Speaker 1: Welcome to text Tuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech in general. So today
Speaker 1: we're actually going to listen to a classic episode. I
Speaker 1: know it's not Friday and when we typically listen to
Speaker 1: classic episodes, but I feel like this one is getting
Speaker 1: super topical again, which is about electronic voting machines or
Speaker 1: e v ms. I voted this morning in Georgia and
Speaker 1: had to go through and use an e v M. Now,
Speaker 1: unlike what the situation was back in when this episode
Speaker 1: you're about to hear originally published, Georgia has changed slightly.
Speaker 1: Back in, the voting machines did not produce any sort
Speaker 1: of paper record, so there was no sort of receipt
Speaker 1: to show that the vote you were casting on the
Speaker 1: electronic machine was being reflected as the vote that was
Speaker 1: actually being recorded. Georgia has since changed that. Now when
Speaker 1: you go through and you make your selections, it sends
Speaker 1: a paper ballot to be printed on a machine, which
Speaker 1: you then can look at verify that in fact the
Speaker 1: information that you put on the electronics display is reflected
Speaker 1: on that paper ballot. But then you bring that paper
Speaker 1: ballot over to another machine and you scan the paper
Speaker 1: ballot in So now you have a scanning machine that
Speaker 1: takes the paper from the electronic machine and scans that,
Speaker 1: which arguably just creates a different point of failure. But
Speaker 1: no system is perfect. The question we have to ask
Speaker 1: ourselves is does this system provide more confidence in the
Speaker 1: overall process of voting than the preview system. I would
Speaker 1: say yes, because at least there was that physical copy,
Speaker 1: not that you've got to keep it. You actually could
Speaker 1: not leave with your paper ballot, so that's something you
Speaker 1: didn't get a copy of it or anything like that. Um,
Speaker 1: but I think it is a step in the right direction. However,
Speaker 1: I have a much deeper conversation with Mr Ben Bolan
Speaker 1: of stuff they don't want you to know and ridiculous
Speaker 1: history and many other things, and so we sat down
Speaker 1: to talk about the scary world of e v ms.
Speaker 1: This one is part one, and in our next episode
Speaker 1: on Monday, we will listen to part two. And I
Speaker 1: hope all of you are well. I hope you're all
Speaker 1: doing what you can to make the world a better place.
Speaker 1: And uh, yeah, I'll see you on the other side. Hey, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me on the show, and hello tech
Speaker 1: stuff audience. I was really excited when you brought up
Speaker 1: this topic and asked if I if I want to
Speaker 1: hang out with you on it. However, before we go
Speaker 1: any further, I've got to ask, are you okay man?
Speaker 1: It's been a long week. Then it's been a long week,
Speaker 1: and it's been a weird day. This this day did
Speaker 1: not unfold the way we first imagined it would, or
Speaker 1: at least not for me. Uh. And Also I figured
Speaker 1: that I needed to be really like up and upbeat
Speaker 1: and excited and happy before we go into this topic,
Speaker 1: because I guarantee you it cannot sustain itself as we
Speaker 1: talk about this. Also, you're gonna hear some papers being
Speaker 1: shuffled around, folks, And that's because my computer decided that
Speaker 1: it was no longer going to connect to the wireless
Speaker 1: network once I took it away from my docking station.
Speaker 1: I think I figured out what the sequence of events
Speaker 1: was that caused it to do yeah, which largely involves
Speaker 1: being docked, removing the wire WiFi, turning the WiFi adapter
Speaker 1: off because I was getting blips and then removing it
Speaker 1: from the docking station without enacting you know, without enabling
Speaker 1: the WiFi again, and now it won't do anything. So
Speaker 1: I just turned the computer off and I'm using paper notes,
Speaker 1: which I understand are a thing. And sometimes how apropos,
Speaker 1: my friend, because sometimes people will argue that, uh, using
Speaker 1: paper based documentation is more efficient or at least less
Speaker 1: prone to error than electronic documentation, such as you know,
Speaker 1: notes we might share on a laptop. Well, it's certainly,
Speaker 1: uh fixes things in a more permanent form, right, because
Speaker 1: with electronic files. I don't know if you know this, Ben,
Speaker 1: but you can sometimes go in and change stuff. What
Speaker 1: but if you've printed something on a piece of paper,
Speaker 1: it's a lot harder to change the thing. You print
Speaker 1: it on the piece of paper without it being noticeable.
Speaker 1: Now you can change it in electronic format and print
Speaker 1: a new thing. Yeah, I don't wish to bamboos all you.
