[LMB] OT: Voting was all-purpose open letter

[JenL]

On 11/7/07, Peter H. Granzeau <pgranzeau at cox.net> wrote:
>
> And I have more than once voted "no" on all referendum questions and
> left all of the office votes blank.


Been there, done that.  ;-)

The most recent voting news in Ohio is an unintended consequence of the
requirement that counties "upgrade" their voting systems.  No more butterfly
ballots.  Some counties (like mine) have gone to giving you a page that you
mark up and then run through a scanner (and if you've left some offices
blank, it asks you to confirm you really meant to do that).  But many
counties have gone to the electronic voting machines.  The law requires that
those machines have a paper backup system (complete with time-stamps).

Well, some bright guy figured out that in low-turnout precincts, it was
possible to take the voter logs (where the pollworker carefully writes down
the name and address of each voter given a ballot) and the paper backups,
and figure out (based on the order of voters and the time-stamps) how at
least some of the voters actually voted on each office/issue . . . .

(Given that the Mechanicsburg Public Library Levy won on a 5 to 2 vote,
there are some VERY low-turnout precincts in Ohio, so it wouldn't be hard at
all to do this in some places.)

jen