Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #BallotMarkingDevices
Most recents (5)
1/Dear legislators debating new ways to enhance confidence in elections: get rid of #BallotMarkingDevices and other expensive vulnerable voting tech. Voters don’t understand it. Losing side will always cry foul. Use more #HandMarkedPaperBallots and mandatory audits. Invest in
2/Better more accurate scanning technology and error tolerant manual counting methods (and training/assessment methods so they can be uniformly applied)
3/More transparent, less tech heavy ways of registering/authenticating voters
Thread 1.
#LosAngeles Done listening to 3 hours of testimony & public comments about the LA Voting System. Incredible that in all that time not a single member of the public testified with any kind of enthusiasm for the voting system. #VSAP #SecurityFail #LaVotes #SMARTelections
#LosAngeles Done listening to 3 hours of testimony & public comments about the LA Voting System. Incredible that in all that time not a single member of the public testified with any kind of enthusiasm for the voting system. #VSAP #SecurityFail #LaVotes #SMARTelections
2. Instead ppl noted:
- The #VotingMachine can print on the paper ballot after the voter casts it potentially changing votes.
- The method that #security experts recommend: #HandMarkedPaperBallots is not being offered.
- the system is tabulating #QRcodes, something banned in CO
- The #VotingMachine can print on the paper ballot after the voter casts it potentially changing votes.
- The method that #security experts recommend: #HandMarkedPaperBallots is not being offered.
- the system is tabulating #QRcodes, something banned in CO
3. I noted: The new system makes it impossible to audit and/or recount. A group that wanted to recount a race that was won by 16 votes was unable to - because of the cost estimate of 200k due to the way the new system stores ballots. presstelegram.com/2020/05/11/lon… #DontCertifyVSAP
1/Building on my thread threadreaderapp.com/thread/1167416… this week as a warm up to a paper that shows voter verification of BMD output is a fantasy that has no basis in theory or practice. Voter verification depends on assumptions that are not true. But here's one that I had overlooked:
2/In addition to cognitive limitations of memory, the very idea of voter verification takes into account neither "change blindness" nor "choice blindness." As Petter Johansson and Lars Hall explain in their paper pdfs.semanticscholar.org/559c/ea673416a… 
3/The idea that significant numbers of voters will and can check the possibly fraudulent output of compromised #BallotMarkingDevices and detect the errors has no merit at all. Everywhere I look there are counterexamples and theoretical hurdles.
1/ The argument seems to be that untrained, unmotivated, possibly stressed-out, tired, mildly cognitively impaired (if over 50) voters can be encouraged to verify machine-marked paper ballots effectively enough to make them useful and trusted paper trails for Risk-Limiting Audits
2/If a fraction of machine-cast votes are unverified, then RLAs become a meaningless exercise bc an attacker of a close election can always arrange for a complete hand-recount which necessarily sweeps these poisoned ballots into the final audited tally.
3/So let’s test this with a similar task, say proof-reading, another error-detection skill involving searching for errors in a document. I am willing to admit that I am at present a terrible proof-reader. But I believe that with training and experience I can improve.
1/ Just finished reading the entirety of the judge’s ruling GA’s vulnerable election system, and I am shaken. Much has been made allowing DREs one last time this fall, but those are mainly municipalities that use hand marked paper ballots not DREs
documentcloud.org/documents/6277…
documentcloud.org/documents/6277…
2/ Most of the order is a Tom Clancy-worthy recounting of officials misleading GA citizens. I am shaken because history is repeating itself. In choosing to ignore the mountain of expert opinion that the new BMDs aren’t safe, SOS is once again listening to outliers.
3/ There is little in Judge Totenberg’s “Past is Prologue” section of the order that does not apply to the new Dominion #BallotMarkingDevices
