This is our moment

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Josh Mitteldorf

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Nov 16, 2022, 11:10:04 AM11/16/22
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Comrades -

After years of being stonewalled by both political parties and marginalized by the MSM, we now see a groundswell of outrage over the way our votes are being tabulated. 

This is our opportunity to be heard. The catch is that we will have to make common cause with Republicans. 

After 20 years of red shifts and Republican control of the tabulating software, it is more than ironic that Republicans are now the ones exposing corruption in the machinery that counts our votes. 

If we ally ourselves with the outraged Republicans, including the January 6-ers, we have a chance of being part of a bipartisan movement that demands a transparent vote count.  If we hold aloof from the Republican activists, there is a chance that they will prevail with the narrative that Democrats invented election theft and that the "reforms" that they succeed in implementing will further bias the vote count toward the Red.

I think it's time to reach across the aisle.  What do you think?

oli6...@aol.com

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Nov 16, 2022, 2:33:09 PM11/16/22
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Comrades,

The outraged republicans you speak of are not likely democratic allies.   They are outraged about not winning not about fair elections.

Every effort they have made has been to restrict the vote or make voting more difficult.

Attempts to overthrow the democratic process, fraught though it is, does not fill me with any confidence that they would be a serious ally. 

The HAVA legislation was a republican  piece of legislation which endorsed a system which was not posible to test effectively and not possible to guarantee as being identical in operation. Cogress is not packed with technocrats who knew what they were voting for.

Before anyone thinks about reaching out to either aisles the EI group needs to know what they want.  What I have noticed is that the group has moved away from seeking consensus than when I originally joined. It wastes time on partisan issues.

We have to have an agreed proposition about how to solve the problem.

I am having a discussion with Ted on a separate thread  which you may have seen.
best wishes
Peter




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Barbara Glassman

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Nov 16, 2022, 4:10:24 PM11/16/22
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Hi, Josh,
I moved to New Hampshire since we became acquainted through Amnesty.
I have some hope that the newfound R enthusiasm for handcounts and manual audits can bear fruit in New Hampshire, despite resistance from the SoS. Thanks to partisan gerrymandering, the GOP retains a lock on the legislature. It's unfortunate that the Dems have so far been in kneejerk reaction mode. They voted against a bad bill for a ballot image audit, likely for the wrong reasons. I urged my members to do so because I want a hand-counted audit of the paper ballots.
It doesn't seem like the guy in the video you posted is interested in serious work on election integrity. 
Barbara Glassman

Mike Ridgway

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Nov 16, 2022, 9:17:53 PM11/16/22
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Peter:

As you may know, I spend a lot of time on Twitter. And the only people I see talking about "election integrity" in 2022 are MAGA Republicans. Everyone else knows that if they bring up the topic, they'll be ruined for life. When it comes to EI, Democrats are now in the decided minority. So which MAGA Republicans have you Democrats reached out to so far?

Mike
A MAGA Republican (sort of)

oli6...@aol.com

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Nov 17, 2022, 9:00:02 AM11/17/22
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Mike

Election Integrity is now a politically toxic issue.  If you can find a Republican or Democrat who is prepared to discuss a solution I would be happy to talk to them.
As I said earlier I have spoken to Rush Holt's staff in the past,  the Department of Defence, and the Secreary of Stae for Elections New Jersey during a Republican Administration and to the EI group but none of them want to entertain any ideas about a solution.
I am not persuaded that any political party is more than any other committed to the principle of fair elections.  If MAGA Republicans  are more committed to Democracy than the Democrats then great.

But we have to start with a proposal that works as I have seen none coming from either party or even the EI group..

