But if they are (1) not connected to the Internet, and (2) generate a paper ballot that the voter can check, then the result is the same as for a vote counting machine - at the end of the day, you have a paper trail and an electronic trail, and they agree. And for most purposes, the electronic record is going to be used in a lot more ways for auditing.Ken wrote: ↑Mon Nov 27, 2023 1:50 pmI think we are drawing a distinction between VOTING MACHINES and VOTE COUNTING MACHINES. They are not the same thing at all.Bootstrap wrote: ↑Mon Nov 27, 2023 1:05 pm A useful answer depends on tests that compare the manual process to automated ones, and the results depend a lot on which two systems you are comparing. Which machines are you opposed to? All machines? Are OCR machines OK? How about punch cards? Which manual processes are you advocating? When you say "paper ballot", what exactly do you mean? Without that, it's hard to set up the comparison.
But if you take human error and auditing into account, I think you will find that:
1. Human beings can misread, miscount, or mishandle ballots, leading to inaccuracies in the election results. Most of the systems used in elections have proven that they can do better than human beings do. Those test results were an important reason they were adopted in the first place.
2. Paper ballots are physically vulnerable. They can be damaged, lost, or tampered with. And sometimes lost ballots have been a real issue.
3. Paper ballots take up space, and it's hard to pull them up quickly for reference or auditing. Especially if you want to archive them for decades to allow research or later audits.
4. Auditing paper ballots is very labor-intensive. Digital records allow a lot more audit trails and analytics.
Whether or not you have paper ballots, you need electronic systems too, and you need to be able to make sure that they correspond.
Electronic voting machines are some sort of electronic touch-screen machine in which votes are recorded electronically onto some sort of digital file that is electronically transmitted to a central election headquarters. Or sometimes stored onto a flash drive and hand-carried to a vote center. There are a variety of issues with voting this way not the least of which is digital security.
Of course, it's important to have user interfaces that people understand and can use accurately.
That's what we have in North Carolina, at least where I vote.Ken wrote: ↑Mon Nov 27, 2023 1:50 pmVote counting machines are optical scanning devices used in elections headquarters to scan and count paper ballots. They are usually not connected to the internet and the technology is simple and often open-source and simply automate the tedious process of counting paper ballots.
To me, though, it seems to reach the same result. You need something that is not connected to the Internet so it can't be hacked. You need both an electronic record and a paper record that users can see and verify. You need ways to audit both. If you have that, I don't really understand why it matters whether you start with paper and scan it in or start with a screen and print it out.