In the November 2018 election, many optical-scan voting machines in New York experienced problems with paper jams, caused by the rainy weather and excessive humidity. Also, this was the first time New York used a 2-page ballot that the voter had to separate at the perforations.  This doubled the number of sheets of paper that […]

As of 2018, the clear scientific consensus is that Elections should be conducted with human-readable paper ballots.  These may be marked by hand or by machine (using a ballot-marking device); they may be counted by hand or by machine (using an optical scanner).  Recounts and audits should be conducted by human inspection of the human-readable portion of […]

In my previous article, I discussed 10 ways that voting machines could cheat, in ballot-marking, ballot-scanning, and ballot tabulating; and I discussed which of these cheats could be caught and corrected during risk-limiting audits and recounts of the paper ballots.  In particular, cheat-methods 1, 2, 5, and 7 will be detected/corrected by audits/recounts; methods 3,4,6,8,9,10 […]

Summary:  Voting machines can be hacked; risk-limiting audits of paper ballots can detect incorrect outcomes, whether from hacked voting machines or programming inaccuracies; recounts of paper ballots can correct those outcomes; but some methods for producing paper ballots are more auditable and recountable than others. A now-standard principle of computer-counted public elections is, use a voter-verified […]

In my last three articles I described the ES&S ExpressVote, the Dominion ImageCast Evolution, and the Dominion ImageCast X (in its DRE+VVPAT configuration).  There’s something they all have in common: they all violate a certain principle of voter verifiability. Any voting machine whose physical hardware can print votes onto the ballot after the last time […]