We had the discovery recount of the ballots in Ivesdale and the hand count matched the machine count exactly. Very gratifying. As I've noted before, the machines are virtually flawless when a person fills in the oval as instructed. If you put an X or check mark, you're taking a chance. Not a single one of the 111 ballots in Ivesdale was marked incorrectly. Last spring I saw a number of ballots in Urbana marked incorrectly, and as I noted in our retabulation last week, some number of ballots in other precincts were marked incorrectly, leading to different counts.
For kicks I did a query on the voters in ivesdale. 20 of the 111 were over the age of 70, 41 over the age of 60. That was the age group I had the most concerns about with the new equipment for two reasons. First, they would generally be less likely to have experience with a fill in the oval type of form. Second, there is something to be said for strength when it comes to filling in the ovals.
When we conducted the retabulation of ballots last week I also noticed the number of blank ballots for the school board race in City of Champaign 12. 184 people cast ballots, of which 25 had no votes for school board. That's 13.6%, which seemed very high. Of course those races were much lower profile than the city council races. But I found it interesting that such a large number of people didn't just throw a vote in there. I suppose that's good that people weren't voting blindly or ignorantly. Bad that people weren't informed.
Mr. Sheldon:
I paid careful attention during this last election and something that I *thought* I noticed during the 2004 Pres election cycle was confirmed. My vote is not anonymous.
During the leadup at the polling place, as you've given your name to the volunteers and they match you to the list of registered voters, they then pass down a card that has your name on it. Then they write a number (mine was 152, we'll say) on it and place it on top of a stack. Then you receive your ballot.
Once you complete your ballot, the attendant at the scanning machine makes a big deal of making sure you see the tally display both before and after your ballot is sucked into the optical scanning machine. After it goes in the attendant says something like: "Now look at the number on the screen. See how it has gone up by one? Your vote has been counted!"
Now never mind the fact that seeing that little number go up by one means no such thing and that the only way for me to be sure of such a thing would be a paper receipt that *I receive*...while that is disturbing enough, the most disturbing thing was that the number that appeared when my ballot was counted was "151" became "152"!! So anyone could open the machine, count up to the 152nd ballot and, referencing against the stack of voters cards, see exactly how I voted!
It seems to me that we have (at least here in Champaign Co.) the worst of all possible scenarios...our votes aren't anonymous and we don't have a paper receipt...but the government does!
I'd be interested in hearing your comments. Thanks for your time!
-MM
MM,
Your vote is anonymous. There is no possible way to match up the ballots after they drop in the machine. It can't be done. they are a scattered mess.
No one in America has a paper receipt that shows how they voted. no one, and it will never happen because it enables vote fraud. You know your vote counted because it was stored in the ballot box, and the paper ballot is the official record. Why would a 'receipt" make you feel any better. Any complicated system that might be developed that would not count your vote could also be develeoped to get you a paper receipt that meant nothing.
The only way to ensure that the votes are being counted accurately is a redundant hand count of ballots. That is what we do.
And all the talk you hear about people wanting receipts are for DRE machines that have no paper ballot. Every single voter integrity organization is in favor of the exact system that we have, paper ballot.
You might want to check out my blog post from last year about this.
In November, I served as an election judge and was very pleased with what I saw of the voting machines.