Speaker 1: I am no flim flam man. So yeah, today we're
Speaker 1: specifically talking and you know from the title of the podcast,
Speaker 1: we're talking about voting machines today, electronic voting machines specifically,
Speaker 1: and what it is about electronic voting machines that have
Speaker 1: certain people kind of talking about security, transparency, that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. And here in the US we are hurtling
Speaker 1: towards an election, uh, kicking and screaming all the way,
Speaker 1: as is typical every few years in the US, I mean,
Speaker 1: especially when it's a presidential election, which we have every
Speaker 1: four years. And so I thought it was really important
Speaker 1: for us to kind of talk about this, and of
Speaker 1: course ben as a host of stuff they don't want
Speaker 1: you to know. There are a lot of conspiracy theories
Speaker 1: that surround voting in general, not just electronic voting machines,
Speaker 1: but the whole process. Yeah, yeah, it's true. There are
Speaker 1: a they're quite a few things that would be called
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories. There are also quite a few very valu
Speaker 1: lid criticisms or observation about the nature of the voting system,
Speaker 1: everything from the nuts and bolts of the technology, to
Speaker 1: the way technology disrupts existing legislative systems, to just the
Speaker 1: organizational stuff. You know, the the question that a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of you guys probably have out their
Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen is stuff like why was Ross Perro
Speaker 1: the last third party candidate to make it to the
Speaker 1: you know, the big kids table of debates, right, actually
Speaker 1: and actually getting put onto ballots on most states. Or
Speaker 1: another great question that I hear all the time is
Speaker 1: why the heck do we still have an electoral college
Speaker 1: if we've if we've evolved beyond the point where a
Speaker 1: bunch of very wealthy white landowners have decided that really
Speaker 1: we shouldn't give complete control to the HOI ploy when
Speaker 1: it comes to picking our leaders. We should have a
Speaker 1: protective layer in between the dirty masses is and the
Speaker 1: enlightened leaders. The quote titian can't even appreciate a cool man, Julie,
Speaker 1: that's true. Yes, uh, hear about recognize the esteemed representative
Speaker 1: from the state of Virginia. Um, yeah, that's a. That's okay.
Speaker 1: So that's a that's a great point. And before we
Speaker 1: get too far into it, one of the most salient
Speaker 1: or applicable quote unquote conspiracy theories about elections revolves around
Speaker 1: the idea that elections have been fixed retroactively or miscounted,
Speaker 1: whether intentionally or accidental, by a machine or the people
Speaker 1: in charge of the software running the machine. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, these are our big questions, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about all of those and in order to really
Speaker 1: get a full understanding of where we are today, I
Speaker 1: think it always helps to have a quick rundown of
Speaker 1: how we got to where we are, right. I love
Speaker 1: to do this on tech stuff, where even if I'm
Speaker 1: going to talk about specific technology, I tend to go
Speaker 1: back and say, well, here's here's how we got there historically.
Speaker 1: Um So, voting has been around for a really long time,
Speaker 1: whether whether you're talking about like from an official capacity,
Speaker 1: like you go back to like the Greeks and they're
Speaker 1: they're voting, or you just talk about you know, small
Speaker 1: groups deciding where they're gonna you know, what animal were
Speaker 1: we going to kill for tonight's meal? We had? We
Speaker 1: had mastadon last night. Come on, let's let's branch out. Um.
Speaker 1: But well before Survivor ever took to the airwaves, we've
Speaker 1: had voting, and for a long time we would tabulate
Speaker 1: these votes manually. You just have someone who would either
Speaker 1: just count up all the votes, if you did some
Speaker 1: sort of voting like through stones like the White Stone
Speaker 1: or the Black Stone to vote on something, or very
Speaker 1: often voting was done in public where you didn't it
Speaker 1: was no secret ballot. You declared your vote in front
Speaker 1: of people, which yeah, and that um, I mean it
Speaker 1: clearly has some advantages in the sense that you have
Speaker 1: verifiable votes, right, it has some disadvantages in that if
Speaker 1: you hold an unpopular opinion in your particular region, you
Speaker 1: might find yourself ostracized from the larger community because you've
Speaker 1: voiced that you may become a target. Yes. Yes, I
Speaker 1: actually had a conversation with someone this morning about how
Speaker 1: uh they they had suggested we moved to h a
Speaker 1: time where we would be able to assigned votes to
Speaker 1: specific people so that for verification purposes, and I said,
Speaker 1: that's a terrible idea. And the reason it's terrible is
Speaker 1: because it favors the majority and it punishes the minority. Right,
Speaker 1: if you are in the minority opinion and you vote
Speaker 1: your conscience, like you, you are not going to be
Speaker 1: cowed into voting the majority just because all these other
Speaker 1: people want you to. Then you stand, you know, victim.
Speaker 1: You're you're vulnerable to the majority who may punish you
Speaker 1: for your your choice to uh to vote your conscience,
Speaker 1: and or you might just feel pressured to change your
Speaker 1: vote so that you keep your you, yourself and your
Speaker 1: family safe. So secret ballots I think are really important.
Speaker 1: They actually came officially to the scene pretty late, especially
Speaker 1: when you're talking about standardized ballots. Those didn't become a
Speaker 1: thing until the mid nineteenth century. So eighteen fifty six
Speaker 1: was when we saw the first standardized ballots, meaning ballots
Speaker 1: issued by the government with the candidates arranged in whatever
Speaker 1: order they had deemed was appropriate. I don't know if
Speaker 1: they went alphabetically or how they arranged it, but the
Speaker 1: government had come to a decision on here's how we're
Speaker 1: going to present the ballot. Um it's standard for everybody.
