4 Responses

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   1)

   Dredd said on 4/18/2007 @ 6:51am PT: [Permalink]

   John,

   I did some research so as to contemplate House bill HR 811 and its compliment in the Senate S 559.

   If you follow the links and study the two bills, you will notice that the two bills are different.

   Focusing only on HR 811 is being unaware, because the constitution makes congress bi-cameral.

   These two bills will have to morph into a bill agreed to by both the House and the Senate in conference, before being presented to the President for signature or veto.

   The Senate has no amendments yet, nor has it held hearings on it yet, according to the record, but the House has held hearings but as of yet records no amendments.

   The Senate version has some interesting language:

   This bill establishes mandatory security requirements for voting systems used in Federal elections. It also will provide for routine, random audits of paper ballots and make it illegal for a chief State election administration official to take an active part in a political campaign.

   (Sen. Nelson’s Introduction, emphasis added). The House bill does not have the same characteristics as the Senate bill.

   The Senate version makes paper ballots the exclusive determinant when there is a discrepancy in an electronic voting machine’s count:

   `(ii) Each paper ballot produced pursuant to subparagraph (A) shall be suitable for a manual audit equivalent to that of a paper ballot voting system.

   `(iii) In the event of any inconsistencies or irregularities between any electronic vote tallies and the vote tallies determined by counting by hand the individual permanent paper ballots produced pursuant to subparagraph (A), and subject to subparagraph (D), the individual permanent paper ballots shall be the true and correct record of the votes cast and shall be used as the official ballots for purposes of any recount or audit conducted with respect to any election for Federal office in which the voting system is used.

   (Senate Bill Text, emphasis added).

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   2)

   the_zapkitty said on 4/18/2007 @ 2:07pm PT: [Permalink]

   Yo, Dredd… did you happen to notice that that’s the exact same text as in hr.811?

   The two bills are practically identical with only two major differences, as I pointed out in the “ES&S systems vulnerable” thread over at https://bradblog.com/?p=4396

   And neither of the two differences between the bills require a paper ballot to be counted if there happens to be a DRE psuedo-ballot around to obfuscate the matter. The pseudo-ballot gets counted… maybe… and it disappears… and the election is over.

3. 

   3)

   Dredd said on 4/19/2007 @ 4:26pm PT: [Permalink]

   Zapkitty #2

   Please point out the words “psuedo ballot” in the text of the bill, or if you can’t find that, what you think supports “your” assertion of the notion of “psuedo ballot”. What is a psuedo ballot according to the text of the two different bills?

   I suspect you are promoting an agenda, but I am not sure who is writing your script.

   And while you are at it, please explain exactly what text in the bills (since you say they are “practically identical” here (and “functionally identical” there) it is that you object to?

   I can not for the life of me figure out your argument from the text of the two bills.

   Seriously!

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   4)

   the_zapkitty said on 4/19/2007 @ 9:27pm PT: [Permalink]

   …Dredd said (again and again)…

   “Please point out the words “psuedo ballot” in the text of the bill, or if you can’t find that, what you think supports “your” assertion of the notion of “psuedo ballot”. What is a psuedo ballot according to the text of the two different bills?”

   A “psuedo ballot” is the product of a Direct Record Electronic voting machine. It is an ephemeral arrangement of memory bits that cannot be checked or verified by the voter. So instead the voser is handed a piece of paper that is printed out by the machine, the user is then told (falsely) that the piece of paper is their ballot, and the piece of paper is then placed in a box with a 97% chance of it never, ever being seen again… much less counted by anyone or anything. And even so the voter has no way of verifying that the printout actually represents their vote… or ideed anything other than a figment of the DRE’s imagination.

   In the meantime, while this charade is going on, the DRE-produced “psuedo ballot” containing something… maybe the voter’s intended votes, perhaps not… has already been received by the machine and the election is over as far as the voter is concerned.

   Repeat: the unverified pseudo-ballot is delivered and the election is over as far as the voter is concerned long before they even see that piece of computer printout that they are told is their ballot to be counted.

   But then… Brad already told you that, right?
   Right: https://bradblog.com/?p=4383#comment-218952