Proposal: Whenever we speak or write about raw, unaudited voting-machine output, we always use that term: output, and never call it results. I was discussing/debating the issues with a county board supervisor this past week. Arguing against the need to verify the output before certification, he said something like, We get the results on election night, and people can demand a recount if they want. We can save the administrative tasks until after the dust has settled. When he said that, I realized that this elected official--otherwise, a very good one--had genuinely never questioned his own assumption that the numbers that come out of voting machines are, indeed the results. I replied along these lines: Lets make a distinction between voting machine output and election results. I think we can agree that the RESULTS of an election are nothing less than the actual will of the electorate expressed on their ballots. On election night, we dont really know yet whether we have the results; we have nothing more than raw computer OUTPUT. What we are proposing is that we check to make sure that the output is in fact the results before we certify winners and losers. As soon as I did that--forced him to be specific about whether he was talking about output or results in every statement, and doing the same myself--the conversation turned solidly to my advantage.
Posted on: Sat, 18 Oct 2014 15:59:01 +0000
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