Indiana Election System

Michael Schultheiss schultmc at cinlug.org
Thu Aug 24 10:17:08 CDT 2006


Ben Racher wrote:
> sorry about the clarification between "works" and "volunteers", it does 
> make all the difference.

No problem.

> >I am interested to see if OVF will make a difference.  Some computer
> >scientists I know think that OVF is tackling the wrong problem.
> >  
> would you mind elaborating?

Rereading what the guy said, his point was that computer security and
audibility are currently too lacking to rely on for voting in high
stakes elections.  He suggests non-computerised voting processes to
remove the ability for computers to compromise an election result.

I don't know if that necessarily means OVF wouldn't help.  I think it's
a step in the right direction.  I agree that we can't automatically
assume technology is the cure to everything wrong with current or past
election methods but I do feel it has its place.  When I moved to
Indiana from Tennessee, I was amazed at how ancient the voting machines
were here.  Even in my high school elections (for student council, etc.)
we used high tech voting machines.  They were amazingly easy to use, and
for the real elections, a ballot would be printed in the newspaper and
it was exactly what you saw in the voting machine.  You pushed a button
(check box in the paper ballot) and it lit up a light in that box.  You
could change your vote as often as you wanted until you pushed the big
VOTE button to submit your vote.


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