patrick.net

All of the support for the National Popular Vote bill has not come from blue states.

In the 41 red, blue, and purple states surveyed, overall support has been in the 67-81% range - in rural states, in small states, in Southern and border states, in big states, and in other states polled.

Supporters include former Senator Fred Thompson (R–TN), Governor Jim Edgar (R–IL), Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO), and former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R–GA)

More than 2,610 state legislators (in 50 states) have sponsored and/or cast recorded votes in favor of the National Popular Vote bill.

The National Popular Vote bill has passed 34 state legislative chambers in 23 rural, small, medium, large, Democratic, Republican and purple states with 261 electoral votes, including one house in Arizona (11), Arkansas (6), Maine (4), Michigan (16), Nevada (6), New Mexico (5), North Carolina (15), and Oklahoma (7), and both houses in Colorado (9).

The closest popular-vote election count over the last 130+ years of American history (in 1960), had a nationwide margin of more than 100,000 popular votes. The closest electoral-vote election in American history (in 2000) was determined by 537 votes, all in one state, when there was a lead of 537,179 (1,000 times more) popular votes nationwide.

For a national popular vote election to be as easy to switch as 2000, it would have to be two hundred times closer than the 1960 election--and, in popular-vote terms, forty times closer than 2000 itself.

Which system offers vote suppressors or fraudulent voters a better shot at success for a smaller effort?

Since 2006, the bill has been introduced in legislatures in all 50 states. The text of the Compact is virtually the same in every state. Each state's bill(s) are easy to find. Wikipedia lists each https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact

We do and would vote state by state. Each state manages its own election and is prepared to conduct a recount.

The National Popular Vote compact is patterned directly after existing federal law and requires each state to treat as "conclusive" each other state's "final determination" of its vote for President. No state has any power to examine or judge the presidential election returns of any other state now or under the National Popular Vote compact.

The current presidential election system makes a repeat of 2000 more likely. All you need is a thin and contested margin in a single state with enough electoral votes to make a difference. It's much less likely that the national vote will be close enough that voting irregularities in a single area will swing enough net votes to make a difference. If we'd had National Popular Vote in 2000, a recount in Florida would not have been an issue.

The implication that recounts will be likely and messy with National Popular Vote is distracting.

No recount, much less a nationwide recount, would have been warranted in any of the nation’s 57 presidential elections if the outcome had been based on the nationwide count.
The state-by-state winner-take-all system is not a firewall, but instead causes unnecessary fires.
“It’s an arsonist itching to burn down the whole neighborhood by torching a single house.” Hertzberg

The 2000 presidential election was an artificial crisis created because of Bush's lead of 537 popular votes in Florida. Gore's nationwide lead was 537,179 popular votes (1,000 times larger). Given the miniscule number of votes that are changed by a typical statewide recount (averaging only 274 votes); no one would have requested a recount or disputed the results in 2000 if the national popular vote had controlled the outcome. Indeed, no one (except perhaps almanac writers and trivia buffs) would have cared that one of the candidates happened to have a 537-vote margin in Florida.

Recounts are far more likely in the current system of state by-state winner-take-all methods.

The possibility of recounts should not even be a consideration in debating the merits of a national popular vote. No one has ever suggested that the possibility of a recount constitutes a valid reason why state governors or U.S. Senators, for example, should not be elected by a popular vote.

The question of recounts comes to mind in connection with presidential elections only because the current system creates artificial crises and unnecessary disputes.

Given that there is a recount only once in about 160 statewide elections, and given there is a presidential election once every four years, one would expect a recount about once in 640 years with the National Popular Vote. The actual probability of a close national election would be even less than that because recounts are less likely with larger pools of votes.

The average change in the margin of victory as a result of a statewide recount was a mere 296 votes in a 10-year study of 2,884 elections.

The common nationwide date for meeting of the Electoral College has been set by federal law as the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December. With both the current system and the National Popular Vote, all counting, recounting, and judicial proceedings must be conducted so as to reach a "final determination" prior to the meeting of the Electoral College. In particular, the U.S. Supreme Court has made it clear that the states are expected to make their "final determination" six days before the Electoral College meets.

If Ohio or Georgia declare that either of those states cast 10 trillion votes for the Republican nominee, OBVIOUSLY that would not be accepted as legitimate by anyone.

