Ohio Officials at Odds Over Paper Ballot

So, paper ballots are the answer, eh? Only ignorance would lead one to argue that. First, in Ohio, the dreaded direct recording electronic (DRE) voting machines actually have a "paper ballot" - it's called a "Voter verified paper trail." You push button, it prints. So, for those "conspiracy theorists" out there - don't worry, there is a paper trail. It can be audited. In Union County, 5 recounts have shown 100% accuracy. (I know, you don't believe it. It's the truth, so you deny it or ignore it. Doesn't change the truth.)

So, what about the sainted Central Count Optical Scan? First of all, the ballots don't always read. Yup, it's true. They are high speed scanners with timing marks on the ballots. Marks a little off? Oops. Error. Second, the ballots are sometimes printed a little bit crooked. Result? The machine reads black marks. Might not be reading what you colored in. Oops. Error. Third, the voters don't always fill the ballots out right. Yes, you can't figure out to color in the circle - you put a x or * or checkmark. What happens? The ballot is spoiled OR - the ballot is re-marked by a poll worker. A person who you don't know actually marks the ballot that is counted. Uh, yes, it's true. It happened here.

Oh yeah, some voters undervoted, some overvoted. CCOS has no way to detect it. Result? Your vote on your precious paper ballot isn't counted. One other thing, optical scan readers don't read with 100% accuracy.

What else? Hmmmm, Cuyahoga County election workers lost 20 ballot boxes filled with paper ballots. No word if they were found. Cuyahoga County was "chaos" counting paper ballots... gee, nice system.

Power went out in a local precinct. Paper ballots save the day? Um, nope. People couldn't see to write. But the DRE's ran on batteries... nice, bright screens. People voted with power out.

So, are DRE's perfect? No. But neither were punch cards, or paper ballots. No system is. But, if you think paper can't be manipulated, you are either naive or ignorant. (Oh, yeah, one more thing. Vote on paper as a provisional or absentee... your ballot isn't coded. It is therefore NOT SECRET. Pollworker opens envelope with your name on it and can read your vote.)

Final analysis? I'll vote on a DRE with a VVPAT and be perfectly happy knowing my vote will be counted, and counted with 100% accuracy and in a private way. You "paper ballot conspiracy" people - wallow in your ignorance and take us back to 5th grade test forms for ballots.

I'm going to venture a guess that some of you will not admit the problems inherent in a paper ballot system.

Re: "The "Help America Vote Act" was a Rovian scheme to take the elecorate out of elections in response to the manufactured "debacle" in Florida."

I completely agree with that statement. HAVA was written by lobbyists for the U.S. electronic voting machine cartel. We have spent all that money now, all that taxpayer money that the U.S. electronic voting machine cartel sucked out of Congress through HAVA. And what has it gotten us? A whole new set of problems that are different from the ones that existed in 2000, and that caused the hanging chad debacle. Had Karl Rove not been successful in his determination to make sure Palm Beach County, Florida voters were forced to vote on paper ballots that were manufactured from low-quality paper, we never would have had HAVA in the first place.

Nothing to apologize for ~Vince~ An excellent post and very informative. Thank you for the information.

I am a temporary employee of my County BOE here in Ohio. I provide manual labor for: setting up each (Diebold) machine to be loaded, tested, recorded, inspected, repaired, and torn down in preparation for each election.

I "volunteered" after the November '06 election in response to a newspaper ad asking for more election workers: I was encouraged after Nov. '06 election that our democracy just might still work (I believe that - at that time - if every seat in both houses were up for grabs there would be very few elected Republicans still walking around D.C.

Needless to say my belief that representative democracy hadn't quite croaked yet was naive, as our newly elected representatives have had very little positive results representing the will of the people.

Can't speak for any other county than where I am, but here my observation has been that the full-time BOE employees (both D & R) are dedicated to seeing that every voter in the county can cast their vote in the manner they so desire. All of these perm. employees are also mad as hell at Ms. Brunnner. Mad because this action is happening at the same time that they are scrambling to get prepared for the election with the devices that we have.

I don't like these electronic machines either and part of the reason I "volunteered" was to see for myself if the situation was as bad as I suspected. As for the ongoing cost of operating these machines, the BOE people tell me that the lobor/cost between maintaining and preparing these machines as opposed to our previous system (punch cards) is about a wash. The Diebolds take more hours=money prior to the election and the punch cards took more time=money after the election.

