Would it
be possible to put the election total of that machine on the card once the
voter has voted it? That way if
the card was not even programmed, a previous total would still be on the card. -----Original
Message----- I have
thought about this issue a number of times in the past -- it came up again
today at Virginia cert. What is the standard operating procedure if a
voter comes back to the poll worker with their smart card and claims it isn't
working? Well, we all know the answer to that: we burn them a new
card. Problem is, the voter might be lying, and wants to vote again. From a
practical standpoint its this is really not a problem. I think everyone
would agree this is a pretty ineffectual way to stuff a ballot box. I do
worry a bit about having to explain this reasoning to John Stossel though. The
only practical suggestion I can think of is to timestamp the voter cards when
the ballot is cast. Inserting a voted card would pop up a message saying
that the card was voted and when. A poll worker would
then know that the ballot was just cast. For
now I suspect we will continue to pretend the issue doesn't exist. It is
worth thinking about though. Any other practical suggestions on
how we might handle this are welcome. Ken |