Michael Shamos’s Points Against Voter Verified Paper Ballot

1. "Voter-verifiable paper ballot" is a contradiction in terms. It's true that the voter can see how he voted, but he still has no guarantee that the paper ballot he sees going into the box will still be there when a recount is performed. The chance that the ballot box will be stuffed or that ballots will be removed is VASTLY more likely than the possibility of a hacker performing some undetectable tampering.

2. It's really UNDETECTABLE tampering we have to worry about, not tampering itself. Anyone can tamper with a voting machine, and machines are sometimes vandalized. People damage the ballot face, inject glue below the buttons to make it impossible to depress them, hit the machine with hammers, etc. This is detected and the machine is replaced. No one has ever demonstrated, despite the offer of prize money, that it is possible to alter vote totals in a DRE voting machine.

3. Machines break down, people use them wrong, people set them up wrong, etc. The use of machines does not guarantee an error-free election any more than not using machines would. The question is whether any of the failures result in alteration of votes or failure to count them. This question is settled, as it is with ALL machines, by testing.

4. The opponents of DREs assert that a clever programmer could fix up a machine so it would pass all possible tests conducted outside the actual hours when the polls are open, but be programmed to switch votes during the actual election. Let us assume for a moment that this is even true (it isn't, actually, since the existence of the time-detection code could itself by detected, but let's give them the benefit of the doubt). The response to this is very simple. Let's actually test a small random sample of machines during the actual election. That is, remove them from service after they are turned on and initialized, and cast votes on them just as if they were being used in the election (except these votes will not count officially). This does not involve putting the machine into any kind of special "test" mode or anything out of the ordinary. If the machine is rigged, this test will reveal it.

5. It is quite feasible to have an independent organization (that is, independent of the voting system vendor), build an "audit" device that would sit inside each voting machine and INDEPENDENTLY record ballot images before the voting machine itself gets its hand on them. If there is any fiddling with the votes by the machine, then a simple comparison with the audit trail will reveal it. The problems in the past has been that the voting system vendor has been required t provide his own audit capability, which is not independent. So if he rigs the machine he can also rig the audit trail. With an independent watchdog this can't happen. This solution is MUCH simpler than any kind of paper audit trail, which by its nature is subject to tampering.

6. Paper, paper! The public reliance on it is seriously misplaced. Paper can be lost, altered, replaced, stolen or invalidated. It is fragile, can decay, fall apart or even look different to the human eye than it does to a machine (a serious problem with opscan equipment).

7. David Chaum has a complex scheme which supposedly allows a voter to verify AFTER an election that his vote has been tabulated properly in such a way that he does not have to reveal his vote. It's based on some complicated mathematics and a very tricky two-part ballot. Let's even assume it works and that it could be used in practice. It provides no protection whatsoever to the voter. Even if he sees that his vote was counted right, he has no idea how many phony votes were added to the totals. If he sees that his vote was NOT counted, it's not clear what recourse he has. He can petition a court to add one vote to the loser's total, but it would take a groundswell of individual petitions to make any difference in the election, and all of these people would then have to reveal their choices. So it just doesn't work in a real election setting.

Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Melon and has twenty years of experience with computerized voting.

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