was placed on the bank to prove that the transaction took place, and the bank responded. The bank knows my identity so the transaction between the bank and me is not done in secret, but my vote is secret and not even the state itself is allowed to know it if I don't want them too.

In either case, the receipt is legal proof of what the machine has done. But in the case of the voter-verified paper trail, because of the secrecy of the ballot, all the voters must anonymously make their "receipts" available to the state for random auditing to ensure that all the votes were counted as cast.

If the receipts, which are really paper copies of the electronic ballot, are given and the auditing takes place, I don't have to count anything, because I know with reasonable certainty that the count was correct. Of course if the election is close enough for the random audit to not detect a fraudulent result, a hand recount of all the receipts can be done. But that would be the exception rather than the rule.

I have nothing against your recount initiative, but the state should be able to prove that the original count was done correctly and IMHO, without the above paper trails, and the proper random auditing procedures, they can not. If the state then makes a claim that the election was free and fair, this alone could be considered fraudulent because they have no way to backup their claim.

Are you an attorney, gulogulo?

You have also not answered my question about exactly what kind of paper trail the DREs in Ohio had. Was it voter-verified?