Speaker 1: And that government was Australia, so it wasn't the UK.
Speaker 1: Of course, it wasn't the U S which a lot
Speaker 1: of people would assume. Yeah, now there had been secret
Speaker 1: ballots in both the UK and the US, but this
Speaker 1: was a standardized approach, which, yeah, this is where you're saying,
Speaker 1: everyone's getting the same sheet of paper to vote on,
Speaker 1: as opposed to if you went into a voting precinct
Speaker 1: to one part of the United States for let's say
Speaker 1: the presidential election, and then went to a voting precinct
Speaker 1: in a totally different state, the ballots could look dramatically
Speaker 1: different from one another and have a have completely different presentation.
Speaker 1: Like you could just imagine, let's say that you're going
Speaker 1: through a corrupt precinct and the candidate that they all
Speaker 1: want to win is a nice, big, bold print, and
Speaker 1: then the other candidates are in teeny tiny print and
Speaker 1: you can barely see them. Like that would be unfair. Obviously,
Speaker 1: you would say, like, I detect a sense of bias.
Speaker 1: So this was Australia in the mid nineteen century, and
Speaker 1: I guess then the best way to organize the candidates
Speaker 1: would be by their crime, right, I'm so sorry. As always,
Speaker 1: As always we love to poke fund at Australia for
Speaker 1: getting its start as a as a as a penal colony. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, clearly the Aborigines have been there forever. But
Speaker 1: but you know, from the European standpoint, Hey, but before
Speaker 1: we get too cocky, Ben, we live in Georgia, a
Speaker 1: state that was a penal colony. Do we get a
Speaker 1: pass for that because we because because Georgia was a
Speaker 1: debtor's prison essentially. If you've ever been in Georgia you
Speaker 1: can understand how how when Europeans got here they first thought, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is where we want to put bad people. So
Speaker 1: so the the Australian state would create these out of
Speaker 1: I guess taxpayer money. Yeah, yeah, it was, and that
Speaker 1: was a big deal, right, like the decision that because
Speaker 1: anything the government does, you know, any product that they're
Speaker 1: going to make, any anything they produce, the money for
Speaker 1: that comes from taxes. That's where governments get their money.
Speaker 1: So you know, you're not going to the Australian government
Speaker 1: of shop and buying a whole bunch of T shirts
Speaker 1: and that money goes to making making ballots. But once
Speaker 1: this was established, then it quickly caught Uh. I was
Speaker 1: gonna say caught fire, but that's hard to talk about
Speaker 1: when you're talking about paper ballots. They got popular, um
Speaker 1: I was adopted throughout the world. And so by the
Speaker 1: late nineteenth century, so late eighteen hundreds, inventors yeah, just
Speaker 1: a couple of decades later, inventors were already beginning to
Speaker 1: experiment with ways to create machines for voting, things like
Speaker 1: using punch cards so that you could tabulate the data
Speaker 1: really quickly. And you know, because especially as populations grow
Speaker 1: and as you open up the vote to more eligible voters,
Speaker 1: as you make more people eligible, you know, keep in mind,
Speaker 1: this is the same period where we start to see uh,
Speaker 1: various minority populations end up getting the right to vote.
Speaker 1: That increases your voting population. We see women get the
Speaker 1: right to vote, That increases your voting pop relation. Being
Speaker 1: able to count those votes quickly becomes really important because
Speaker 1: you don't want to hold up like. You don't want
Speaker 1: to everyone waiting, Like we voted three weeks ago. When
Speaker 1: are we going to find out who won? You don't
Speaker 1: want that to happen. So there were a lot of
Speaker 1: experiments in ways to tabulate votes more quickly. And also
Speaker 1: the idea was that this would be more reliable than
Speaker 1: a human, like, less likely to make an error, less
Speaker 1: prone to uh, less prone to a user error or
Speaker 1: or fraud or fraud. You know, you can't bribe a
Speaker 1: tabulation machine to give you incorrect results. You could program
Speaker 1: it to do that, but we'll get into that later. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: even though people were working on it in the late
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds, it would be another half century before you
Speaker 1: actually started to see some of these punch card systems
Speaker 1: make their way into voting booths. Uh, it just wasn't
Speaker 1: ready yet. Um. And then we get into the first
Speaker 1: actual voting machines and we get to a man by
Speaker 1: the name of Henry W. Sprat. He sounds like a
Speaker 1: like a LIMI he is or he was. Can I
Speaker 1: say limey on the air? Is that okay? I mean
Speaker 1: we can beep it out. It's just gonna sound like
Speaker 1: I said something worse. The English Blackguard. Um. He was
Speaker 1: an Englishman and he received a U. S. Patent for
Speaker 1: a push button voting machine back in eighteen seventy five.
