Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 17:17:13 12/03/00
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On December 03, 2000 at 17:05:25, Mogens Larsen wrote: >On December 03, 2000 at 16:32:14, Robert Hyatt wrote: > >>I don't see the difference. Here I have to present an ID, and when I vote, >>my name is checked off on a roster of voters certified to vote at that >>particular voting precinct. You don't just get to walk up and vote. You have >>to have a picture ID _and_ be on the roll... And once you vote, you are marked >>as having voted so you can't go back later and vote again, either... > >I never claimed there was a significant difference in voting procedure, because >there's a limited number of ways to do it. Just that your comparison with >flipping a coin isn't entirely correct. I know nothing about your voting >machinery or efforts made to ensure reliability of the result by crosschecking. >But something is obviously wrong... > >Mogens. Here's a test: take 6 million optical scan sheets that represent (say) 25 question test answers. Run 'em through an optical scanner. Run that same 6 million through again. Get the same answer exactly? Didn't think so. Do the same for punched cards. I used them for 10+ years in the period 1968- 1978 or so. Not as reliable as optical. But then optical wasn't perfect. There is no "perfect" way to count things. If you ask any manufacturer at all what the error rate for a particular 'scanner' is, you will _never_ get "0.00000" And when you scan 6 million of anything, you _will_ get errors. If you scan them 100 times, you might get the same answer more than once (same total) but the individual ballot results will be different, although the errors might even out more than once. Sad but true. If you have hand-punched cards, just handling them to manually count 6 million votes would change a few. In 1968 we had a programmable calculator made by Wang, which used a single punched card for the program steps. Punched by hand much like some of the Florida voting machines. And it was a pain. Such a pain it never sold, as I recall...
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