First-time reader and poster (so I don't know how to comment directly to Forrest above)
So in response to Forrest, unverifiable DREs (direct record electronic) voting machines are not convenient or fast (and there's no way to know whether they are accurate). Here in Tennessee, we compared how long it would take 21 voters, taking from 3 minutes to 13 minutes to complete their ballots (with the time to vote increasing 30 seconds for each voter from the fastest to the slowest), to vote on paper ballots counted by optical scan machines vs. the same 21 voters voting on a DRE. The difference: the paper ballot/ opscan voters were all finished voting within 13 minutes -- the DRE group took 2 hours and 48 minutes. That's because with the paper ballots, the act of voting is separated from the act of having the vote counted, unlike with the DREs. So fast voters are not hindered by being stuck behind slow voters in a DRE line from completing their paper ballots and having their ballots counted by an opscan as soon as they are completed. Paper ballot/opscan voting systems are also 30-40% cheaper to operate than DRE voting systems, because it takes 70% less equipment to run an election.
I agree with Dr. Jeffrey Chase at Duck University who said that "DREs are a threat to democracy." I agree with Fortune magazine that selected DREs as the "worst new technology" of 2003. And I also agree with the marketplace that has assigned a resale value of $zero$ to DREs that state after state is dumping now, because no democracy on the planet wants these slow, expensive and insecure "black boxes" anymore.
The only thing that DREs are good for is making election fraud an easy and wholesale process. That is likely why the federal law that introduced them en mass (the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), also known as "Hack America's Votes" Act) was pushed through by Congressman Bob Ney (R-Ohio) without allowing any opportunity to debate the obvious security problems with the equipment. It would be nice to ask Rep. Ney just what he was thinking but he is still in the custody of the federal Bureau of Prisons for his bribery/corruption conviction.
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First-time reader and poster (so I don't know how to comment directly to Forrest above)
So in response to Forrest, unverifiable DREs (direct record electronic) voting machines are not convenient or fast (and there's no way to know whether they are accurate). Here in Tennessee, we compared how long it would take 21 voters, taking from 3 minutes to 13 minutes to complete their ballots (with the time to vote increasing 30 seconds for each voter from the fastest to the slowest), to vote on paper ballots counted by optical scan machines vs. the same 21 voters voting on a DRE. The difference: the paper ballot/ opscan voters were all finished voting within 13 minutes -- the DRE group took 2 hours and 48 minutes. That's because with the paper ballots, the act of voting is separated from the act of having the vote counted, unlike with the DREs. So fast voters are not hindered by being stuck behind slow voters in a DRE line from completing their paper ballots and having their ballots counted by an opscan as soon as they are completed. Paper ballot/opscan voting systems are also 30-40% cheaper to operate than DRE voting systems, because it takes 70% less equipment to run an election.
I agree with Dr. Jeffrey Chase at Duck University who said that "DREs are a threat to democracy." I agree with Fortune magazine that selected DREs as the "worst new technology" of 2003. And I also agree with the marketplace that has assigned a resale value of $zero$ to DREs that state after state is dumping now, because no democracy on the planet wants these slow, expensive and insecure "black boxes" anymore.
The only thing that DREs are good for is making election fraud an easy and wholesale process. That is likely why the federal law that introduced them en mass (the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), also known as "Hack America's Votes" Act) was pushed through by Congressman Bob Ney (R-Ohio) without allowing any opportunity to debate the obvious security problems with the equipment. It would be nice to ask Rep. Ney just what he was thinking but he is still in the custody of the federal Bureau of Prisons for his bribery/corruption conviction.