Aug 05 2008
Optical scanners and hand tallies for California: why I still heart Debra Bowen
California’s Secretary of State Debra Bowen gave the keynote address at the Usenix security conference last week, cementing her reputation as the secretary of state who best gets IT.
In her speech, titled “Dr. Strangevote, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Paper Ballot,” Bowen said optical scanning was a “pretty good, although not perfect alternative” to direct-recording electronic voting.
Elinor Mills writes for CNet:
A paper ballot is a permanent record that is easy to audit, whereas electronic vote records and audit logs can be altered, she said. And many e-voting systems use Microsoft Access for tallying votes, which opens the system up to fraud, she added. “Votes can readily be moved from one column to another …. without being detectable.”
California and West Virginia are the only two states that have a statutory requirement for random manual vote tallies, according to Bowen.
“I added requirements for additional manual tallies of 10 percent of precincts in any contest where the margin of victory is less than one half of one percent,” Bowen said. If there is a problem with the scanning software for any reason additional audits can be done, she added.
It’s nice to live in a state where I feel as though the Secretary of State has our back.
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