This is not a populous county; part of the rust belt that has been losing population for the last 30 years. I suspect there is much more tension in the metropolitan areas.

Since no other poster has stated this: The "Help America Vote Act" was a Rovian scheme to take the elecorate out of elections in response to the manufactured "debacle" in Florida. Similar in strategic and tactical design to the "wrong-footing" of that idiot Sadam prior to our illegal invasion.

No system is completely safe from tampering and fraud, but I agree with the poster above that said that the "confidence in our systems" expressed by company reps is not the same thing as enjoying the public trust.

These machines need to go, and the sooner the better. I agree with Ms. Brunner's efforts, and the County BOE's will just have to suck it up and help us remove this Orwellian/Rovian scheme from our democracy.

I apologize for the length of this post.

About Oregon ballots:

ZoomerzMom and Patrick Kem, I live in Oregon and you need to think twice before boasting about our system. Those lovely paper ballots are counted on easily hacked optical scanner machines. Sure the ballots can be recounted, but we have seen repeatedly across the country how expensive and rarely undertaken these recounts are. In fact, the only recount of ALL ballots (not a statistical sample) that I know to have taken place was in Washington state a number of years ago when the REPUBLICANS demanded all votes be recounted because of a disputed congressional election. (They still lost). Usually-- and it could be this is enshrined in state laws-- there is a statistical sampling, and in more than one jurisdiction whistle blowers have reported that this sampling, rather than being random, has been of precincts specifically and carefully chosen by the election officials, presumably to give accurate accounts.

It's kind of a national Alzheimer's. Rather than solving any our problems really, we embrace half-way solutions like, in this case, computer ballots and optical scanners-- that don't really solve the problem, but only appear to, and make us feel good that we're doing something. Optical scanners are in themselves hackable.

Abbybwood is completely correct-- the only honest election would be one tallied on paper and counted by teams of volunteers. And do you know what? People would leap at the chance to volunteer. Counting the ballots would become an important civic rite.

The fact that Americans have been convinced that this solution is somehow impossible is a testament to the fact that an accurate count of votes is something which neither party is enthusiastic about.

Computers have no place in an honest election process as there is no way to prevent hacking-- which many computer experts forthrightly admit.

I did!

ruthru you didn't deal with my Gerald Ford comment.

Re "The mess up with non-Diebold voting systems almost resulted in the 2000 General Election going the wrong way."

Here is what happened with the hanging chad problem in Palm Beach County, FL, which triggered a series of events that resulted in George W. Bush being our president, instead of the people's choice, Al Gore:

The paper ballot company that's located somewhere in the Midwest and that has done a terrific job manufacturing good quality paper ballots and marketing them to elections officials all across our country for years, was forced to use a low-grade paper specifically for the ballots that were earmarked for Palm Beach County. The employees of the company who make the ballots and verify their quality refused to sign off on them as being a product that would serve the people of PBC well. The owner of the company ended up signing off on them, which was highly irregular.

So the ballots ended up being used by the voters specifically in PBC, resulting in the disastrous hanging chad debacle.

If our Corporate Media were interested in investigating and reporting actual news events, instead of spewing propaganda 24/7, this would have been reported to the American people. Since it was not, we continue to remain in the dark about the truth into how our elections, and that one in particular, are determined by forces other than one citizen/one vote.

I would like to see the ability to "opt-out" of the secret ballot. If I choose to opt out then I could go down to city hall or log on to a website and see/verify how my vote was counted. If enough people did this, it would make stealing elections virtually impossible.

Soeharto,

Where've you been? You seem out of sorts here. We'll try to get you caught up on what's been happening in the twenty-first century. First off, the election in 2000 was stolen, not because of faulty ballots, but because the Supreme Court refused to allow Dade county to count them.

Mob Politics: How Bush Supporters and Republican Congressional Staffers Stopped the Miami-Dade Recount
November 29, 2000 | Story:

Next came Ohio, and it wasn't necessary for the court to hand the country over to the mobsters. They were already on top of things:

CEO of Voting Machine Firm Diebold Resigns
December 13, 2005 | Headline

And the chief executive of the electronic voting machine manufacturer Diebold, Walden O'Dell, has resigned. In 2003 O'Dell made headlines when he wrote that he's "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

You "can't see why Americans need Canadians to tell them anything." Perhaps you need to realize how incredibly ignorant you are. I'm still an American. I'm telling you this. Is that okay?