My experience is that everywhere I went the principle of NIH (Not Invented Here)  is stronger even than political persuasion.
Best wishes
Peter

Josh Mitteldorf

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Nov 17, 2022, 4:36:13 PM11/17/22
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Undoubtedly you are right that many MAGA Republicans will not be willing to work with us. But there is great diversity on the Republican side of the EI issue, as there is diversity of personality and motivation on the Democratic side. I think it's worthwhile to issue an invitation and look for people with whom we can connect.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ElectionIntegrity/640350784.803944.1668681511864%40mail.yahoo.com.

oli6...@aol.com

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Nov 18, 2022, 9:38:47 AM11/18/22
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Hi Josh

WE still need an agreed proposition to discuss with anyone and we don't have that.
Regards
Peter


Barbara Glassman

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Nov 18, 2022, 9:22:16 PM11/18/22
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At least here in New Hampshire, it seems like the best hope for common cause with Republicans is the adoption of robust hand-counted audits, as opposed to the ballot image audit the SoS and his minions are wedded to, performed as a pilot this year. A few towns voted down R-initiated proposals to switch to hand-counting elections. The few EI folks I know in NH who are concerned about audits shy away from RLAs on the assumption that the sophisticated math will discourage adoption. I started looking at the proposal for Universal Ballot Sampling. Is there an update or others anyone would like to suggest? I'm happy to share as is.

As of late the only initiative I'm aware of will be another stab at passing a bill drafted by a longtime advocate allowing for verification hand counts at the polls on election night, a practice that was followed by at least one conscientious moderator without objection until a few years ago, when SoS Gardner and his underling, David Scanlan, now SoS, decided that wards could hand count or machine count but not both. They also got ballots and ballot images exempted from public records. 

Post 2020 dissatisfaction was so intense that a Special Committee on Voter Confidence was formed to allow for venting. They have yet to make recommendations. My testimony, calling for hand-counted audits, is here. The lone right-winger on the committee encouraged me to present it. So I do see hope for joint efforts.

Barbara


To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ElectionIntegrity/CAMVOpmM_TJtWfDX60Kr3vufv0W_%2BO%3DMSXf%3DjGWwjre0Rh5f7og%40mail.gmail.com.

Barbara Glassman

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Nov 18, 2022, 9:22:16 PM11/18/22
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PS  She is only asking for verification counts of a few races, not all.

Lawrence Brigham

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Nov 21, 2022, 4:28:08 PM11/21/22
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Having worked at the board of election and participated in the instructions given in the training at our local BOE, I believe that if  all the detractors would take the training and work as an employee of the county BOE  as a poll worker it would cure the complaints.  

Lawrence W. Brigham

 

 

From: Election Integrity <Election...@googlegroups.com>
Reply-To: Election Integrity <Election...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Monday, November 21, 2022 at 3:42 PM
To: Election Integrity <Election...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [ei] This is our moment

 

Mike

 

Election Integrity is now a politically toxic issue.  If you can find a Republican or Democrat who is prepared to discuss a solution I would be happy to talk to them.

As I said earlier I have spoken to Rush Holt's staff in the past,  the Department of Defence, and the Secreary of Stae for Elections New Jersey during a Republican Administration and to the EI group but none of them want to entertain any ideas about a solution.

I am not persuaded that any political party is more than any other committed to the principle of fair elections.  If MAGA Republicans  are more committed to Democracy than the Democrats then great.

 

But we have to start with a proposal that works as I have seen none coming from either party or even the EI group..

 

My experience is that everywhere I went the principle of NIH (Not Invented Here)  is stronger even than political persuasion.

Best wishes

Peter

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Ridgway <miketan...@gmail.com>
To: Election Integrity <election...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Thu, Nov 17, 2022 12:51 am

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Josh Mitteldorf

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Nov 21, 2022, 6:37:00 PM11/21/22
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But we have to start with a proposal that works as I have seen none coming from either party or even the EI group..
It seems to me that our least common denominator is HCPB. It's simple and explicit and hard to argue with. We can argue among ourselves about whether vote-by-mail is better or worse, about chain of custody, about having webcams in every place where votes are counted...but to the outside world, I suggest it would be helpful if we adopted a unified message and advocated for HCPB.

- Josh 

Paul Lehto

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Nov 21, 2022, 6:37:01 PM11/21/22
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I agree wholeheartedly with you Josh that we can work with grassroots Republicans. They agree with our message.  The alternative of continued separation not only divides what would otherwise be a coalition majority of Americans,  if we somehow stay invisible and un-allied we are still nevertheless in what another poster understandably called "toxic."