The 2000 presidential election was determined by a mere 537 popular votes in Florida.

otto says

Which system offers vote suppressors or fraudulent voters a better shot at success for a smaller effort?

The paperless system, obviously.

otto says

If Ohio or Georgia declare that either of those states cast 10 trillion votes for the Republican nominee, OBVIOUSLY that would not be accepted as legitimate by anyone.

And yet, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact has no mechanism for other states to challenge or recount it, even though it would OBVIOUSLY not be legitimate. There is also no mechanism to challenge fraud or error on a more likely scale, e.g. a million paperless votes for Democrats getting reassigned to Republicans in a state that has at least 5 million total. Georgia and Ohio each have 10 million people, and in a Presidential election each can produce at least 5 million votes. Florida can also (notoriously) produce 6 million votes in a Presidential election; why do you want the votes of California subjugated to the "Honorable" Katherine Harris, former GW Bush Campaign Chair and Florida Secretary of State?

otto says

All of the support for the National Popular Vote bill has not come from blue states.

Let me rephrase: all of the actual enactments have come from blue jurisdictions, i.e. blue states and DC. As with Obamneycare, Republicans kept their fingerprints off the enactment, letting gullible Democrats insist on doing their dirty work for them.

"Under federal law an objection to a state’s Electoral votes may be made to the President of the Senate during Congress’s counting of Electoral votes in January. The objection must be made in writing and signed by at least one Senator and one member of the House of Representatives. Both the Senate and the House of Representatives debate the objection separately. Debate is limited to two hours. After the debate, both the Senate and the House of Representatives rejoin and both must agree to reject the votes.

In January 2005, Ohio’s 20 Electoral votes were challenged. After debate, the Senate and the House failed to agree to reject the votes. Ohio’s 20 Electoral votes for President Bush and Vice President Cheney were counted."

https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/print_friendly.html?page=faq_content.html&title=U.%20S.%20Electoral%20College%3A%20Frequently%20Asked%20Questions#contestvotes

Under the current system, the electoral votes from all 50 states are comingled and simply added together, irrespective of the fact that the electoral-vote outcome from each state was affected by differences in state policies, including voter registration, ex-felon voting, hours of voting, amount and nature of advance voting, and voter identification requirements.

The 2000 Certificate of Ascertainment from the state of Florida reported 2,912,790 popular votes for George W. Bush and 2,912,253 popular vote for Al Gore, and also reported 25 electoral votes for George W. Bush and 0 electoral votes for Al Gore. Because of a mere 537 vote statewide win, the 25–0 division of the electoral votes from Florida determined the outcome of the national election.

Neither the current system nor the National Popular Vote compact permits any state to get involved in judging the election returns of other states. Federal law (the "safe harbor" provision in section 5 of title 3 of the United States Code) specifies that a state's "final determination" of its presidential election returns is "conclusive"(if done in a timely manner and in accordance with laws that existed prior to Election Day). National Popular Vote is based on the same legal mechanisms and standards that have governed presidential elections since 1880.

The National Popular Vote compact is patterned directly after existing federal law and requires each state to treat as "conclusive" each other state's "final determination" of its vote for President. No state has any power to examine or judge the presidential election returns of any other state under the National Popular Vote compact.

otto says

After the debate, both the Senate and the House of Representatives rejoin and both must agree to reject the votes.

You are aware that Republicans control both the Senate and the House, yes?

otto says

Under the current system....

If you are going to quote talking points, as you did, you should at least link for attribution rather than plagiarize. A Google search found your talking points on various websites, including a Tea Party site and the aptly named "straight dope."

I wonder what to call someone who wants Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan to decide whether California voters should be subjugated to Republican machines in Georgia and Ohio. I suppose "Tea Partier" or "dope" are the two most likely answers.

curious2 says

After the 2000 election debacle, why would Democrats "reform" the system by making their own voters even more vulnerable?

Because they are disingenuous political hacks, that attacks politics like it's a Blue team against the Red team foot ball bowl game.

Talk about vulnerable . . .
Again, you are ignoring that with the current system we have lived through 537 votes in one state determining a presidential election, despite Gore's lead of 537,179 (1,000 times more) popular votes nationwide, without requiring any over the top conspiracy of states fraudulently reporting millions of voters.