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/01/25/diebold-voting-machi.html

Here's the very simple solution we must all INSIST on by November: All voting in every precinct will be done with paper ballots and pens. No computers will be allowed within the voting area. Any voter registered in any particular neighborhood of a precinct will be welcomed to stay after the polls close to observe and/or participate in the counting of the ballots. Any and all video cameras will be encouraged to film all activities. Once the ballots are counted twice by the group and verified as accurate by the group an affidavit will be signed by all those present testifying to the count. The count will then be driven by three individuals to the county office and logged into on camera with the tally officially signed by the three individuals who bring the ballots in. If this process takes until the next day, so be it.

And there you are.

I fully agree ~Poet~, and it would not take as long a time as countng hanging chads.

As a Floridian, I feel the pain of every Ohioan frustrated over the sorry state of ballot reform in their state. My own preference would be for all paper ballots and if it takes several days to certify the ballot count then so be it. Not beiong able to validate the results of an election is what makes the whole enterprise a dejmoralizing affair.

We should all have the Oregon method of voting. It could also have a return postage card attached, and that signed and returned to the voter, so one would know their vote had been recieved at the polling place.

Who made any snide inuendos about Gerald Ford ~SOEHARTO~?

What I wrote about the Ohio presidential vote for Ford is accurate. I got that information from The Honorable Gerald Ford, when he once gave a speech for Ronald Reagon, and spoke about how important our votes are.

Do you have a reading disability SOEHARTO, or are you just being critical for no reason?

The mess up with non-Diebold voting systems almost resulted in the 2000 General Election going the wrong way. I can't see why people would want Canadians to tell Americans how to do anything. And I don't think snide inuendos aimed at Gerald Ford are very worthy.

Oregon has 100% vote-by-mail, all paper. I have not heard of any problems in all the years I have lived in Oregon.

Voting by mail is great when the weather is inclement, or when you forget exactly when election day is.

The ballot arrives about two weeks prior to election day, you use a #2 pencil to select your choice, you put the ballot in a security envelope and then put that envelope in an outer, mailing envelope and sign the outer mailing envelope (this is compared to your registration signature), then you mail it. Voila! Done!

Re "It is NOT possible to have a recount if there are is no paper trail. That fact alone, should be enough to use only paper ballots."

You might be surprised at the number of people who think that a computer printout given to a voter showing how that voter voted is verification that his/her votes were tabulated correctly by the computer. It is entirely possible to program a computer to give a voter a printout showing how (s)he thinks (s)he voted, while what is going on inside the computer's brain is something altogether different.

There may be a time in the not-so-distant future when computers and computer programs can be secured for voting, but that time has not arrived.

Here are the 2004 election results for Ohio's Union County. To my sorrow, I live only about 60 miles from there . . .
http://www.electionsonthe.net/oh/union/elecres/20041102.htm

It seems that even more Ohio election officials will have to be jailed before they gain a respect for the law.

Massachusetts has the best ballots I've ever seen. All one needs to do is make a straight line that connects a name with an office. Golly, gee, it works.

Votes do count. ___ When Gerald Ford ran he lost Ohio. Had he won Ohio, he would have been the president. If only ONE more person had voted for Ford in every Ohio precinct, he wold have won Ohio. __ Votes do count.

It is NOT possible to have a recount if there are is no paper trail. That fact alone, should be enough to use only paper ballots.

One lost or misapropriated vote is one too many. Every vote must be counted and we must assure the voters that the ballot boxes have not been stuffed over the internet. Maybe some hackers can do us a favor in these primaries by adding a million votes to one side or the other and thus expose the failings of electronic voting. In a state like Florida which disenfranchised thousands of African American and low income voters in previous elections or Ohio where these machines have been the subject of inquiries, can we trust the elected officials to do their job?

Re "Hey, does anyone know–how secure are absentee ballots? Maybe we should all vote that way."

At least when voters use mail-in ballots, they aren't surprised at the polling place on election day in one of the following ways: (1) mysteriously missing from the polling place roster, or (2) listed on the polling place roster as having registered under a different party than what they thought they had registered under.

And for those precincts that no longer use paper ballots and have changed to having every voter vote on an electronic voting machine, mail-in voters do not have to vote using that system that is proven to be shockingly lacking in security.