Speaker 1: And so imagine that you have a column of buttons, okay,
Speaker 1: and each button corresponds to a choice for a vote
Speaker 1: for a single vote. Now it's just a column, or
Speaker 1: it could be arranged as a row. It depends on
Speaker 1: how you built it. But it's a single row or
Speaker 1: a single column. And you might have three buttons that
Speaker 1: are activated because you have three choices that you could
Speaker 1: choose from. You would choose and then that's it. You
Speaker 1: only had that one that one option because uh, it
Speaker 1: only had the one row or the one column. Okay.
Speaker 1: So so like in other words, like when we go
Speaker 1: in for an election, frequently we have multiple uh positions
Speaker 1: or or um issues that we're voting on. Not just
Speaker 1: the president or maybe a state rep or a state senator,
Speaker 1: but also uh controller uh well and ann and people
Speaker 1: in the actual House of Representatives in the U. S. Senate.
Speaker 1: So you've have multiple positions that could be open, well,
Speaker 1: you would need to have multiple rows or multiple columns
Speaker 1: so that you could make that kind of vote. And
Speaker 1: in fact we did see those follow but in eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy five we saw that first push button patent um
Speaker 1: that in several variations that follow. We're all purely mechanical devices,
Speaker 1: so no electricity here. These are all working from like
Speaker 1: levers and joints and hinges, and so it's actual just
Speaker 1: pure mechanical action, which is great, um, but also problematic
Speaker 1: because things can break down, things can jam. Like if
Speaker 1: you've ever used an old typewriter sometimes you know the
Speaker 1: keys can jam. Same sort of thing could happen. I mean,
Speaker 1: especially with the more complex voting machines, more moving parts
Speaker 1: creates just simply more opportunities for something to go wrong, exactly,
Speaker 1: more points of failure. Yeah, and so one of my
Speaker 1: favorite inventions that came out fairly early was a lever
Speaker 1: that you would pull in order to close the curtain
Speaker 1: behind you. Not Ben, I didn't even ask you this,
Speaker 1: but uh have you for all of your voting experiences.
Speaker 1: Have you only used the direct recording type the computer
Speaker 1: monitor types, or have you ever used a voting booth
Speaker 1: like I had used a booth very very early in
Speaker 1: my political career. Yeah, and I think voting will count
Speaker 1: as my political careers. I said, before you burnt all
Speaker 1: the bridges, and before I had burned the bridges and
Speaker 1: became an inspiration for several characters in the House of Cards. Yeah,
Speaker 1: uh yeah, I I was in the very early days
Speaker 1: before this was institute. I did get to experience like
Speaker 1: the older paper based voting I I did. Um, I
Speaker 1: did the old lever voting machine used to be that
Speaker 1: used to be in Georgia before two thousand two. I'll
Speaker 1: talk about that more in a second. But um, the
Speaker 1: way that they that they typically would work. Because this
Speaker 1: once this innovation was introduced, it was adopted pretty much universally. Uh.
Speaker 1: You would have a lever that you would use to
Speaker 1: close the curtain behind you, and only then would the
Speaker 1: other levers become active where you would be able to
Speaker 1: cast your vote. So it was great because it meant
Speaker 1: that you were pretty confident that your vote would be
Speaker 1: done secretly. No one's going to look in on you,
Speaker 1: because before you could even get started, you had to
Speaker 1: close the curtain. You didn't have an option to vote
Speaker 1: with the curtain open. And uh, typically the way it
Speaker 1: would work is that there'd be a mechanism that would
Speaker 1: just lock all the other levers in place until that
Speaker 1: curtain lever was activated. And yeah, it was really ingenious.
Speaker 1: It was again pretty simple. Even when you get to
Speaker 1: electro mechanical voting boosts later on, it's still followed the
Speaker 1: same principle. And I thought that was really neat. Now,
Speaker 1: those voting booths were and incredibly heavy, uh and complex,
Speaker 1: and like I said, they would break down occasionally, which
Speaker 1: obviously that's a big problem. They sound positively Stephen punk
Speaker 1: if we're being honest. Yeah, if you were to ever
Speaker 1: like look in the back of one, you would be
Speaker 1: pretty impressed. It would look kind of like a piano
Speaker 1: got in the fight with you know, like a copper
Speaker 1: store or something. It was pretty cool. That is such
Speaker 1: a beautiful description. That might be your best writing this week. Well,
Speaker 1: like a piano with story. Yeah, and then you that's you.
Speaker 1: You got a lever action voting machine. In eighteen eighty one,
Speaker 1: Anthony C. Baroneck received a U S patent for a
Speaker 1: push button voting machine that was more suited for American elections.
