Voting Proposition

This post comes out of the ACORN post I'm about to post, but I want that one to be at the top of the blog for a few days, so I'm posting this first.

I'd just like to reiterate my proposal for solving the problems with our voting machines. I do not believe electronic voting machines are bad, I actually believe they can be a force for good... subject to certain safeguards.

I suggest electronic voting machines print out a receipt like ATMs do. These receipts should be machine and human readable.

After each voter verifies that their receipt correctly represents the vote that they cast, it is then fed into a separate, un-connected system (preferably built by a different company) which keeps a second tally and then maintains the paper receipts for manual recounts where necessary.

I believe there are at least three cases when recounts should be performed:

1. In the case of challenge of the results (in close races, or where there's some statistical anomaly, like results which don't match exit polling).
2. Whenever some threshold is met in disagreement between the two separate machines(*)
3. For spot inspections, where some random set of districts during each election are selected for a manual recount to ensure the veracity of the results from the two electronic counts.

There would also be a process (hopefully rarely used) for a voter to challenge if his/her receipt does not match the vote they intended to cast.

Liam.

(*) This recount would automatically trigger any time there was a difference beyond a certain threshold between the two "official" counts. This threshold would probably be a percentage deviation or whenever the results of the two machines' counts change the results of one or more races. I say "a threshold" rather than "any discrepancy" because there will always be someone who forgets to submit their paper receipt after voting, so I'm willing to accept some small and statistically insignificant difference (although any time the "recount" machine registers a higher tally than the primary machine, that might raise an eyebrow or two)

I similarly expect that the number of challenges to results on the receipts will not be zero, both from user error of the primar e-voting machine, from those with memory or other mental infirmities who may honestly be confused, and from the occasional trouble-maker who decides to throw the system into question by voting one way and immediately (and loudly) trumpeting how the system was "obviously" rigged because he would never have voted for this particular candidate.