Yes, efforts have been made to kill EI as a viable issue for anyone, but only a few years ago Dems had nonstop coverage saying the "Russians hacked the election" and that Trump was illegitimate - the same claims.now considered beyond the pale for anyone. 

The general political climate, whether you agree or disagree on these issues, is the same: official pronouncements whether they be election results, military adventures, or covid policy MUST simply be accepted and never can be critiqued.  

This destroys the entire terrain of citizen oversight of government,  including but not at all limited to elections. The survival of free citizen speech in criticism.of government is at stake. Reminds me of the Revolutionary war.flag "join or die." Elections are not free if they cannot be freely criticized.

Paul Lehto, J.D. 


Steve Freeman

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Nov 21, 2022, 6:42:41 PM11/21/22
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I think that I wrote a proposal after the 2020 election that everyone should agree with: America Needs Elections We Can All Believe In An impartial perspective on US elections.

 

In that environment I couldn’t publish it anywhere, but are there any objections to anything in it?

Lawrence Brigham

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Nov 21, 2022, 6:43:01 PM11/21/22
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Machine counts of paper ballots is a fine start, Hand count for verification is a must!

Larry Brigham

Theodore de Macedo Soares

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Nov 22, 2022, 12:39:49 AM11/22/22
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Almost all other major democracies use hand-counted paper ballots:

The United States remains one of the few major democracies in the world that continue to allow computerized vote counting—not observable by the public—to determine the results of its elections [1]. Countries such as Germany [2] Norway [3], Netherlands [4], France, [5, 6],  Canada, [7] , Denmark [8, 9], United Kingdom [10], Ireland [10], Spain [10], Portugal [10], Sweden [10], Finland [10], and many other countries [10], protect the integrity and trust of their elections with publicly observable hand-counting of paper ballots.

 [1] According to a 2020 Gallup World Poll, https://news.gallup.com/poll/285608/faith-elections-relatively-short-supply.aspx, only 40% of Americans say they are confident in the honesty of U.S. elections. Finland and Norway with 89% of their citizens expressing confidence in the honesty of their elections along with the citizens of 25 other countries have greater confidence in their elections than do Americans.

[2] “Rigged to Work”: https://www.dw.com/en/no-concerns-over-election-fraud-in-germany/a-17102003

[3] “Norwegian votes to be counted manually in fear of election hacking”  https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/life-and-public/2017/09/norwegian-votes-be-counted-manually-fear-election-hacking

[4] “Fearful of Hacking, Dutch Will Count Ballots by Hand”: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/01/world/europe/netherlands-hacking-concerns-hand-count-ballots.html

[5] “Voting in France: Paper ballots, in person, hand-counted”:https://apnews.com/article/covid-health-france-elections-europe-96859198666d51b2c4482c3cdb0eb6aa

[6] French Senate: Making the moratorium on use of voting machines permanent. https://www.senat.fr/rap/r13-445/r13-445_mono.html

[7] Canada Elections Act (S.C. 2000, c. 9) https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/E-2.01/page-22.html#h-206023

[8] Denmark’s election law does “not permit electronic voting technologies to be used during voting” https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312923857_A_Risk-Limiting_Audit_in_Denmark_A_Pilot

[9] Folketing (Parliamentary) Elections Act, Translation (Consolidated Act No. 1260 of 27 August 2020) CHAPTER I: GENERAL ELECTIONS AND REFERENDUMS. Counting of the Votes Cast at the Polling Station, Part 9 “[T]he polling supervisors and the appointed electors, … shall count the votes cast at the polling station. The counting is public.” https://elections.im.dk/parliament-elections/folketing-parliamentary-elections-act

[10] The ACE Electoral Knowledge Network. Vote Counting. Country List. Count votes by hand. https://web.archive.org/web/20221114152441/https%3A%2F%2Faceproject.org%2Fabout-en%2FCDTable%3Fquestion%3DVC005%26set_language%3Den



Ted



Theodore de Macedo Soares

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Nov 22, 2022, 12:39:49 AM11/22/22
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Your article is very good. No objections.

The most impactful argument for hand-counted ballots, I believe, is to show that all major world democracies do not allow computers to count ballots--all ballots are counted by hand. This will cause people to pause and consider why before having to present any of our proof and indications of election fraud.