Speaker 1: This one had the multiple rows and column so it
Speaker 1: was more advanced than than sprats. And then in eighteen
Speaker 1: eighty nine, Jacob H. Myers patented the first lever voting
Speaker 1: machine also known as a direct recording vote machine, which
Speaker 1: use mechanical lever syndicate. Votes and results were counted by
Speaker 1: the machine itself and then what would happen is he
Speaker 1: would record the results. A human being would record the
Speaker 1: results from each machine for it to be uh tabulated
Speaker 1: in the grand totals. Um and Myers had said that
Speaker 1: the approach had major advantages over older methods and that
Speaker 1: it could prevent ballot stuffing because each person could only
Speaker 1: use the machine once before it had to be reset,
Speaker 1: so you couldn't vote and then just go ahead and
Speaker 1: vote again, and vote again and and then just keep
Speaker 1: on creating uh you know, false votes for whatever candidate
Speaker 1: you chose. You can only do it the one time
Speaker 1: and then it would have to be reset for the
Speaker 1: next voter, which meant that, you know, it was a
Speaker 1: little labor intensive because you had to have someone there
Speaker 1: to reset the machine. But at the same time, it
Speaker 1: kept the voting process honest. Um. And then the first
Speaker 1: time Myers machine was actually used, I remember it was
Speaker 1: made Ino, so it didn't take long. And again there
Speaker 1: still was a weak point here. If you had someone
Speaker 1: whose job it was to write down the results, they
Speaker 1: could fudge the results from the machine. And let's also
Speaker 1: point out that here in the late nineteen century, yep,
Speaker 1: post civil war, at least in the US, Yes, late
Speaker 1: nineteenth the three is post civil war even today, even today,
Speaker 1: I'm just saying with with that having occurred so recently,
Speaker 1: corruption was rife and rampant, oh yeah, especially like there's
Speaker 1: certain areas of the United States that have almost a
Speaker 1: comical association with election fraud, Chicago, Chicago being the big one,
Speaker 1: Like like you'll hear stories about Chicago elections that are amazing,
Speaker 1: like like like how how how many people turn out
Speaker 1: to vote in an election, including ones who haven't been
Speaker 1: alive for like ten years, um, boss tweed kind of stuff. Right, yeah, yeah, So,
Speaker 1: at any rate, the the this didn't erase the ability
Speaker 1: for some tampa to happen, right, But again it would
Speaker 1: be the humans. Ideally, the machines count all the votes
Speaker 1: as they were cast. But the humans whose job it
Speaker 1: was to transcribe that could fudge if they wanted, if
Speaker 1: they if they were so inclined. Not that they were
Speaker 1: allowed to, but they could have because there's a hierarchy
Speaker 1: of reporting here. One person tabulates each machine. After each
Speaker 1: vote goes to a precinct, precinct tabulates, it goes to
Speaker 1: a higher authority of a regional sort, and then on
Speaker 1: and on and on up to the national level. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And just like you said earlier, the more moving parts
Speaker 1: we have in a mechanism, whether an organization or a machine,
Speaker 1: the more potential points of failure we have, right, And
Speaker 1: and this again kind of leads into the thinking that
Speaker 1: would eventually develop into the electronic voting machine, the idea
Speaker 1: of being that, hey, if we can remove some of
Speaker 1: these steps, then perhaps we can end up having a
Speaker 1: more accurate reflection of the public's intent. Right, Which that's
Speaker 1: a very honorable thing, but it gets a little a
Speaker 1: little muddy in practice. Yeah, we do so. Nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: lever voting machines have become a common site throughout elections
Speaker 1: in US cities. Most major cities had these by nineteen thirty. UM.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty two karn City, California, would use optical
Speaker 1: scan ballots for the first time. So these are like
Speaker 1: the center dized tests, like the s A T. I
Speaker 1: assume they're still like that. I haven't been in high
Speaker 1: school in a really long time. But you know the
Speaker 1: kind of test where you have to fill in the
Speaker 1: bubble all the way to indicate your choice. That's what
Speaker 1: we're talking about optical scans. So you've got your ballot
Speaker 1: and you fill in the ballot as directed in order
Speaker 1: to make your choices, and then those are later put
Speaker 1: through a scanning machine. It's essentially like a camera. It
Speaker 1: just detects where the dots are and then it can
Speaker 1: tell who you voted for based upon the position of
Speaker 1: the dots. And obviously this means that you have to
Speaker 1: have uh very standardized paper so that they can load
Speaker 1: in properly, be read by the machine correctly, so that
Speaker 1: you don't get misidentified votes that sort of stuff. You
Speaker 1: have to also have the seemingly unnecessary but in practice
Speaker 1: crucial instructions for every voter on what we actually mean
Speaker 1: when we say filling in a bubble. Yes, you know,
Speaker 1: check marks no X. You have to fill it in
Speaker 1: completely all the stuff you may remember from your S
Speaker 1: A T S A C T S or EL sets
Speaker 1: right right, yeah, because if you don't fill it in correctly,
Speaker 1: if you don't fill in that bubble fully, then it
Speaker 1: may not be counted. And obviously every person who goes
Speaker 1: to the trouble to vote once his or her vote
Speaker 1: to matter, right, I mean we don't. We don't just
Speaker 1: stand there just for the fun of it. Um, maybe
Speaker 1: the first time, but after that you're like, well, I'm
Speaker 1: doing my civic duty. It's not my civic Oh boy,
Speaker 1: let's go and do this. Remind me at some point
Speaker 1: when we get to the contemporary area. I have a
Speaker 1: great voting story for okay, but but right now we've
Speaker 1: got the scanners, and then we move into something that's
Speaker 1: a little bit of local history for you and I. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty four, Fulton and Decab Counties in Georgia
Speaker 1: used punch cards and computer tallely machines for the first
Speaker 1: time in an election. Uh. Fulton and Decab Counties are
Speaker 1: really the two main counties of Atlanta. If you look
Speaker 1: at Atlanta on a map, especially if you look up
Speaker 1: the term metro Atlanta, there are a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: counties that are in that something. There's like thirteen or something.
