We’ve been answering lots of questions about the OSDV Foundation’s role in the District of Columbia’s Pilot “digital vote-by-mail” project, including a recent post with a detailed account of the history leading up to the Pilot. But there is one Q&A in particular that I want to share with a broader audience. It’s a two-part [...]
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(Part 2 of 2: What’s My Ballot?)
Today, I’m continuing on from a recent post, which compared my in-person voting experience with one method of Internet-based voting: return of marked ballots by fax or email. Next up is a similar comparison with another form of Internet-based voting: Internet voting from home using a PC’s Web browser.
Let’s [...]
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Posted in Voting System Technology on Jun 8th, 2010
I just finished voting in CA’s primary — whew! 47 contests, 76 candidates total, and for on-paper voters, 4 sheets! But today, instead of hand-marking a ballot (my preference explained in an earlier posting), I used a DRE. This voting machine is part of the voting system that San Mateo County purchased from Hart Systems, [...]
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Posted in Voting System Technology on May 10th, 2010
I have to admit, I like paper ballots. But it wasn’t always that way. As a small child, I remember going into the voting booth with a parent, and watching them use those fine old lever machines. They were cool. The curtain made it seem like something both secret and important was happening. The little [...]
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I was very encouraged by recent election news from Ohio’s Cuyahoga County, reported in the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper: Reason for election machine glitch found, officials expect things to be OK for the primary. At first blush, it might seem like bad news:
All told, 89 of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections‘ 1,200 machines powered [...]
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[Today's guest post is from election technology expert Doug Jones, who is now revealed as also being an encyclopedia of U.S. elections history. Doug's remarks below were in a discussion about how to effectively use post-election ballot-count audits as a means to gain trust in the correct operation of voting machines -- particularly timely, given [...]
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Posted in Voting System Technology on Dec 7th, 2009
Today I provide the next step in clarifying TTV goals in relation to discussions with election transparency advocates. Regarding the previous posting, I want to emphasize that voting machines — in this case we focus on paper ballot scanning machines — are a transparency problem, if there is no human involvement in counting paper ballots, [...]
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Posted in Voting System Technology on Nov 24th, 2009
The reports of computer viruses in NY voting machines — though spurious — cause me to return to a basic mantra of TrustTheVote: we do technology development so that election tech helps inspire public confidence in elections, rather than erode it.
The NY case is a great example of erosion, but also a cautionary tale for [...]
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Posted in Voting System Technology on Nov 23rd, 2009
I wrote before that this month’s re-count activity in Pennsylvania was notable because of the variety of voting methods used there, and hence the variety of recounting methods needed. In contrast to the Lackawanna county that I mentioned specifically, there are many counties in PA that use completely paperless DRE voting machines. In these cases, [...]
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Posted in Voting System Technology on Oct 15th, 2009
Kudos to Brad Friedman for making a good call on a subtle point in his comment on my posting about Bo Lipari’s coverage of the NY State testing of voting systems. Brad objects to my statement that lever machines are not compliant with the Help Amercia Vote Act (HAVA).
And rightly so! The bad news about [...]
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