Reply #19: Done.

[thanatonautos]

Dear Senator Dodd:

I understand that Connecticut is considering making a move to computerized
optiscan voting machines, and that for the most part, Connecticut presently
uses lever based mechanical voting machines, like my home State of New York.

Please consider very carefully the disadvantages in such a course of action.

The mechanical lever machines, by virtue of their size, and the consequent
ability to physically secure them, were arguably more resistant to tampering
than current high technology approaches to voting are.

Numerous questions have in fact arisen in the current election cycle as to the
security of opti-scan machines.

An opti-scan machine is in fact, in principle more susceptible to very hard to
detect forms of tampering by virtue of the electronic nature of its vote
counting mechanism.

Furthermore, an auditable voting machine is no better than an unauditable one,
if in fact, no audits are ever carried out.

Secretary of State Bysiewicz's point that historically, most problems have
occurred with paper based ballot systems where officials had to `interpret'
the intent of voters is misguided, in my view.

It is a red herring to suggest that the major problems have been with paper
based systems such as human un-readable punch card based systems, which
produced the famous hanging, pregnant and other types of chads in Florida in
2000. It's clear that paper punch card ballots are inferior ... but it is not
clear that hand counted mark sense ballots are inferior to any other voting
technology. And paper mark sense ballots have an inherent auditable paper
trail.

There are many advantages to using mark sense paper ballots ... paper is a
write once system, which preserves for a long time the marks made by the
voter. There is much information contained in those marks, which is not
reliably preserved by any other system I am aware of. This is why we place a
relatively high level of trust in a person's signature.

The problem that humans must on occasion interpret the marks that voters make
is not ameliorated by saying that machines make an `objective decision' about
what constitutes a vote. Studies have in fact shown that hand counted paper
ballots have very low rates of under and overvoting.

Please consider reverting Conneticut to a system which is in fact superior,
rather than introducing a more vulnerable system for the sake of appearing to
have the latest and best technological solution.

Above all, do not consider introducing even an auditable electronic system
without making explicit provision for that system to be audited independently
and on a regular basis.

Sincerely,

xxxx xxxxx