[PLUG-TALK] Punch Ballots, Mail Ballots, and Fraud

Keith Lofstrom keithl at kl-ic.com
Mon Aug 3 05:35:19 UTC 2020


> >>>>> "Keith" == Keith Lofstrom <keithl at kl-ic.com> writes:
> Keith> In Hood River in 1990, one of those workers was pleased to serve
> Keith> Secretary of State Norma Paulus.

My point wasn't about Repocrats versus Demublicans, but the
abuse of punch card ballots, which Oregon eliminated with
optically-scanned and physically archived vote-by-mail.

On Sat, Aug 01, 2020 at 07:53:39PM -0700, Russell Senior wrote:
> Uh ... why would Republicans be angry? Norma Paulus was a Republican.

I got the name wrong; the Secretary of State in 1990
was Democrat Barbara Roberts, who successfully ran for
Governor that year. 

Sorry;  I spent my time back then playing with BSD, which
crowded out many other memories ... such as names.  Still
does, as Randal Senior and Russell Schwartz can attest.

In the 1970s, Beaverton School District used an ancient
Hollerith card sorter; I helped my mother program that in
my early teens.  Washington County may have used a card
sorter for elections and other tasks. 

Hood River County's (population 16,900 in 1990) small
Department of Records and Assessment oversees elections,
and a zillion other tasks.  They probably couldn't afford
a card sorter.  In 1990, Hood River County had 24% of the
population of Benton, 5% of Washington, and 3% of Multnomah
County.  More likely they depended on other governments,
or used senior citizen volunteers as mechanical Turks
(perhaps Turks with attitudes).  Unreliable either way.

I only *vaguely* recall the cards being sent elsewhere for
counting.  I probably remember wrong, but the important
point is that the abuse happened /before/ counting, in an
inherently UNTRACEABLE way.  Ten years later, chads in 
Florida almost prevented President Gore's election. :-)

As I mentioned, the Secretary of State (Roberts) did help
us investigate the double-punching of ballots. I do not
question her integrity, merely the integrity of one 
volunteer poll worker in Hood River, and the integrity of
a process depending on individual human integrity.  Many
eyes /should/ make all bugs shallow.

I write in defense of vote-by-mail.  A voting process with
designed-in integrity and multiple means of verification
is better than an ancient mechanical kludge like punch
cards, or closed and corruptible software such as Diebold
"E-voting".  Instead of accusation, a focus on continual
process improvement is how the world gets better,

Let's teach the world how we made this work in Oregon. 
PLUG can build platforms for Oregon election workers to
teach the rest of country how vote-by-mail works, design
ballots, select and program scanners and counting systems.
When innovators in 45 other states learn what we know,
they will learn how to do it even better and teach us.

We don't have much time; the election is three months away.
In 1942, 11 months after World War 2 broke out, Oregonians
built Liberty Ship Robert E. Peary in 112 hours.  Can we
lay the keel for a reliable US Ship of State in 90 days?

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com



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