<x-flowed>On 6/26/06, Lowenstein, Daniel <lowenstein@law.ucla.edu> wrote:

There is one point, though, that I think should be made.  Rotation,
which in California I believe is by Assembly district, but could
also be by precinct, is fine.  But some of these e-mails have
referred to randomization.  If that means randomization by
individual voter, I think it would be a very bad idea.  In
California and no doubt in many other places, the state/county sends
a sample ballot to voters.  It is important that the sample ballot
be the same as the voter will see in the voting booth.  Even if the
randomization were set in advance, in which case theoretically the
correct sample ballots could be sent to each individual voter, there
would still be confusion--for example, when one spouse looks at the
other spouse's sample ballot and then sees something different in
the voting booth.  Also, campaigns, parties, and others, should have
the ability of sending sample ballot type images to voters, which
would be difficult if not impossible if randomization were !
on a voter-by-voter basis.

Randomization would have a number of bad consequences.  The worst,
outside of the above, would probably be that ballots from a giving
precinct would not longer be uniform and would facilitate linking
voters to ballots (where a randomization was reasonably unique given
then number of voters) as well as adversely impact the efficiency of
manual audit procedures (15 states have these kinds of requirements)
or recounts.

I don't know of any electronic voting system that randomizes choices
in a contest for individual voters. (I know of one cryptographic
scheme -- that is not ready for prime-time (like many of the crypto
schemes) -- that relies on cryptographic shuffling of "targets" for a
choice in a contest... but that's, well, different.)

Joe