Discussion of vote tabulation article

Several folks have discussed this issue with me and brought up some interesting and insightful questions or counterpoints. I'll try to reproduce many of them here as time allows.

• We trust ATMs with our money all of the time. Why wouldn't we trust similar technology for voting?
  
  My response:
  
  This is actually an excellent example to help illustrate my contention. Ask yourself if you really trust an ATM. Most of us balance our checkbooks once a month. What we do is take our last known balance, then using our hard-copy (check stubs & ATM receipts), we then check what we believe the new balance to be against what the bank tells us the new balance should be. If they don't match, we investigate.
  
  This is a common-sense check-and-balance system that all of us use. Stories of situations where the bank's balance was wrong abound, but it really isn't a serious problem because we regularly check their story against ours. You can't do this with a DRE vote tabulation system. If you don't unquestioningly take the bank's word on the balance of a tiny personal account, why would you take the word of ES&S or Diebold on a vote count that affects billions in government spending and changes the lives of every person in the country. (and recently, other countries...)
  
  Add to your own personal checks the fact that every bank is subject to several independent accounting audits every year and you can see that nobody trusts an ATM without independent verification at several levels. Therefore, following the logic of trusting this technology just as we trust an ATM, nobody should trust a DRE voting device unless it has hard-copy verification and and independent audit.




• According to the vendors of DRE tabulation systems, there has never been a problem with them.
  
  My response:
  
  This is a ridiculous statement and I am surprised anyone takes it seriously. By definition, if there is no way to check, of course there will never be a problem! If there is an incorrect vote count, you will never know.
  
  Look at it this way: When you went to school, someone always checked your answers on tests. If the teacher had suddenly stopped checking your answers, would that mean that they were all correct?
  
  Note added Sept 5th:Recently, the state of Nevada tested an enhanced DRE system that included the paper audit trail that I've suggested would solve the problem. Ironically, the system failed the test. Critics said this made the system questionable but I look at it in a very different way: The key component of the system demonstrated its value decisively because this system could actually be tested! The important outcome of this test is not that the system failed, but that because it could be tested, we know it failed. Kudos to the State of Nevada for being the first state to require a system that can be tested.

Copyright, Updates, Comments, Questions.

Copyright © 2004 Nick Fankhauser.
I grant the right to reproduce this work to anyone with the following restriction: The entire work must be presented in the reproduction.

The reason I require that the entire work be reproduced is that I will probably update it periodically. I believe that all of the statements are true but I am not perfect and may need to make corrections or perhaps even change my opinion. I also hope to be able to report some progress toward a solution eventually. If you are reading a reproduction, please go to the following URL to make sure you have the most current copy: http://www.fankhausers.com/articles/

I invite comments, questions and corrections. I'm willing to post opposing opinions if they are reasonably well written. My EMail address is nick@fankhausers.com