The precariousness of the current state-by-state winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes is highlighted by the fact that a shift of a few thousand voters in one or two states would have elected the second-place candidate in 4 of the 15 presidential elections since World War II. Near misses are now frequently common. There have been 7 consecutive non-landslide presidential elections (1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, and 2012).
A shift of 60,000 voters in Ohio in 2004 would have defeated President Bush despite his nationwide lead of over 3 million votes.
In 2012, a shift of 214,733 popular votes in four states would have elected Mitt Romney, despite President Obama’s nationwide lead of 4,966,945 votes.

In the 2012 presidential election, 1.3 million votes decided the winner in the ten states with the closest margins of victory.

The indefensible reality is that more than 99% of presidential campaign attention (ad spending and visits) was invested on voters in just the only ten competitive states in 2012.
Two-thirds (176 of 253) of the general-election campaign events, and a similar fraction of campaign expenditures, were in just four states (Ohio, Florida, Virginia, and Iowa).
38 states had no campaign events, and miniscule or no spending for TV ads.

There are only expected to be 7 remaining swing states in 2016 - Florida (29 electoral votes), Ohio (18), Virginia (13), Colorado (9), Nevada (6), Iowa (6) and New Hampshire (4)

The predictability of the winner of the state you live in determines how much, if at all, your vote matters.

Issues of importance to non-battleground states are of so little interest to presidential candidates that they don’t even bother to poll them.

Over 87% of both Romney and Obama campaign offices were in just the then 12 swing states. The few campaign offices in the 38 remaining states were for fund-raising, volunteer phone calls, and arranging travel to battleground states.

Policies important to the citizens of non-battleground states are not as highly prioritized as policies important to ‘battleground’ states when it comes to governing.

“Battleground” states receive 7% more federal grants than “spectator” states, twice as many presidential disaster declarations, more Superfund enforcement exemptions, and more No Child Left Behind law exemptions.

Ugh - again you've copied and pasted talking points without even bothering to link whom you're parroting/plagiarizing. I had already read the talking points. I posted this thread because the talking points don't add up.

otto says

Again, you are ignoring that with the current system we have lived through 537 votes in one state determining a presidential election, despite Gore's lead of 537,179 (1,000 times more) popular votes nationwide, without requiring any over the top conspiracy of states fraudulently reporting millions of voters.

I am certainly not ignoring what happened in Florida in 2000. Democrats ignored it when they took power in 2009. Why do you suppose that is? They had enough votes to enact practically anything, and yet they failed to enact electoral reform. They could have funded reliable paper ballot machines for every precinct nationwide to ensure every vote would be counted reliably, but they chose not to do that. The system was working perfectly from the POV of their corporate sponsors, no change required. The "change" you hope for now would have enabled Republicans to achieve the same result as in 2000 even more easily, using paperless ballots. As with Obamneycare, Democrats propose "reforms" to worsen the problem.

Tenpoundbass says

Because they are disingenuous political hacks, that attacks politics like it's a Blue team against the Red team foot ball bowl game.

Michael Moore made the same point, and it seems entirely correct.

I find it interesting that nobody has even tried to defend this NPVIC except "otto," who had never commented on PatNet before, but who had copied and pasted many of the same talking points elsewhere on the WWW (for example, here and here). I am guessing that "otto" is paid to search "NPVIC" on Google and elsewhere every day, and plaster pre-authorized talking points anywhere it's mentioned. Who is paying the shills for this legislation, and cui bono?

"Georgia -- where Republicans scored spectacular upset victories in the 2002 midterm elections -- relies exclusively on Diebold machines... Bev Harris, who is writing a book on voting machines, found Diebold software -- which the company refuses to make available for public inspection, on the grounds that it's proprietary -- on an unprotected server, where anyone could download it. (The software was in a folder titled ''rob-Georgia.zip.'') The server was used by employees of Diebold Election Systems to update software on its machines. This in itself was an incredible breach of security, offering someone who wanted to hack into the machines both the information and the opportunity to do so.

An analysis of Diebold software by researchers at Johns Hopkins and Rice Universities found it both unreliable and subject to abuse. A later report commissioned by the state of Maryland apparently reached similar conclusions."

