Another treatise on voting
When it comes to the actual mechanics of the election, the responsibility of your precinct and your city/county election officials is to look at every vote cast, with a bit of suspicion and to provide a valid, reliable and verifiable count. They shouldn't be participating in the fraud. Having said that, with all of the new and creative ways to vote that we now have, it becomes a lot harder to police the process.
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I believe that much of this can be fixed with a little bit of technology. Think about this. We have had ATMs for over 50 years. In that time there has been very, very little fraud committed with ATM machines. Anyone who uses an ATM accepts the fact that they need a card which has been issued to identify them to the machine. We call this an ATM card but it is in actuality an ID card. Yes, it is a single purpose ID card but that is what it is. Also, every ATM has a camera which takes a photo of the person doing the transaction and that photo is synchronized with the information scanned off of the ID card to assure verifiability.
Hundreds of millions of folks use or have used ATMs with full faith that their accounts are safe and that they will get out of the machine the money they requested. The failure rate on ATM transactions is almost zero. We can use this paradigm to better our voting process.
Why is it such a horrible thing to ask for ID and maybe snap a transactional photo when one votes? Is our vote worth so little that we should put everyone on the honor system at the polls? We don't do it for anything else of value. Hell, you wouldn't put a bowl of penny candy at risk using an honor system to receive payments. Has anyone ever put a twelve-pack in a refrigerator at work and not have at least one of the items walk? Exactly! Trust, yet verify.
My point is this, we all accept the need for validation. Any argument against it is total BS. If we can stipulate the need for validation*, here is what I would do to make our election a lot more reliable at very little additional cost.
My voting system would require a hybrid approach of paper and machine. Not one or the other, but both. The front desk where you show your ID and get your ballot would be computerized and hooked, via VPN, back to a central computerized voting system. Within your city or your jurisdiction, you could vote at any precinct. When you identify yourself, the computer checks the main database and confirms that you have not voted early, voted elsewhere or voted absentee. It would also confirm that you are registered to vote. Based upon your registered address, you would receive a freshly printed custom ballot and your record in the central server would be updated, showing that you are voting (which precludes you voting again this cycle.) Each section on the ballot will have a choice for None of the Above to make it obvious that you didn't accidentally skip a section. Once you color in the circles or enter a write-in candidate, you would walk over to the ballot scanner. This is where the magic happens.
Standing in front of the scanner, you feed the ballot into the machine. As it reads and records your selections, it takes a picture of you. Once the scan is accepted, your photo and the vote is recorded in this machine. Please note, this machine is NOT connected to the internet nor to a LAN. It is a stand-alone machine. This next step is very important. You will receive two register tape-sized receipts. One will show you how you voted and the second will just show a big, long code. Both receipts will have a QR code printed on them. You will review the first receipt to make sure the scanner correctly recorded your voting intentions. If it looks good, you will keep the first receipt and deposit the second one into a ballot box near the scanners.
The big long number which is also represented by the QR code will have encoded into it the date and time of your scan, the location of the machine, the machine number, an index to point to your photo, an index to point to the scanned sheet and a serial number representing your order on this machine for this day, along with, of course, your votes. It will use a complex algorithm to encode the number and decoding the number will pull out all of these variables.
If you review the first receipt and it is not correct, you will take both receipts back to the front desk and get another ballot. The first ballot will be voided as a spoiled ballot. Your first receipt will be surrendered and shredded as the second receipt is dropped into a box for spoiled ballots.
As you leave the voting room, you would have the option of visiting a small machine similar to the price checking kiosks in Target where you could confirm your QR code matches your voting preferences. Notice that all along the way, you have the opportunity to confirm the machines. Machines are inherently trustworthy but machines are made and programmed by humans. The more we can validate the machine data, the more even the skeptics among us can begin to re-trust the system.
If you vote early, the process works exactly the same. Absentee ballots would need to be handled in a similar manner to how they are handled now, but when they are scanned, the operator of the scanner will have their picture taken with each scan. States should allow absentee ballots to be opened and scanned prior to election day so that tallies can be reported immediately after precincts close on election day. Since absentee ballots and early voting has a cut-off date, all early voters would have their ballots scanned well before election day. This part should be non-negotiable. In fact, if there were to be a federal voting standard for national elections, I would support a consistent date to begin and to complete early voting along with a requirement to complete early tallies prior to election day.
When the polls close on election day, the scanning machines will have its secure SD card removed and placed in a static-free carrying case. Note that there would be a replica secure SD card enclosed in a locked socket in each scanner on the off chance of something happening to the removable card.
Under observation of interested parties, the SD cards would be plugged into a special computer at the front desk. It would read the card and tally the vote for that scanning machine. Once all cards are read, the results would be uploaded, via VPN, to the jurisdictional headquarters for totaling. Unless there is a line at a voting center at closing time, it would be conceivable that the final tally could be announced within 30 minutes of the polls closing.
None of the problems we saw in Fulton County GA, Philadelphia, Detroit, Phoenix or Milwaukee should even be possible. All early ballots would have been read in advance. In order to ensure that the early tallies do not leak or get changed, there could be a group of 10 individuals for each jurisdiction who would receive a sealed envelope with the early voting totals enclosed. Once the polls close on election day, these trusted individuals could open their envelope to verify their totals against other envelopes and against the announced early voting total. Call this Multi Factor Authentication.
As much as I do not like ballot drop boxes, they could have similar security measures. When someone drops a ballot into a drop box, they would need to be subject to a photograph as well as the ballot would be photographed as it slips through the slot. One ballot at a time would be allowed and no more that X number could be deposited at one time. Ballot harvesting would be illegal and would not be allowed at drop boxes. Any bulk ballot drops such as from senior centers, nursing homes, hospitals, elderly church members, etc. would need to take place at an early voting center where each ballot would be scrutinized by an election official and the depositor would be photographed for the record.
While this might seem a bit complicated and onerous, it really is not. This uses commonly available technology, fairly simple algorithms and easy to understand processes. If a group opposes this process or fails to propose something similar, you should question their motives. Much the same as asking yourself why anyone would oppose removing dead people and people who have moved out of the jurisdiction from the voting roles, I would be suspicious as to why someone would want to keep the old way of doing things in place. You must ask why a group would want to keep it easy to cheat.
If we treat voting with the same respect and safeguards we would use to issue cash, receive cash, pay bills, run a credit card, buy a car or purchase a gun, then we will have a reliable and virtually unadulterated voting system, nationwide. I would find myself going from an election denialist to an election reliablist because who doesn't want to have an election that is fast, fair and reliable?
* If we cannot agree that voters need to be verified and validated, then we have much bigger issues to discuss amongst ourselves..
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