IP: Difficulties With Paper Ballot Systems Pointed Out Six Months Ago

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

> Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2000 15:47:38 -0800
> From: Ed Gerck <egerck () safevote com>
> To: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
> Subject: Difficulties With Paper Ballot Systems Pointed Out Six Months Ago
>
>
> [Dave:  This may interest IP'ers -- things did not go wrong
> all of a sudden.]
>
> When looking at the current scenario in public elections, it is
> useful to consider the lessons gained here.  One of them is IMO
> to fight lenient attitudes toward problems.
>
> The overview of an extensive year 2000 market study that Safevote
> conducted in the U.S. regarding public elections and the perspective
> of Internet voting was made available to the public and published in
> the newsletter The Bell [http:/www.thebell.net] in May, June and July
> [http://www.thebell.net/archives/]. Florida was one of the five
> states researched. Six months ago, The Bell declared:
>
> "The study revealed the tension in having the  power to identify a
> problem while lacking the means to solve it.  For example, for vote
> recounting the majority of paper punching systems used in the U.S. do
> not produce repeatable results when ballots are tallied more than
> once, which means that election officials lack the means to
> objectively distinguish between fraud and error under these
> circumstances.  Thus, the timeliness and usefulness of this study to
> the election community, vendors and interest groups cannot be
> overstated, as well as its relevance toward future benchmarks to rate
> Internet voting systems. The study shows that the performance of
> currentsystems is not the "golden benchmark" to which Internet voting
> systems should be compared.  There are many faults with the current
> systems, as the report will describe, so we should in fact be looking
> to Internet voting systems in order to try to reduce those faults and
> thus provide for more security than what is available today ­ not
> less security."
>
> Cheers,
>
> Ed Gerck