Speaker 1: It's crazy at this point. But but the two big
Speaker 1: ones that make up what we what we who live
Speaker 1: in Atlanta think of as Atlanta are Fulton in Decab.
Speaker 1: And so in fact I think Ben, I think you
Speaker 1: you might live in one and I live in the other.
Speaker 1: That is true. I'm currently a resident of Fulton County,
Speaker 1: though for a long time I was over there with
Speaker 1: you in Decab. Yeah, and then to be fair, I
Speaker 1: think only a couple of miles separate Ben and Ben's
Speaker 1: how in my house, so we're right there on the
Speaker 1: border of the two counties. Anyway, those two counties became
Speaker 1: the first to use punch cards and computer tally machines
Speaker 1: for the first time, and that would quickly get adopted
Speaker 1: by a lot of other places. In Joseph P. Harris
Speaker 1: would patent the votomatic punch card system and that would
Speaker 1: require voters to use like a stylus like pen to
Speaker 1: punch holes into a ballot. This became very common to
Speaker 1: and it was on a sort of a template thing, right,
Speaker 1: like it would slide into this thing with the choices,
Speaker 1: the one that you chose almost like a frame that
Speaker 1: would hold the paper taut. Yeah, I remember those. And
Speaker 1: also I want to point out this is one of
Speaker 1: my favorite eras of American history for gadgets. It's the
Speaker 1: time when everything was legitimized by adding oh matic at
Speaker 1: the end. It was their digital or their organic the buzzword. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So if you look at any of the cafeterias from
Speaker 1: back then, there were a lot of the like the
Speaker 1: serve ohmatic or whatever, and they tend to be uh,
Speaker 1: you know, like a series of windows and you would
Speaker 1: put coins into a slot and you would be able
Speaker 1: to open up one of the windows and get your
Speaker 1: you know, the ham sandwich that was made seven hours ago,
Speaker 1: if you really be still my heart or just a
Speaker 1: jar of eggs. Yea man, those are the days, right,
Speaker 1: Ben and I have more to say about electronic voting machines,
Speaker 1: but before we get to that, let's take a quick break. So, so, yeah,
Speaker 1: this this is something that has an important difference though,
Speaker 1: right because the while the act here was just relatively
Speaker 1: simple human technology, a person popping the style is into
Speaker 1: a piece of paper. How did they count this? Again?
Speaker 1: You would put it through a tabulation machine typically, uh
Speaker 1: you you would do this again using light to detect
Speaker 1: where the the punched hole was. This also leads us
Speaker 1: to another issue in American elections later on, the the
Speaker 1: dreaded hanging chads. But we'll get there, we'll talk about that, um.
Speaker 1: But but it does it does open up the opportunity
Speaker 1: for tabulation errors only because if the piece of paper
Speaker 1: that you are punching out isn't completely free of the ballot,
Speaker 1: like if it doesn't break off from the ballot, then
Speaker 1: it can it can obscure that whole, and a tabulation
Speaker 1: device could think that you made no choice whatsoever for
Speaker 1: that particular vote, whatever it might be. YEA n seventy four.
Speaker 1: That was the first patent for a direct recording electronic
Speaker 1: voting machine or d r e UH. These are also
Speaker 1: known as electronic voting machines e v m s. They're
Speaker 1: essentially computers computer terminals UH. And it was first used
Speaker 1: in and the first one that was used was called
Speaker 1: the video voter. Yeah. Now, typically these days you have
Speaker 1: an electronic display that shows you the ballot and electronic
Speaker 1: version of the ballot, and then you use some form
Speaker 1: of interface make your choice. It might be buttons, so
Speaker 1: it might be a physical button that you have to
Speaker 1: press that corresponds to a choice you see on the screen,
Speaker 1: or maybe a touch screen in some cases where you
Speaker 1: you know your your choices pop up, you press the screen,
Speaker 1: it activates, and your vote is uh is reflected on
Speaker 1: what you see on the screen. UH. At that point,
Speaker 1: a couple of different things could happen. The vote could
Speaker 1: just be recorded electronically in memory, and then at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, what the precinct folks will do
Speaker 1: is remove the memory from each device, and then you
Speaker 1: send that over to a centralized tabulation area and then
Speaker 1: the results would be collected there. Or it may also
Speaker 1: print a paper record so that you have a hard
Speaker 1: copy to compare against the electronic ones. Not all e
Speaker 1: v M s have paper trails. In fact, a lot
Speaker 1: do not, which is problematic. Will get more into that. Uh.