"Nearly one in four voters in [2010 used] e-voting systems with no paper records"

Why did Democrats in 2009-2011 fail to address the risk of these paperless machines, despite having power to enact legislation and fund paper ballot machines? Why would Democrats in California want their votes subjugated to unaccountable machines in Georgia, which is controlled by Republicans? And who is paying "otto" and other astroturf shills to require this result?

curious2 says

After the 2000 election debacle, why would Democrats "reform" the system by making their own voters even more vulnerable?

Liberals would fuck their own mothers in the ass and slit her thoat if they thought it would vote against someone.

Maybe Donald Trump should buy Dominion, so he will own the machines and software that count the votes. That might get the Democrats to agree that paper ballots are necessary, but it's too late now for Democrats to enact anything, after throwing away the House in 2010.

@Dan8267, when I posted this thread about the NPVIC and paperless electronic ballots, I was particularly hoping you might comment. In the OP, I linked to another thread with video in which a programmer testifies from personal experience manipulating paperless electronic ballot machines.

I am genuinely curious why Democrats would want to subjugate their human voters in "blue" states to Republican machines in "red" states. I am also curious why Democrats advocate the types of voting that are most easily and reliably bought and sold: absentee voting and remote voting, where canvassers can go door to door buying and selling votes.

It seems to me that both major parties are developing systems that would make buying and selling elections easier and more reliable. I hesitate to say so, because it sounds possibly too much like a conspiracy theory, but I wonder if it results from a process more like Noam Chomsky described in Manufacturing Consent. Each major partisan faction seems, for its own reasons, to be programming consent, ultimately automating consent, with the likely effect that the establishments within both parties would have the power to enforce the narrowing of choices within pre-approved parameters (e.g. Clinton v Bush) by eliminating awkward insurgencies (e.g., Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump). Each side loves its own lies, but hates the lies of the other side, so I get mainly Dislikes for pointing out that both sides are doing similar things.

In the long run, as both major factions promote more easily bought elections, I feel some concern that elections may come down to who is more brazen. The NPVIC contains literally no protection against one side claiming 10 trillion votes. Astroturf shill "otto" said that would be obviously illegitimate, but the NPVIC provides no real safeguard against it, even though it would have been easy to include some protection. More to the point, paperless electronic ballots can reportedly switch decisive numbers of votes from one candidate to another without anybody seeing it or being able to prove it, and so contests could come down to how many votes are the most brazen willing to buy and sell.

curious2 says

@Dan8267, when I posted this thread about the NPVIC and paperless electronic ballots, I was particularly hoping you might comment.

I haven't followed NPVIC enough to comment on it. However, in general, I prefer better systems than winner take all elections including representational voting and instant runoffs.

As for electronic voting, paperless or not, it all depends on the design, the transparency, the implementation, and the ability to verify. There is no technological reason why paperless electronic voting cannot be made far more secure than paper-voting or electronic voting with a literal paper trail. However, I would not trust any system that isn't completely transparent, and this includes not having any trade secrets in the machines, and isn't auditable. The intentions and the implementation matter greatly.

So although Diebold voting machines are completely untrustworthy, a properly implementing voting system would be far more tamper-resistant. There are a few difficult problems like ensuring verification of votes without compromising anonymity, but these problems are solvable as long as the hardware and software are open.

However, voting machines are one places where I think we absolutely should not use PCs, i.e. 80x86 processors, because the virtualization support in them allow for root kits to modify memory in ways that cannot be detected. And remember, modern MACs are PCs. We'd have to use a processor that does not support virtualization, at least not in any way like Intel does.

I'd even go as far as putting low-yield explosives or EMPs inside the voting machines so that any tampering attempt would render the machine a brick at the hardware level and would be easily detected.

Put simply, I'm for electronic voting if people like me implement it. Then neither side would be able to rig elections, prevent legitimate votes, or change the results. However, I would not trust the government at all in implementing the system, nor would I trust any system that I cannot inspect. Transparency, not trust, in all things.

What we need is a National Proportional Representation Interstate Compact (NPRIC). NPVIC is fine for presidential elections, but it does nothing to fix what ails the congressional election system.

justme says

What we need is a National Proportional Representation Interstate Compact (NPRIC). NPVIC is fine for presidential elections, but it does nothing to fix what ails the congressional election system.

