Wouldn't a paper trail "later" simply provide a paper trail of flawed data?
The only valid paper trail would be the one the voter views before leaving
the polling place and deposits in a sealed ballot box after verifying the
accuracy of the votes recorded.
Larry Levine
----- Original Message -----
From: "Toplak Jurij" <jure.toplak@uni-mb.si>
To: "Eugene Volokh" <volokh@mail.law.ucla.edu>; "electionlaw"
<election-law@majordomo.lls.edu>
Sent: Saturday, November 15, 2003 5:41 PM
Subject: Re: Potential problem with California vote-tallying?
If there were also counties reporting 0.1% or 0.2% of the voters not
voting
on the recall question, 0.0% in some counties might be be understandable.
But since the next lowest score is 0.5% there is surely something wrong.
In
addition, zero out of 422.000 is surely not correct result.
(Un)fortunatelly
the result was not around 50:50 and nobody required the recount :)
I wonder whether Diebold machines can produce paper trail later, if there
a
dispute arises?
J.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Eugene Volokh" <volokh@mail.law.ucla.edu>
To: <election-law@majordomo.lls.edu>
Sent: Saturday, November 15, 2003 2:16 PM
Subject: Potential problem with California vote-tallying?
Very interesting apparent problem: "Perusing the results by county,
<http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/sov/2003_special/recall_question.pdf>
one
notices something odd: Alameda, Kern, and Plumas county report 0 voters
not
voting on the recall question. *Zero*."
Eugene
-----Original Message-----
From: Anthony [mailto:anthony@danceslut.net]
Sent: Friday, November 14, 2003 8:53 PM
To: pundit@instapundit.com
Cc: Clayton E. Cramer; Volokh, Eugene; jsanchez@reason.com;
dweintraub@sacbee.com
Subject: Diebold voting systems
Posted to my blog at http://blog.danceslut.net/archives/000273.html
Anthony Argyriou
***************************************
Diebold's new voting technology has come under fire.
<http://www.reason.com/links/links111103.shtml> Here's some more fuel
for
the fire.
Dan Wientraub reports
<http://www.sacbee.com/static/weblogs/insider/archives/000918.html> that
the
California Secretary of State has released the official results of the
recall election.
<http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/sov/2003_special/contents.htm> Perusing
the
results by county,
<http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/sov/2003_special/recall_question.pdf>
one
notices something odd: Alameda, Kern, and Plumas county report 0 voters
not
voting on the recall question. *Zero*. In every other county, the rate
goes
from 0.5% in Yolo County (representing 271 voters out of 56005 total)
and
0.7% in Alpine County (representing 4 voters out of 575) to 10.3% in
Sierra
County (168 out of 1632), with Los Angeles County recording the second
highest rate, at 8.9% (195 thousand out of 2.2 million)
The official results include voting systems used by each county.
<http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/sov/2003_special/vs.pdf> Los Angeles
County
and Sierra County use the Votomatic punch card. Four of the five
counties
with the next highest rates of not voting on the recall question,
Amador,
Kings, Mariposa, and Mono, all use the Optech Eagle Mark Sense Ballot
Card.
Mendocino, San Diego, and Solano Counties all used the Votomatic also,
and
experienced high rates of not voting on the recall.
Kern County uses the Dibold AccuVote OS Mark Sense Ballot Card, and
Alameda
and Plumas use the Diebold Accuvote Touch Screen.
The high end results suggest that voters are prone to error with the
Votomatic punch cards and the Optech Eagle ballot card. The
non-participation rate in Alameda County in the Gubenatorial vote was
8.8%,
slightly higher than the statewide rate of 8.0%. It's not believable
that
all 422,269 votes in Alameda County actually voted on the recall, unless
the
machine forced them to. The zero results with the Diebold systems
suggest
something more sinister: the Diebold machines discarded the votes of
anyone
who didn't vote in the recall, or assumed votes for them.
--
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day;
teach him to use the Net and he won't bother you for weeks.