Speaker 1: Location Yeah, not even not even state to state, but
Speaker 1: within within a state, you could have one area, one
Speaker 1: precinct where there's a paper trail, and one whether it's not.
Speaker 1: This is largely because in the United States, UH, the
Speaker 1: decision on what sort of machine you're using is made
Speaker 1: at the local level. It's not federally mandated. Right. The
Speaker 1: federal mandate is that you must have a system in
Speaker 1: place for people to vote. You got you gotta have
Speaker 1: somehow right, But beyond that, it ends up being a
Speaker 1: decision made on the local level. And there's been a
Speaker 1: lot of arguments about who should foot the bill for
Speaker 1: these systems. Should it be a state level thing, should
Speaker 1: be regional, should it be federal? And uh, this is
Speaker 1: why we get a lot of disparity across the United
Speaker 1: States when it comes to different ways to cast a
Speaker 1: vote on an election year. Um, in two thousand, Uh,
Speaker 1: this was a big, big year. This was a year
Speaker 1: that really started to change things here in the US. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is the year when Al Gore was running against
Speaker 1: uh George W. Bush and um, it was a very
Speaker 1: close race throughout the United States, but particularly in Florida,
Speaker 1: which was seen as a state that was going to
Speaker 1: decide everything right and also, to add to the allegations
Speaker 1: and the controversy here, the vote in Florida at the
Speaker 1: time could be influenced by the governor who was brother
Speaker 1: to w Yeah. So you had, um, you had polls,
Speaker 1: like the actual surveys indicating that Gore actually had a
Speaker 1: bit of a lead in in a lot of areas,
Speaker 1: but elae elite enough of a lead to bring into
Speaker 1: question the results that came in later. But then you
Speaker 1: also had this issue of the hanging chad's in Florida,
Speaker 1: millions according to according to some some sources, millions of
Speaker 1: votes were tossed out because you had these ballots that
Speaker 1: had chad's hanging from them and they would not be
Speaker 1: tabulated by the machines, and so rather than tear off
Speaker 1: the piece of paper, which would almost be seen as
Speaker 1: like you could argue as a way of tampering, like
Speaker 1: how to be sure? Like what have you looked at
Speaker 1: a ballot and legitimately they had not made a choice
Speaker 1: for a specific issue or a specific position, or you
Speaker 1: weren't sure if it just got messed up, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't know if maybe they started to tear and
Speaker 1: then they change their mind, Like how how far does
Speaker 1: the chad have to hang before you can make the determination? Oh,
Speaker 1: this is what they meant to do. And of course
Speaker 1: I wish I jumped in with this earlier. But when
Speaker 1: you talked about these millions of hanging chad's, of course
Speaker 1: we're saying that the chad is the is the leftover
Speaker 1: piece of perforated piece of paper. It's not you know,
Speaker 1: a bunch of guys in backwards chats a cargo shorts
Speaker 1: hanging out. Although I wish I was, Yeah, I wish
Speaker 1: that the I mean, yeah, I would expect to see
Speaker 1: see a bunch of chads hanging out in Florida, but
Speaker 1: only on spring break, right, and know if it's people
Speaker 1: named Chad. I don't believe in comitti determinism, which is
Speaker 1: the smart word for the smart phrase for that kind
Speaker 1: of belief. Yeah, we were very intelligent about our our
Speaker 1: shortsighted uh bad jokes. So yeah, this is this is
Speaker 1: a huge deal though, because UM people who naturally people
Speaker 1: who support UM the Republican candidate at the time, George
Speaker 1: who would later become president, George Bush. Uh, they say, well,
Speaker 1: this is how democracy works, and we have to make
Speaker 1: sure it's a clean election. And then the Democrats who
Speaker 1: are supporting Al Gore say, this is not how democracy works,
Speaker 1: and yes, we need to make sure there's a clean election.
Speaker 1: These votes count. You can't you can't just throw people's
Speaker 1: votes out the door because you don't you don't like
Speaker 1: what they say, and use the excuse that they don't
Speaker 1: fit your standard, and so this was this was an ugly,
Speaker 1: ugly mess, very much so, all the way, all the
Speaker 1: way to the Supreme Court. That's how far this ugly
Speaker 1: mess went. And and they eventually made the decision going
Speaker 1: back to I love that you put this in earlier,
Speaker 1: going back to your comment about tabulating things in a
Speaker 1: timely manner. Ultimately, right, the people who, of course the
Speaker 1: winning party is going to fight and say there shouldn't
Speaker 1: be a recount because they got it done the once.