As your notes section stated, "in 2009 the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany ruled that every important aspect of an election must be observable by the public and thus 'meet the constitutional requirements of the principle of the public nature of elections.'"

The contention that our ballots are too long and unwieldy for hand-count can be addressed by having separate ballots--on election day--for federal, state and local elections. At least the federal ballot, with only two or three races, should be counted by hand. States and local authorities can decide if their elections are also to be counted by hand.


Ted

oli6...@aol.com

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Nov 23, 2022, 11:21:58 PM11/23/22
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Hi Josh

Aren't HCPBs the orime subject of the Trump challenges to the result of the last Presidential election.?

If this is the highest common denominator where does this leave EI?

How does HCPB address the UOCAVA population?

Does anyone think the EI group would not be swamped by the GOP's other agendas ?

Does the GOP have any other synegistic agenda with civil rights, extension of the franchise accessability for voters to voting machines or the Civil Right Act 1964 or every endeavour for voter suppression.

EI is an entirely different question from one's politiical persuasion but submerging it with any party would immediately disqualify it from any claim to an objective interest in Election Integrity.

So many recent posts are coloured by their allegiance to a political party.

One particularly commical acronym is the use for MSM. It is a convenient shorthand for that dreaded liberalism but is FOX news a player in the MSM mix? 
Best wishes
Peter


-----Original Message-----
From: Josh Mitteldorf <aging...@gmail.com>
To: Election...@googlegroups.com

oli6...@aol.com

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Nov 23, 2022, 11:21:58 PM11/23/22
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Hi Larry

Do you remember how well punch card systems worked for in precinct voting.  It enabled both hand counting and machine counting of paper ballots.  It only left about 400 votes in doubt.  

The hanging chad  question was easily solved by improved quality control of the paper stock.  And look at the mess "reforn" in the shape of HAVA has got us.

Regards
Peter



Mike Ridgway

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Nov 24, 2022, 11:54:44 AM11/24/22
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That's a great compilation, Theodore.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ElectionIntegrity/1366504783.1802227.1669075766237%40mail.yahoo.com.

Mike Ridgway

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Nov 24, 2022, 11:54:44 AM11/24/22
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I would remind everyone that the there are basically means by which changes can take place.
1) Court rulings which force elections administrators to change their practices. That takes lawyers and lawyers are expensive.
2) Changes in federal law. That's going to be tricky going forward unless Democrats ram something through between now and the time that Republicans take control of the House.
3) Changes in state law.

Seems to me that 3 is your best bet. But for 3 to take place, you need at least one legislator in at least one state who is willing to open a bill. Is anyone aware of any such legislator in any of the 50 states? 

Mike Ridgway
Newport, TN

Theodore de Macedo Soares

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Nov 24, 2022, 12:54:11 PM11/24/22
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"That's a great compilation, Theodore." Thanks. As I have noted, the fact that most countries do not allow computers to count their votes should be in all articles on election integrity--preferably in the first paragraph, as I have done in:

2022 U.S. Senate Midterm Elections

Exit polls in the battle ground states and pre-election polls for the 2022 elections projected the Republican Party to win control of the U.S. Senate. The computerized vote counts reversed these projections with the Democratic Party maintaining control of the Senate. Most countries, unlike the United States, do not allow computers to count their ballots—all ballots must be hand-counted and the process observable. (See highlighted section below).

This article also contains an updated list (includes Italy) and streamlines the references:

The United States remains one of the few major democracies in the world that continue to allow computerized vote counting—not observable by the public—to determine the results of its elections [1]. Countries such as Germany [2] Norway [3], Netherlands [4], France [5, 6],  Canada [7] , Denmark [8, 9], Italy [10], United Kingdom [11], Ireland [11], Spain [11], Portugal [11], Sweden [11], Finland [11], and most other countries [11], protect the integrity and trust of their elections with publicly observable hand-counting of paper ballots.

[1] According to a 2020 Gallup World Poll, only 40% of Americans say they are confident in the honesty of U.S. elections. Finland and Norway with 89% of their citizens expressing confidence in the honesty of their elections along with the citizens of 25 other countries have greater confidence in their elections than do Americans.

