Wednesday, November 05, 2003

Electronic voting: Aussies Do It Right in ACT: "The machine does not include a voter-verifiable receipt, something critics of U.S. systems want added to machines and voting machine makers have resisted. A voter-verifiable receipt is a printout from the machine, allowing the voter to check the vote before depositing the receipt into a secure ballot box at the polling station. It can be used as a paper audit trail in case of a recount.

"Green said the commission rejected the printout feature to keep expenses down... Quinn, however, thinks all e-voting systems should offer a receipt. "There's no reason voters should trust a system that doesn't have it, and they shouldn't be asked to," he said. "Why on earth should (voters) have to trust me -- someone with a vested interest in the project's success?" he said. "A voter-verified audit trail is the only way to 'prove' the system's integrity to the vast majority of electors, who after all, own the democracy.""

""The only possible motive I can see for disabling some of the security mechanisms and features in their [Diebold] system is to be able to rig elections," Quinn said. "It is, at best, bad programming; at worst, the system has been designed to rig an election. I can't imagine what it must be like to be an American in the midst of this and watching what's going on," Quinn added. "Democracy is for the voters, not for the companies making the machines.... I would really like to think that when it finally seeps in to the collective American psyche that their sacred Democracy has been so blatantly abused, they will get mad.""

An otherwise excellent Wired article does not mention that the ACT electoral system is Hare-Clark Quota-Preferential with Robson Rotation, a model for parliaments and assemblies everywhere.

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