Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

["Steve Burnett" <burnett AT pobox.com>]

> How accurate would a paper trail be anyway?  We all know that one
> information  could be sent to the printer, and another to the actual
> system/database.
>
> How accurate was last presidential election in Florida? I guess we'll
> never  really know.  If people want to fix the elections, there’s really
> no way of  stopping it... In my humble opinion.

So the benefit in switching systems is....?

The transition cost is not zero (at least highly unlikely to be zero), so
it'd be nice to see a positive benefit somewhere.

Steve B

> Quoting "H. Wade Minter" <minter AT lunenburg.org>:
>
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> Hash: SHA1
>>
>> On Thu, 11 Mar 2004, Thomas Beckett wrote:
>>
>> > Rachel Cox wrote:
>> > > Yeah, I'm not very excited about electronic voting at this point
>> myself. I'm eager for the time when I can be, but right now there are
just too many questions for me to be comfortable with it.
>> >
>> > Well in North Carolina at least, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
>> The paper ballot and optical reader system we now use (in Orange,
Durham and Wake at least) works great, and there's a physical ballot
and audit trail.  The ballot itself is simple and easy to
>> understand.  I have even witnessed a local election recount on
>> behalf of the Democratic Party and I think the system works well.  I
would be extremely suspicious of any effort to replace this system with
anything else.
>>
>> The big problem as I see it is that the big voting companies like
Diebold are absolutely opposed to, and fighting tooth-and-nail to stop,
any sort of audit trail for their computers.  They want zero paper
trail for their voting.
>>
>> Why on earth would anyone who wants fair elections be so opposed to
having a paper audit trail?  That's what gets my suspicions up about
e-voting. They want to take an unproven system and remove any sort of
non-electronic accountability.
>>
>> Sketchy at best.
>>
>> - --Wade