[ale] Its over. Maybe

[tfreeman at intel.digichem.net]

On Fri, 5 Nov 2004, Jim Popovitch wrote:

> On Fri, 2004-11-05 at 18:06 -0500, Tejus Parikh wrote:
> > Well, the last time I went to the ATM, I put my card in, and I got a
> > receipt, money and a card out. 
> 
> Why do you need a receipt, to put in your own wallet, of who you voted
> for?  

I want a receipt for my use - to check myself. Same as the receipt from 
the ATM, it is a cross check that allows me to check that they and I are 
on the same page. And with elections being decided in the region of 
counting errors, I find cross checks a nice cost effective concept. Fool 
proof? No. Beyond having the results cooked? Of course not. But paper is 
currently still a little harder to foul up than electronic records, and a 
lot easier for people to read.

Which may be a large part of the point. We, the people, are voting 
for/against people to represent people. There isn't one damn machine in 
the basic process, so turning over ultimate authority to a machine doesn't 
make any sense to me. _People_ need to be able to audit the process in a 
publically transparent process.

> 
> The ATM receipt is tailored for the customer's use NOT the banks.  The
> point is that neither the bank nor the election board needs a stack of
> papers just to validate an electronic transaction.  Oh the irony of the
> techno-geeks calling for old-school mechanisms to validate modern
> technology.  Can clay tablet requests be far off?  

Thank you for noting that I am a Luddite(sp?). Clay tablets have at least 
the desireable property of being almost indestructable, although the 
processes of firing and transportation could be dicey. I'll accept paper 
at the moment, as paper has a relatively well known history, and most if 
not all of the vulnerabilities known (even though I doubt the 
vulnerabilities are all compensated for). When the new machines have a few 
more elections under their belt, and a few fraud cases prosecuted for 
them, the system will be much better understood.

Meantime, voting machines have a bit of the feel of deus ex machina, a 
simple miracle from god which solves everything by authority from above. 
I'm not quite sheep enough to really like it.

> 
> -Jim P.
> 
> 
> 
> 
>  
> 
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If you think Education is expensive
Try Ignorance
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