Re: Guess they didn't use an iSeries... -- MIDRANGE-L

The voting machines are kept in secure warehouses and transported onelection day to the polls. The cartridges containing the ballot infoare programmed by the warehouse staff just prior to being taken to thepolling places. A simulated upload is performed to insure that what isentered is in fact what is uploaded. There are checks and balances inplace at every step of the way.

One improvement that would make it even more failsafe is to print out arandomized vote total prior to the cartridge being removed. This willprobably be SOP within a few years. The challenge here is to preservethe anonymity of individual voters to insure a secret ballot.




Peter Dow (ML) wrote:

I assume you're talking about during an election. What about the restof the time, say 6 months before the election? Is there anything toverify the software in the voting machine when they haul it out ofstorage for an election?
Wayne McAlpine wrote:
That's correct. But the machines are never out from under the watchfuleyes of the poll commissioners at each precinct, so that would be a verydifficult thing to do. The cartridges are kept physically secure duringthe entire process.
Booth Martin wrote:
In other words, to manipulate the totals a villain would need to changethe results as, or after, the votes are cast but before the vote totalsare removed from the voting machine?
Wayne McAlpine wrote:
One of the first principles of managing an elections system, manual orautomated, is that there is never just one copy of the vote totals.Multiple copies of the vote totals from each machine are maintained bydifferent governmental entities at different locations. Totals arecertified by a Board of Elections Commissioners at the local levelbefore they become final in the Secretary of State's computer system.It would require collusion on a massive scale to alter the totals.