1. Get rid of the Senate altogether. Replace it with nothing. Put all power in the House.
2. The ten most popular political parties can each run a single candidates in each state after their primaries. That's 10 representatives for each state. A total of 500 representatives nationally.
3. Everyone ranks the 10 candidates from best to worse.
4. Every candidates wins a voting power equal to the following. For each voter, add (rank * 0.1) where rank = 10 for a first place vote and 1 for a last place vote. The sum is the amount of voting power, some decimal between 0 and the number of voters in his state.

For example,
Adam, Bob, and Clark are running in a state with three voters who vote like this.

Voter 1: Adam (first choice), Bob, Clark
Voter 2: Adam, Clark, Bob
Voter 3: Bob, Clark, Adam

Adam's voting power is 1.0 + 1.0 + 0.8 or 2.8.
Clark's voting power is 0.8 + 0.9 + 0.9 or 2.6.
Bob's voting power is 0.8 + 0.9 + 0.9 or 2.6.

Every time Adam votes, he's representing 2.8 people and Clark and Bob are representing 2.6 people. People are represented by each representative, but in decreasing amounts as they go away from their preferences.

No need for Congressional districts.

Not voting has an impact. It removes voting power from candidates and thus acts as a vote of no confidence.

Every vote counts as every vote contributes to the power distribution of representatives in Congress.

The rights of individual citizens, not the state, is what matters. You aren't rewarded or penalized for where you live.

One of the things I like about electronic voting -- IF it is done right -- is that it allows for voting systems that simply cannot be carried out by hand like the system I describe in my prior post.

Dan8267 says

The ten most popular political parties can each run a single candidates in each state after their primaries. That's 10 representatives for each state.

Same for California and Rhode Island? I suppose RI has at least 10 people, but California has a somewhat broader field, and certainly more voters.

curious2 says

Same for California and Rhode Island?

Same number of representatives, but not the same voting power. A state like CA would have representatives with much higher voting power than those from Rhode Island as each representative's voting power is a function of the number of his voters and his rank for each voter. In other words, representatives represent people, not states.

Oh, by the way, in addition to voting no confidence for anyone by not voting at all, each voter can decide only to rank some of the candidates. For example, a voter could vote first for the Green Party, then the People's Party, then the Democrats, and then stop ranking the candidates. The Tea Party, the Libertarian Party, and the Republican Party would get zero voting power from that voter. So each voter can decide not to let some of the representatives get any power from him.

Dan, I appreciate your technical insights.

If Constitutional architecture interests you, I strongly recommend reading Empire of Debt or The New Empire of Debt. The two editions are 90% the same, and either costs $4 with shipping if you buy used books (as I do). Both editions made me laugh out loud, literally. Either edition explains brilliantly how certain changes during the "Progressive" era have wrought consequences that were unintended by most people, and directly contrary to the promises made.

That brings me back to this thread. I imagine "otto" the shill is probably a self-styled "progressive" who might even call himself "liberal," working at a "technology job" searching for NPVIC every day on various search engines, and copying and pasting pre-authorized talking points wherever NPVIC is mentioned. (S)he/it did not explain, and probably cannot explain, why (s)he/it wants the human voters of California subjugated to the proprietary Diebold software and hardware, with no transparency, no audit trail, no paper records, and no technical specifications regarding hardware and software. I say "otto" probably cannot explain those things because "otto" lacks the depth of critical thinking to understand your comment and apply it to the NPVIC. Some PR agency offered a "new media" "social networking" "tech job" that didn't require any programming skills, and "otto" took it in order get paid and "work in tech" without learning anything that would require rigorous logic. For all we know, "otto" might be an AI bot, and no human made voluntarily any defense of NPVIC.

curious2 says

wants the human voters of California subjugated to the proprietary Diebold software and hardware, with no transparency, no audit trail, no paper records, and no technical specifications regarding hardware and software

Yes, clearly the Diebold machines are completely unacceptable. First off, there should be no trade secrets in any voting machine. The mere presence of secret mechanisms invalidates a machine's use in voting. I say it should be considered a violation of the 5th Amendment to use any "magic box" as evidence including the use of RADAR guns that are not inspectable by the full public. An error in the hardware or software could result in a false reading, and ever person given a ticket has the right to examine and challenge the evidence and the right to call upon anyone and everyone in the world for help doing so. Thus both the hardware and the software must be fully inspectable by the defense. Voting machines should also meet this requirement and for even greater reason.

