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ADVANTAGES
OF OPTICAL SCANNER
1. Paper ballots are inherently voter verified
2. Easy and intuitive for voters and poll workers
3. Ballots are easily counted by hand
4. Lowest rates of invalid ballots
5. Easy to add voting booths at low cost
6. Reliable, auditable, accessible, cost effective.
7. If large voter turn-out – can just add polling
booths; w DREs – need to add machines.
8. Optical scanners are a reliable, mature technology that
has been used successfully in US elections by 35% of voters
in 46% of counties for as many as 20 years, and have been
proven to have a high degree of security and accuracy.
9. A survey by New Yorkers for Verified Voting of the 865
counties currently using OpScan devices shows a very high
degree of satisfaction with the equipment, an absence of
problems, little if any voter and poll-worker training,
and minimal maintenance requirements and storage costs.
No states that presently use OpScan technology are switching
to DRE’s
OpScan
Survey: 865 counties: very happy and pleased
re:
Time to fill out ballots (a few minutes)
Time to scan –(instant to a few seconds)
No lines to vote (or rarely – 5 seconds)
Minimal poll worker training, very easy to learn
(equal to lever machines, 0 to 11⁄2 hrs.)
Basically NO VOTER TRAINING to
minimal voter training. (Unanimous: easy, easier
than any known alternative, voters find easy)
Polling place preparation – 1 to 3 hours
Scanners rarely fail, voters can keep voting if
they do.
Testing of scanners done locally, usually only takes
several minutes.
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10.
Conclusion: Low failure rate, long lifespan, high reliability,
low cost to run elections and to maintain, easy to learn
and easy to use.
DISADVANTAGES OF DREs
1. Failures and problems in real elections
Miami Dade – so many errors that the Supervisor of
Elections recommended scraping the $24.5 million DREs and
purchasing paper ballot op scanner
2. Actual costs always exceed predicted costs
a. Miami Dade – DRE”S cost $6.6 million to operate
in 2004 presidential election – twice what was budgeted!
b. Orange County spent less than $2 million to run election
on op scan; less than 1/3 of Miami Dade
3. Election officials forced to rely increasingly on private
corporations to run OUR elections
4. High purchase cost and high maintenance cost.
a. Purchasing contract included 400 days worth of tech support
from vendor – used up within the first year,
b. County negotiates the rate and number of days for vendor
support before election – price has been as high as
$1,000/person/day.
5. Relatively new, unproven technology.
It is recommended never to choose version 1.0 of any software.
No one knows how to write bug-free software. The more complex
the software, the more difficult it is to find the bugs,
and election software is very complex. Computer experts
say today's voting machines are prone to errors and vulnerable
to fraud. Even thorough testing can't reveal malicious programs
that could subvert an election.
6. Security problems
Malicious code embedded into the software could go undetected.
Neither close inspection of the code nor thorough testing
of the computer could ensure that malicious software has
not slipped through the cracks. Studies by major universities
and computer scientists all indicate that DRE’s are
the “most reported to have security flaws” of
any voting system in recent years, and are vulnerable to
vote corruption and tampering at all levels: by voters,
hardware and software manufacturers, operating system developers,
poll workers, even ISP’s.
Possible security errors:
| Vote
multiple times |
Modify
party affiliation |
| Cause
votes to be miscounted |
Create,
delete and modify votes |
| Tamper
with audit logs |
Insert
backdoors into code |
| Delay
the start of voting |
Close
down voting. |
7. Federal funds only cover the INITIAL PURCHASE. All subsequent
costs will be incurred by the state, counties and towns.
8. Voter verification is not inherent and will often be
ignored by voters if there are lines of people waiting to
vote.
9. Using DREs may be intimidating to some people, especially
those who do not use computers and who may therefore not
even try to vote. (In one Ohio county senior citizens threatened
not to vote if DREs were purchased. The county purchased
op scanners.)
10. Conclusion: Analysis of the counties
using DRE’s are a laundry list of problems: long lines
due to equipment failure, flawed vote counts due to hardware
and software failures, and operational cost overruns exceeding
predicted costs.
Why is this discussion necessary when there is NO DOUBT
that, in every way, optical scanners are a better voting
machine than DREs? Vendors have spent millions of dollars
lobbying lawmakers to pick their DRE systems. Until very
recently,when they were finally forced, they refused to
even present optical scanners for NYS certification. The
vendors know that DREs will provide continuous revenue to
them for maintenance and technical repair and replacement.
They stand to make much bigger profits on DREs (at the expense
New York taxpayers), so their preference is not surprising.
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