Wow! This is huge! And even people who used to think that a simple paper trail are now convinced that a full fledged ballot which can be used in recounts is the only reliable way to go.
Many former advocates of VVPAT, including John Gideon, executive director of VotersUnite, now favor requiring that all votes be recorded on paper ballots.
"DREs are unacceptable as voting devices and … the addition of a VVPAT on a DRE is only a placebo to make some voters feel more comfortable," Gideon said in an e-mail.
This is absolutely great news for our Democracy!
Posted by Mary at November 30, 2006 01:24 AMI'll believe it when I see it.
Posted by raisin at November 30, 2006 01:53 AMAre we actually seeing light at the end of a very dark tunnel?
Posted by Judith at November 30, 2006 04:25 AMI'm convinced that the reason the Democrats won this year is because the GOP underestimated the amount that they needed to cheat by this year. 50%+1 should be enough to win, reform cannot come fast enough for me.
Posted by herbal tee at November 30, 2006 04:31 AMI'm glad to hear this, but I don't understand the problem, conceptually, with VVPATs. If they're not legible, that's a problem with the implementation that can be corrected. But the article seems to say that they're simply not a good idea, and I don't understand why. Can anyone explain? The article says that VVPATs wouldn't have helped in FL-13 (which I assume is the district that had 18,000 undervotes). But why not? Voters would have seen that there was no vote for Congress and would have been able to go back and correct it.
I like Avi Rubin's suggestion for voting systems (he and others have suggested the same thing.) You have an electronic machine that fills out an optical-scan ballot for you. This means you use the same type of touch-screen system that prevents over-votes and allows disabled voters to vote independently. It will also fill in the bubble correctly and not color outside the lines. Then you feed your paper ballot into an optical scan reader, which would have to be audited to make sure votes are counted correctly. Votes could always be hand-counted if necessary.
Posted by CG at November 30, 2006 06:44 AMOne has to have huge respect for Brad and Bev Harris and the army of grassroots Americans that have fought this long tough battle. This war isn't over yet but I shudder to think where we'd be if they hadn't jumped in.
Posted by mainsailset at November 30, 2006 07:10 AMI still want to know how Diebold can get my ATM transaction and receipt securely correct EVERY FUCKING TIME yet curiously cannot engineer a failsafe voting machine.
Oh wait, I do know. It's called "priorities."
Fuckers. I hope they all go bankrupt.
Posted by God Of War at November 30, 2006 07:59 AM