Voting Machines Woes Cause Early Delays - Forbes.com

I'm against electronic voting machines. Here in my town we use the Wizard of Oz kind. Those are the old school ones where you putt a big handle and the curtain surrounds you, and you have little levers which display red arrows for your choices. I guess these aren't too bad, although I don't know their inner workings. I don't like the touchscreen ones at all. The 'scantron' like optical ones, are OK. But, nothing beats a punch card, hand counted election.

I know all of these methods can have issues, and be fooled/hacked/wrong. But, when you physically put a mark on a piece of paper, it can be tallied in multiple ways. Be it automatic via a machine, or by human eyes. The touch screens don't allow this. There is no way to know what the voters intent was, only what the machine records as the vote.. which may not be what the voter intended or even saw marked on the touch screen. This means you can't audit intent vs. counted like you can with punch cards and bubble forms. With those, you can let a machine count it, then you can also audit by hand.

If I were an election official and needed to use touch screens or optical readers, this is how I would try to validate them.

I would have a sample set of fake votes (well, test votes) where I know the result. If it's for an optical reader, then I'd fill in the forms. If it were touch screen, then I'd make a lot of votes to store on the memory card (which can be hacked, but let's assume it hasn't been). This sample set would be made via an independent party, so nobody involved with the voting knows how the results should turn out. I'd then have the machine count the results of my sample set before counting election votes. If it comes out as I'd expect, I'd run the real votes. Then, I'd re-run my sample set. If my sample sets both came out correct, I'd certify the results. If they didn't, then I'd go into recount mode.

Not perfect, but if nobody who could hack/alter a machine knows the results of the sample set, it could help verify that the machines are working properly. Or, better yet, stop using machines and just use paper ballots which are hand counted.