I don't think that paper is the right way to go for auditing. Paper gives people who know nothing about technology a false sense of security simply because they are biased to trust paper more than electronics. Paper is actually easier to fake, harder to check, has fewer independent lines of verification, and takes a hell of a lot more time and effort to check than electronic records. As such, all paper solutions involve taking extremely small samples (less than 1%) and hoping they are representative of the whole. With electronic auditing one can constantly check every transaction. If done right, nothing slips through the cracks.

Of course, one has to take engineering seriously and devote the resources necessary to do electronic voting right. Our culture does not respect engineering and wants to treat engineers as cheap, unskilled labor. Whenever engineers are treated like this, people hire cheap and bad engineers and they get bad results. This is exactly why the ACA website was a national embarrassment that did not work when it was first released.

Engineering is hard, and those that do it well are very valuable people. We should encourage engineering by providing career security, good pay, and social respect for engineers.

Dan8267 says

I don't think that paper is the right way to go for auditing. Paper gives people who know nothing about technology a false sense of security simply because they are biased to trust paper more than electronics. Paper is actually easier to fake, harder to check, has fewer independent lines of verification, and takes a hell of a lot more time and effort to check than electronic records. As such, all paper solutions involve taking extremely small samples (less than 1%) and hoping they are representative of the whole.

Dan, I Liked your comment and agreed with most of it, but disagreed with some parts, including this part.

Auditing is a profession, like engineering. Paper is a tool, like a mouse or trackball or keyboard. In my opinion, paper can help make auditing more robust. Consider the following system:
1) Voter goes to polling place;
2) Voter uses touchscreen Machine A to vote;
3) Machine A prints a clearly marked paper ballot, like currency, using multiple colors and watermarks to foil counterfeiting or spoliation;
4) Voter inspects paper ballot to verify it says what Voter intended;
4a) In case of error, voter rejects ballot and reinserts it to Machine A for automatic voiding and count adjustment, then returns to step 2;
4b) If the ballot is correct, voter brings it to Machine B for counting and secure storage;
5) Machine B reads and counts each ballot. At the end of the day, Machine B's count should match Machine A's count. In case of discrepancies, the paper ballots can be counted.

In this way, you have a process that is both secure and seen to be secure. Each campaign can have human inspectors watch the process. "To avoid evil, avoid the appearance of evil." Ordinary citizens can see for themselves that the machine count matches the paper count.

Following the 2000 election debacle, the Florida Supreme Court ordered a manual recount of all 6 million votes; SCOTUS ordered that count to stop midway. Later, a consortium of newspapers counted all the ballots as the Florida Supreme Court had ordered. The newspapers found that Al Gore had got more votes in Florida than GW Bush. They found also, however, that the partial recounts Al Gore had requested would have left GW Bush the winner. Further, due to the different ballots used by different counties, there was a significant risk of overvoting (or possibly spoliation), undervoting, or misvoting. IOW, Al Gore bungled, and 5 Republicans on SCOTUS resolved the ambiguities by awarding the Presidency to their own party and prohibiting Florida from doing a full count. If there had been uniform paper ballots across the state, with dual electronic counts in each polling place, they could have completed a recount by uniform standards.

Without paper, the audit becomes more difficult. You must rely on experts, there can be different copies of databases, one or more copies might become corrupted, and everything comes down to which expert you believe. Sad to say, each major party can hire experts to speak the party line.

With paper, you have physical evidence and a chain of custody. Any conspiracy requires more participants, any of whom might talk. For that reason, most jurisdictions require paper.

I find it very suspicious that some jurisdictions (mainly Republican) have chosen to dispense with paper, and I find it even more suspicious that other jurisdictions (mainly Democrat) have decided to subjugate their human voters to the Republican Diebold proprietary paperless machines. And, I remain dismayed that Democrats failed to address this issue when they could, in 2009-11, but I see a possible explanation in the difficulties that Sanders voters reported recently in Arizona: both major party establishments want to centralize power, and prevent actual voters from electing insurgents. I find corroboration for that suspicion in the fact that many Democrats and partisan mouthpieces continue to condemn Ralph Nader (of all people) for Gore's "loss" in Florida, when in fact Gore didn't lose among voters in Florida, Gore bungled his campaign and then lost among Republicans in SCOTUS.