And for those precincts with long waiting lines on election day, mail-in voters are not subject to this particular scenario that disenfranchises so many voters who are unable to stand in line for hours.

It behooves every voter to check with his/her local Registrar of Voters to discover exactly how mail-in ballots are handled, verified, and counted.

Gail- If questions of fraud arise... 1)there needs to be adequate hard evidence to support the case, evidence which the nontransparent nature of the machines and resistance by politically appointed secretaries of state and election officials makes difficult to acquire; 2) you then run into chain of custody issues as demonstrated by the Black Box Voting folks in New Hampshire (www.blackboxvoting.org); 3) then you have cost of recount and legal requirements for starting one (e.g., demand must be made by a candidate), and so on. Needless to say, I prefer an ounce of prevention over a vague possibility of ten pounds of cure.

my2sense- Absentee ballots and vote-by-mail have no rigorous chain of custody requirements. Who knows where they go? And if they get to the central tabulator, you're back to secret vote-counting on machines using proprietary software. The whole thing's a charade.

Some Ohio officials seem to be against the idea of democracy. No paper, no votes. No votes in a country then that country isn't a democracy. It's that freaking simple. Damn shame that so many officials in other states are quietly going about doing the same thing that Ohio does.

Hey, does anyone know--how secure are absentee ballots? Maybe we should all vote that way.

"We felt it was a waste of taxpayer money because we have confidence in our system."

Confidence is not the same as public trust. Until a system has been verified by a fully trusted system, and has verification built in, from vote entry to final tally, it is an abuse of tax payers money.

We know the Sec of State is a Democrat. Too bad we can't be privy to the politics of those against the paper ballots. Of course it isn't hard to figure that one out, is it.

1. Open source software
2. Secure systems only
3. Verifiable (paper receipts)
4. Political parties removed from process - need a non-partisan organization like the league of women voters to over see

Why would the people of the United States give up their solemn right to unchecked corporate power?

Until something is done about ANY private, corporate-owned machines, "caging" and other Rovian tactics nothing will change.

jskinner February 10th, 2008 1:38 pm

"As if optical scam is any more secure. It's just another SDD (software driven device) running on proprietary code. In general, electronic voting is only as trustworthy as the politicians who have forced us to use it."

True, but at least there is a paper trail that can be counted by hand if questions of fraud arise.

"Touch-screen machines were found to be vulnerable to hackers using devices as rudimentary as magnets and personal digital assistants, and security measures were found to be inadequate to prevent fraud."

That statement pretty much sums-up the state of our electronic voting systems around the country; and David Phillips from Union County is concerned about spending $68,000. of taxpayers money to help ensure voters that their votes will go to the right candidates?

Do the people of Union County prefer Democracy or Potential Fraud?

I can't imagine Canadians ever falling for unverifiable paperless ballots. There would be a public outcry.. You have to wonder why such practices would ever be considered acceptable.

As if optical scam is any more secure. It's just another SDD (software driven device) running on proprietary code. In general, electronic voting is only as trustworthy as the politicians who have forced us to use it. The maximally secure and transparent voting method is still paper ballots publicly hand-counted at the precinct.

Paper ballots are a waste of money?

How much did those McDonalds cash register, spiffy doodle ESS and Diebold gizmos cost, eh?

Is the denial of a Constitutionally guaranteed recount, chump change? How many people have given their lives for that little document, eh?

What a crock... thanks for the article.

God Bless Ohio

Local elections officials who prioritize the speed and ease at which they can do their jobs over the accurate counting of every single voter's vote need to get over it. They work for the citizens and voters of their state, and not for some big corporation that gets to call its own shots.

SoS Brunner is doing her job, and she needs all the support she can get. We've got a similar situation here in CA. Many local elections officials are protesting the security protocols put in place by our SoS Bowen. They are even suing her for doing her job. This is a deplorable situation, and the citizens of every county need to let their local elections officials know how they feel about this.

So far, the ONLY people who seem to agree that electronic voting machines are the way to go are the electronic voting machine companies themselves, and those local elections officials who are closely connected to this industry, through prior jobs or through promises of future jobs.

This situation is bad, bad, bad for the citizens/voters of Ohio and the rest of our states.

"We felt it was a waste of taxpayer money because we have confidence in our system," said David Phillips"

Ohio is scrambling to correct serious flaws in its voting systems that were uncovered in a study released in December.

how confident can you be?

/the surge is working