[2] “Rigged to Work. The voting process in Germany is strictly regulated to rule out any possible election fraud.”

[3] “Norwegian votes to be counted manually in fear of election hacking“

[4] “Fearful of Hacking, Dutch Will Count Ballots by Hand“

[5] “Voting in France: Paper ballots, in person, hand-counted“

[6] French Senate: Making the moratorium on use of voting machines permanent. CONTINUE, AS IS, THE MORATORIUM

[8] Denmark’s election law does “not permit electronic voting technologies to be used during voting”

[9] Folketing (Parliamentary) Elections Act, Translation (Consolidated Act No. 1260 of 27 August 2020) CHAPTER I: GENERAL ELECTIONS AND REFERENDUMS. Counting of the Votes Cast at the Polling Station, Part 9 “[T]he polling supervisors and the appointed electors, … shall count the votes cast at the polling station. The counting is public.”

[10] Election of House of Representatives and the Senate of the Republic September 25, 2022. Chapter 23. Ballots counted by officials.

[11] The ACE Electoral Knowledge Network. Vote Counting. Country List. See “Count votes by hand”









Ralph Lopez

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Nov 25, 2022, 10:59:40 PM11/25/22
to Election...@googlegroups.com, Theodore de Macedo Soares *EIC, Barbara....@gmail.com, miketan...@gmail.com, Josh Mitteldorf
If someone could draft an HCPB resolution for legislators to work from we could make it into a MSWord doc with revision mark-up turned on, then circulate a final draft for signatures.  Or we could simply direct our legislators to copycat Canada's law, and not reinvent the wheel.  Canada has had HCPB for years.



Ralph

Edit nb4 when they say that's still a lot of work tell them we'll draft it and they can sign it the way they vote on 200 page bills they didn't even read, given to them by big pharma or other interests.


On Thursday, November 24, 2022, Mike Ridgway <miketan...@gmail.com> wrote:
That's a great compilation, Theodore.

On Tue, Nov 22, 2022 at 12:39 AM 'Theodore de Macedo Soares' via Election Integrity <ElectionIntegrity@googlegroups.com> wrote:
Almost all other major democracies use hand-counted paper ballots:

The United States remains one of the few major democracies in the world that continue to allow computerized vote counting—not observable by the public—to determine the results of its elections [1]. Countries such as Germany [2] Norway [3], Netherlands [4], France, [5, 6],  Canada, [7] , Denmark [8, 9], United Kingdom [10], Ireland [10], Spain [10], Portugal [10], Sweden [10], Finland [10], and many other countries [10], protect the integrity and trust of their elections with publicly observable hand-counting of paper ballots.

 [1] According to a 2020 Gallup World Poll, https://news.gallup.com/poll/285608/faith-elections-relatively-short-supply.aspx, only 40% of Americans say they are confident in the honesty of U.S. elections. Finland and Norway with 89% of their citizens expressing confidence in the honesty of their elections along with the citizens of 25 other countries have greater confidence in their elections than do Americans.

[2] “Rigged to Work”: https://www.dw.com/en/no-concerns-over-election-fraud-in-germany/a-17102003

[3] “Norwegian votes to be counted manually in fear of election hacking”  https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/life-and-public/2017/09/norwegian-votes-be-counted-manually-fear-election-hacking

[4] “Fearful of Hacking, Dutch Will Count Ballots by Hand”: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/01/world/europe/netherlands-hacking-concerns-hand-count-ballots.html

[5] “Voting in France: Paper ballots, in person, hand-counted”:https://apnews.com/article/covid-health-france-elections-europe-96859198666d51b2c4482c3cdb0eb6aa

[6] French Senate: Making the moratorium on use of voting machines permanent. https://www.senat.fr/rap/r13-445/r13-445_mono.html

[7] Canada Elections Act (S.C. 2000, c. 9) https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/E-2.01/page-22.html#h-206023

[8] Denmark’s election law does “not permit electronic voting technologies to be used during voting” https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312923857_A_Risk-Limiting_Audit_in_Denmark_A_Pilot

