The Public Ballot

There are two particular criticisms which have been raised several times, in various forms. Rather than continue to correct them at each turn, I'll just address them here.

Example one (from C|NET's coverage):

Assumption is flawed, with multiple voting machines and time taken to vote differences, matching sign in records to time stamped records doesn't provide proof of that individual's vote.

In fact, there are both beginning and ending timestamps for each vote entry, with down-to-the-second precision. Although this doesn't guarantee the accuracy of every decoded vote,

• it provides a high degree of accuracy, in the aggregate, and
• the degree of accuracy of any individual vote can be reasonably calculated (in other words, you'll know how right or wrong you are with each vote).

Example two (from ColumbusING):

Wouldn’t work. The way the voting process works essentially randomizes voters. Knowing the order in which people voted does not tell you what machine they used. Without that link (order w/ machine), the information is useless.

At any given time, each voting machine will have one Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail. For the machines discussed here, that is a roll of paper which contains the beginning and ending timestamps for each voting session.

James Moyer, my colleague in the voter identification project, has requested that his contact information be listed here for inquiries from members of the media, as well as concerned citizens.

Email: james@moyer.com.

Phone: (330) 242-3657

On behalf of Jim Cropcho:

I've been getting requests to discuss this issue, so I'd like to make my contact information more accessible.

Email: jim.cropcho@gmail.com.

Today is a very big day for The Public Ballot. We have are now on the front page of News.com (CNET's news service).

An in-depth article by Declan McCullagh, with quotes from Stanford Professor David Dill and Berkeley Professor David Wagner. Insight is also provided by Lorrie Cranor, director of the Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University and featuring Kurt Olsen's elegant chart.

A special thanks to Ed Felten for his thorough analysis.

Read our article here. Expect a follow-up post soon!

Here is a short list of links to sites on which The Public Ballot has been discussed.

Jon of ColumbusING has a great, simple summary of the process. Thanks!

Independents Unbound

Care2

Black Box Voting

Democratic Underground

BuzzFlash

Digg