Democracy 1-2-3

1. Democratic elections require observers, and counting all the votes in public view.

2. “Voter-verification” is not voting.

3. Spot-check “audits” of a tiny percentage of paper trails is no substitute for counting all the votes

Voter-verification, and spot-check "audits" of electronic voting machines after elections, are dead-ends for democracy.

These two ideas have been used to sell electronic voting to America -- by reframing both our election vocabulary and how we think about elections.

But the opportunity to verify one's ballot does not equate to the right to vote.

And the possibility that someone might "audit" ( by spot-check counting a tiny percentage of paper trails) does not equate to counting all the votes that were cast and getting it right on election night.

Our idea of voting has been converted into verification of a computer printout. Our idea of counting the votes has been converted into "spot checking" a few computers. These two changes have been accepted by most of our computer "experts" -- they have accepted the role of re-designers of how elections should be conducted. Most of these "experts," wittingly or not, are willing to conceal how our votes are cast, stored, and counted. They talk about reading software, rather than letting citizens observe vote handling and counting procedures. "Verifiable voting" and "spot-check audits" are not democracy.

Real democratic elections have built-in oversight: observers, checks and balances. A well-managed hand count has self-auditing built in to the process--with multiple sets of eyes watching and the checking and balancing of the tallies as counting proceeds on election night. Polling place reconciliation of counts on election night should reveal and correct any miscounts in publicly observable view. That's a democratic election.

Teresa Hommel

www.wheresthepaper.org/Democracy123.htm

November 5, 2007