[9] Folketing (Parliamentary) Elections Act, Translation (Consolidated Act No. 1260 of 27 August 2020) CHAPTER I: GENERAL ELECTIONS AND REFERENDUMS. Counting of the Votes Cast at the Polling Station, Part 9 “[T]he polling supervisors and the appointed electors, … shall count the votes cast at the polling station. The counting is public.” https://elections.im.dk/parliament-elections/folketing-parliamentary-elections-act

[10] The ACE Electoral Knowledge Network. Vote Counting. Country List. Count votes by hand. https://web.archive.org/web/20221114152441/https%3A%2F%2Faceproject.org%2Fabout-en%2FCDTable%3Fquestion%3DVC005%26set_language%3Den



Ted



On Monday, November 21, 2022 at 06:37:01 PM EST, Josh Mitteldorf <aging...@gmail.com> wrote:


But we have to start with a proposal that works as I have seen none coming from either party or even the EI group..
It seems to me that our least common denominator is HCPB. It's simple and explicit and hard to argue with. We can argue among ourselves about whether vote-by-mail is better or worse, about chain of custody, about having webcams in every place where votes are counted...but to the outside world, I suggest it would be helpful if we adopted a unified message and advocated for HCPB.

- Josh 

Peter


Peter:

 

Peter



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oli6...@aol.com

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Nov 26, 2022, 9:36:33 AM11/26/22
to ralphlo...@gmail.com, Election...@googlegroups.com, teds...@yahoo.com, Barbara....@gmail.com, miketan...@gmail.com, aging....@gmail.com
Before anyone thinks this is a cure-all, the HCPB were the Republican's greatest concern during the last election.  It is not that HCPB are not used but that there are many operational problems in ensuring they are consistently and securely managed over 100,000 jurisdictions. 

HCPB rely on people's integrity.
  
I believe Trump requested Georgia to find 10,000 + votes to make him win the state.  Obviously he thought the process was easily manipulated.

The problem is that election confidence is low because the topic is politicised and the process does not provide incontavertable evidence based results.  It relies on circumstantial evidence.   

Will in-precint only voting severely disnfranchise many voters and will it encourage voter intimidation? .Which definition of HCPB are you talking about?  How do you deal with absentee voters and  the UOCAVA population?

The USA is in a politically confrontational period where everything  is contentious and the mechanics of elections are just one more political football.

The EI group needs to come up with a comprehensive system which protects the enfranchisement of everyone.  Chasing past failures will not produce future solutions.  And allying with either party woulld disqualify its integrity.  The system should belong to the electorate not the administrators.

Best wishes
Peter

-----Original Message-----
From: Ralph Lopez <ralphlo...@gmail.com>
To: Election...@googlegroups.com <Election...@googlegroups.com>; Theodore de Macedo Soares *EIC <teds...@yahoo.com>; Barbara....@gmail.com <Barbara....@gmail.com>; miketan...@gmail.com <miketan...@gmail.com>; Josh Mitteldorf <aging....@gmail.com>
Sent: Fri, Nov 25, 2022 4:51 am
Subject: [ei] This is our moment

If someone could draft an HCPB resolution for legislators to work from we could make it into a MSWord doc with revision mark-up turned on, then circulate a final draft for signatures.  Or we could simply direct our legislators to copycat Canada's law, and not reinvent the wheel.  Canada has had HCPB for years.



Ralph

Edit nb4 when they say that's still a lot of work tell them we'll draft it and they can sign it the way they vote on 200 page bills they didn't even read, given to them by big pharma or other interests.


On Thursday, November 24, 2022, Mike Ridgway <miketan...@gmail.com> wrote:
That's a great compilation, Theodore.