As with Obamneycare, the system operates as designed, and the only questions involve allocating blame/credit/patronage.

curious2 says

1) Voter goes to polling place;

2) Voter uses touchscreen Machine A to vote;

3) Machine A prints a clearly marked paper ballot, like a receipt;

4) Voter inspects paper ballot to verify it says what Voter intended;

4a) In case of error, voter rejects ballot and reinserts it to Machine A for automatic voiding and count adjustment, then returns to step 2;

4b) If the ballot is correct, voter brings it to Machine B for counting and secure storage;

5) Machine B reads and counts each ballot. At the end of the day, Machine B's count should match Machine A's count. In case of discrepancies, the paper ballots can be counted.

Several flaws. First, if there is an error as stated in 4a, there is no reason to believe that the same or another error will not occur when reinserting a receipt. Second, errors are easy to avoid. A voting system has to be able to withstand deliberate and sophisticated attack. A compromised machine can print a receipt that differs from the vote it records while still displaying on the screen what the voter expects.

A third and very important flaw is that the paper receipt reveals the voter's decision and thus can be used to punish voters and force them to vote according to someone else's will. No paper trail that undermines voter's anonymous ballet is acceptable.

There are ways to provide checks without revealing who voted for what, but such checks must be electronic, not paper.

For example, a voting system can use a distributed counting system so that if one machine is compromised it is detected. Such a system would require simultaneously compromising all the voting machines in the entire nation, a much, much harder problem and one that you cannot test beforehand. This makes it very risky to even attempt hacking the system.

curious2 says

Without paper, the audit becomes more difficult. You must rely on experts, there can be different copies of databases, one or more copies might become corrupted, and everything comes down to which expert you believe.

If the system is transparent, experts can check each other. That's the way peer-reviews work. And they do work. If any expert makes a mistake or tries deception in any way, he'll be caught and severely criticized. His reputation will be permanently destroyed. This is why scientists are very cautious about publishing results and check their work very carefully. It's pretty damn rare to hear about someone trying to game the system because the community knows what they did and reject them forever after.

In contrast, a paper trail covering 300 million or so voters can easily be manipulated. Remember the dangling chad problem? Remember the "lost box" of Ron Paul votes. Paper can be forged, burned, lost, altered, etc. And it's impossible to allow all 7 billion people in the world inspect a paper ballet. It's trivial to let all 7 billion people inspect electronic ballets.

curious2 says

With paper, you have physical evidence and a chain of custody.

With paper, you have physical evidence and a chain of custody that you cannot trust unless you trust all the people in the chain of custody and that no one outside that chain ever has access. These are very bad assumptions, especially if you are trying to fight a sophisticate and malevolent attack or prevent corruption in any system where billions of dollars are at stake.

In contrast, an electronic system can be made impenetrable. An electronic chain of custody can be truly secure. It's not a trivial problem, but we do it everyday with software that matters to us, particularly banking software. We're willing to spend the time and money to make sure our financial accounts aren't compromised. So we know we're capable of writing secure systems when we truly want to.

An electronic chain of custody can be inspected and verified by everyone in the world. No trust is required if the code and hardware are transparent. There are mathematics that can be applied to electronic accounting that simply cannot be applied to paper and manual processes. For example, I can digitally sign any document to prevent tampering and repudiation. This is not plausible with any analog solution.

I don't have a problem with a paper trail if the following conditions are met.
1. The paper trail cannot compromise voter privacy as doing so allows coercion of votes.
2. The system cannot in any way, shape, or form rely on the paper trail. Security must be guaranteed by the system itself, and any attack must be detectable without the paper trail. At most, the paper trail is just a bonus.
3. The system must still work if the paper trail fails for any reason. For example, a voting machine runs out of paper and can't print receipts. The votes cast using it must still count.

curious2 says

I find it even more suspicious that other jurisdictions (mainly Democrat) have decided to subjugate their human voters to the Republican Diebold proprietary paperless machines.

The Diebold machines should be banned. They clearly do not do anything correct and are antithetical to all the principles of honest and transparent elections. But the Diebold machines do not in any way represent what is possible to do with technology.