Re: Hart InterCivic eSlate and eScan machines

From: Ron Crane <voting_at_lastland_dot_net>
Date: Sun May 21 2006 - 21:50:32 CDT

Some Diebold models (e.g., the HSCC) record .tif file images, which -- assuming you can get your hands on them -- can be analyzed by BBV's Votoscope and similar software to detect certain kinds of fraud. http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/73/17248.html .

David Jefferson wrote:

Most optical scan systems, e.g. the Diebold AccuVote OS, parse the  
paper ballot on the fly as the timing marks and voter ink marks move  
under the heads, and they record only vote counts, not full records  
of the votes on the ballot.

But some newer optical scan systems record an entire full-face TIFF  
image of the ballot, which is later parsed offline using what we  
might call OVR software (optical vote recognition).  This is  
theoretically superior, because in principle it allows different,  
independent  OVR software to extract votes from the same set of  
images, and any differences can be brought to human attention.  Of  
course,  in practice we don't have multiple independent OVR  
algorithms processing the data.  Also, if the original TIFF image is  
bad because of an optical sensor limitation perhaps, such a problem  
would not be detected.

David


On May 21, 2006, at 3:01 PM, Jerry Lobdill wrote:

  

Thanks Joseph Hall and Jim Soper for the information. I'll read the
reports carefully. Are these ballot "images" stored in some picture
format or as a database record? (No need to answer if the info is
already in the reports.)

Given that these images are stored, would a tamperer have to change
both the images and the running tally in order to be home free?
Obviously, changes could be made to the tally while ignoring the
ballot images in such a way that a recount would be improbable.

Thanks,

Jerry

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David Jefferson
d_jefferson@yahoo.com



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Received on Wed May 31 23:17:04 2006