On Tue, Nov 22, 2022 at 12:39 AM 'Theodore de Macedo Soares' via Election Integrity <ElectionIntegrity@googlegroup s.com> wrote:
Almost all other major democracies use hand-counted paper ballots:

The United States remains one of the few major democracies in the world that continue to allow computerized vote counting—not observable by the public—to determine the results of its elections [1]. Countries such as Germany [2] Norway [3], Netherlands [4], France, [5, 6],  Canada, [7] , Denmark [8, 9], United Kingdom [10], Ireland [10], Spain [10], Portugal [10], Sweden [10], Finland [10], and many other countries [10], protect the integrity and trust of their elections with publicly observable hand-counting of paper ballots.
 [1] According to a 2020 Gallup World Poll, https://news.gallup.com/poll/2 85608/faith-elections-relative ly-short-supply.aspx, only 40% of Americans say they are confident in the honesty of U.S. elections. Finland and Norway with 89% of their citizens expressing confidence in the honesty of their elections along with the citizens of 25 other countries have greater confidence in their elections than do Americans.
[3] “Norwegian votes to be counted manually in fear of election hacking”  https://thebarentsobserver.com /en/life-and-public/2017/09/no rwegian-votes-be-counted-manua lly-fear-election-hacking
[5] “Voting in France: Paper ballots, in person, hand-counted”:https://apnews.c om/article/covid-health-france -elections-europe-96859198666d 51b2c4482c3cdb0eb6aa
[6] French Senate: Making the moratorium on use of voting machines permanent. https://www.senat.fr/rap/r13-4 45/r13-445_mono.html
[8] Denmark’s election law does “not permit electronic voting technologies to be used during voting” https://www.researchgate.net/p ublication/312923857_A_Risk-Li miting_Audit_in_Denmark_A_Pilo t
[9] Folketing (Parliamentary) Elections Act, Translation (Consolidated Act No. 1260 of 27 August 2020) CHAPTER I: GENERAL ELECTIONS AND REFERENDUMS. Counting of the Votes Cast at the Polling Station, Part 9 “[T]he polling supervisors and the appointed electors, … shall count the votes cast at the polling station. The counting is public.” https://elections.im.dk/parlia ment-elections/folketing-parli amentary-elections-act
[10] The ACE Electoral Knowledge Network. Vote Counting. Country List. Count votes by hand. https://web.archive.org/web/20 221114152441/https%3A%2F%2Face project.org%2Fabout-en%2FCDTab le%3Fquestion%3DVC005%26set_la nguage%3Den


Ted
On Monday, November 21, 2022 at 06:37:01 PM EST, Josh Mitteldorf <aging...@gmail.com> wrote:


But we have to start with a proposal that works as I have seen none coming from either party or even the EI group..
It seems to me that our least common denominator is HCPB. It's simple and explicit and hard to argue with. We can argue among ourselves about whether vote-by-mail is better or worse, about chain of custody, about having webcams in every place where votes are counted...but to the outside world, I suggest it would be helpful if we adopted a unified message and advocated for HCPB.

- Josh 

Peter

Peter:
 
Peter



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Paul Lehto

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Nov 28, 2022, 10:41:31 PM11/28/22
to Election Integrity, ralphlo...@gmail.com, Theodore de Macedo Soares, Barbara....@gmail.com, miketan...@gmail.com, Josh Mitteldorf
The most you can ask from a VOTING SYSTEM is that it be transparent and therefore CREATE (accessible) EVIDENCE of either cheating or error. 

HCPB does that. Computers do not. 

 The very fact that people are sometimes able to talk about corruptions with HCPB proves that the voting system itself worked.

It is the legal and administrative systems that deal with the errors or frauds. The voting system should just show us the evidence.  The legal and administrative systems can sometimes fail when the voting system works

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ElectionIntegrity/1099361521.2704903.1669458798957%40mail.yahoo.com.

oli6...@aol.com

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Nov 30, 2022, 5:24:34 PM11/30/22
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Hi Paul 

I agree with you entirely that HCPB provides some evidence one can dispute.  That falls far short of being verifiable.

Electronic voting as implemented is not transparent and certainly not verifiable..

Nonetheless a well designed and well implemented end to end verifiable system could be better than either.

I am not defending the status quo as both methods are clearly disputed and disputable which is the cause of distrust and easy politicisation.

The fact that elections are disputable undermines democracy.  This is a worrying state of affairs.

Neither system is good enough so the EI group coming down on one side or the other is rather pointless.

Why do we dismiss the return to the punchcard system as an interim better system than the electronic voting which replaced it with an infinitely worse alternative.  If you recall this led to only a few votes being in dispute -- less than 400--- whereas today everything is in dispute.

Best wishes
Peter




-----Original Message-----

Ray Lutz

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Nov 30, 2022, 5:24:48 PM11/30/22
to Election...@googlegroups.com, Paul Lehto, ralphlo...@gmail.com, Theodore de Macedo Soares, Barbara....@gmail.com, miketan...@gmail.com, Josh Mitteldorf
Hi Paul and list: See below.


On 11/28/2022 7:40 PM, Paul Lehto wrote:
The most you can ask from a VOTING SYSTEM is that it be transparent and therefore CREATE (accessible) EVIDENCE of either cheating or error.
Of course, this statement I believe we can all agree with.


HCPB does that. Computers do not.
But this statement is not completely true. Let's pull it apart.
1. Paper Ballots are essential, because they provide evidence of the vote. This is essential and we almost have all states upgraded
to use paper ballots except for a few. Some places have a mix of DRE (touch-screen voting with no paper) and PB. We should be
a bit clearer to say we want "Hand Marked Paper Ballots", i.e. HMPB. This is because BMDs (ballot marking devices) create paper
but have a touch-screen, and there is a gap between the act of the voter (touching the screen) and the paper (what is in the barcode).
So I think we can all agree that HMPB are essential, with no BMDs except for disabled or foreign-language voters. They are using
BMDs far to much in many areas, and we may not be able to fully do away with them.

2. Now the dispute. Hand-counting. We can first all agree that the human-eye is best at looking at any single ballot and deciding what
exactly it says. BMD ballots have no ambiguity, except that the QRCode might differ from the text, so if machine read the text in
an Audit (as AuditEngine does) then machines are almost as good as humans at interpreting the vote on those ballots. But there
may still be cases where there is no choice, even with those ballots, to review by hand. So, it will always be the best to have humans
review ballots in cases when machines throw up their hands and give up, so to speak.

3. But hand counting by humans is not very good when it comes to doing that step above 100s of thousands of times, or any counting
job. Humans make spurious mistakes for no reason other than being bored, tired, distracted, just error prone, or have malicious intent. It is actually a lot
harder than most people think, especially those people who have never tried it, and who have never attended a hand-count audit.
It is very hard to do this counting step. And, all hand count devotees forget somehow that counting is then spread out into very
insecure voting locations that may result in violence, or outright box stuffing. That box stuffing is actually not solved at all by hand counting the
ballots, and I daresay delegating this step to 1000s of precincts will make the problem worse.

4. And then, there is the fact that you have to accumulate the count somehow. Some all hand-count-by-humans advocates say it is
okay to enter them into a spreadsheet, and then allow the computers to take it from there.  If you do that, then pretty soon, you will
also say that you want a better way to enter the votes into the spreadsheet, and then want to have barcodes by each vote or something.
In no time, you have the scanner machines that we have today, which do produce evidence: the ballot images. Those images can be
compared to the paper to hold off any risk that the machines can be manipulated.

5. Bottom line is that I don't mind hand counts to your hearts content, but only after the ballots have been scanned and ballot images
created that can be fully secured using cryptographic signatures. I am against encryption. We want to see the ballot images at the
end of the election. And I want each voter to personally feed their ballot into the scanner.

6. This STILL does not fully eliminate the possibility of malicious actors at the polling place stuffing the box. This can be reduced by
reducing the number of polling places and having more people at each one. This is the voting center concept, and it does have
this positive factor (more people at each one and less chance of stuffing) while also allowing more services at each one, such as
having same-day registration available, for example (when that is allowed by state law).

7. And HCPB is not amenable to processing mail ballots, which is in widespread use, and will not go away soon (nor should it).
Anyone that asserts they can get rid of it will have to admit that there are legitimate reasons to use absentee or vote-at-home
voting, and then it is hard to find a dividing line between those who can and are not allowed to use it, and the availability of
this has already been processed by the courts to say that you have to offer it to everyone equally.  Yes, we need to tighten it up
but it will not go away in those areas that already use it predominantly.

Thus, I believe the HCPB is a false solution, and we should look for HMPB with TSSP, i.e. Hand-marked paper ballots with transparent
secured scan processing, which is fully auditable. This actually accomplishes the first goal, Paul, without adopting the false solution
of all hand counting.

--Ray
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