Speaker 1: You don't when you think about it, a recount to
Speaker 1: the winner, it sounds like you're doing the election all
Speaker 1: over it. It's like double jeopardy. You don't wanna you
Speaker 1: don't want to run the risk of losing again. You
Speaker 1: you want to you one, you want to keep moving,
Speaker 1: and you know you can't really blame someone for wanting that, right,
Speaker 1: So ultimately the Supreme Court said, okay, like we can't
Speaker 1: hold up the the American political process, and they and
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court ultimately decided the president in that election. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this was a big point of contention for lots of
Speaker 1: people on both sides really, because there were people who
Speaker 1: were very concerned about what this set meant for future
Speaker 1: alle actions. And so in two thousand to the US
Speaker 1: government actually passed the Help America Vote Act or HAVA
Speaker 1: h a v A in response to the two thousand
Speaker 1: Hanging Chad debacle, and their goal was to phase out
Speaker 1: punch card systems entirely and use other systems. Didn't They
Speaker 1: weren't specific in saying, you have to move to electronic
Speaker 1: voting machines, but just let's not have this happen again,
Speaker 1: because that was not pleasant. And so a lot of
Speaker 1: regents did opt to go with electronic voting machines, and
Speaker 1: in two thousand two, the first state to use d
Speaker 1: r E machines statewide it is mandated at a state
Speaker 1: level is Georgia. Yeah, look at us. Take that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're first in something. We're first in several things, but
Speaker 1: this is one of the good ones, arguably. So it
Speaker 1: was interesting to see that Georgia was was taking a
Speaker 1: leadership position in innovation in this way. But we should
Speaker 1: point out that in most states, electronic voting machines are
Speaker 1: not the only way you vote. In fact, in most
Speaker 1: states there's some sort of combination of different voting methodologies. Uh,
Speaker 1: some states you are are you still mail in your vote?
Speaker 1: You don't even go to a polling place because, uh,
Speaker 1: those states are known for having low populations dispersed across
Speaker 1: the wide area, and it's hard to make a journey
Speaker 1: all the way to a place where you can go
Speaker 1: and cast a vote, especially depending on the season. If
Speaker 1: there's inclement weather in a place like Alaska, you know,
Speaker 1: how can you realistically expect someone to travel all the
Speaker 1: way in? And then you know, also the reason we
Speaker 1: have to depend on some hybrid systems is because we
Speaker 1: may have UM veterans or state level officials, people working
Speaker 1: for the government that are stationed abroad. Might have people
Speaker 1: who are living abroad for some reason or another. But
Speaker 1: if it's a legit intimate reason, I guarantee you they
Speaker 1: want to vote, usually against having their foreign income taxes
Speaker 1: US rates. But but then there are you know, there
Speaker 1: are multiple people who, for one extenuating circumstance or another,
Speaker 1: need to send a vote, can't be physically at the machine.
Speaker 1: So overall, it's good for us to have this mix right, right,
Speaker 1: and and uh, you know again, for a lot of places,
Speaker 1: it's it was not so much that we have to
Speaker 1: move to electronic voting machines. We just had to move
Speaker 1: off of punch cards. Um. So. One of the other
Speaker 1: sad things about Georgia though, is that in a lot
Speaker 1: of areas the machines being used are essentially the same
Speaker 1: ones that were launched in two thousand two, which means
Speaker 1: we have early adopter syndrome. Yeah. Well, we also have
Speaker 1: the the problem that a lot of people have when
Speaker 1: they get into PCs for the first time, which is
Speaker 1: that they realize they have to upgrade every few years. Uh.
Speaker 1: We have not done that in a lot of states,
Speaker 1: including Georgia. And this also comes into play with the
Speaker 1: idea of the expense right. You have to pay to
Speaker 1: get those new systems in and that means you have
Speaker 1: to allocate taxpayer money to do that. And I don't
Speaker 1: know if you've noticed this, Ben, but um a lot
Speaker 1: of taxpayers aren't keen on the whole idea of paying
Speaker 1: more tax, which means that if you aren't paying more
Speaker 1: tax than you have to take money away from something
Speaker 1: else in order to pay for the electronic voting machines.
Speaker 1: And it's it's hard to make that a politically positive move.
Speaker 1: It is difficult to justify that because there's so many
Speaker 1: different interested parties and if you were to say, hey, uh,
Speaker 1: this group over here, I know that we typically budget
Speaker 1: a certain amount every year for you guys, but we're
Speaker 1: gonna decrease that budget a little bit this next year
Speaker 1: so that we can put that towards electronic voting machines.
Speaker 1: And then that group says, why are you punishing us? Um,
Speaker 1: And I'm not I'm not trying to pass judgment here.
Speaker 1: I understand like there's it's just it's a difficult political
Speaker 1: game to play. And then we have to also ask,
Speaker 1: you know, what private industry is involved with this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I'm just gonna I'm just gonna. I don't want
Speaker 1: to go I know we'll get into it later, but
Speaker 1: I do want to point out, you know, when we're
Speaker 1: asking that question, or we're bringing up the point of
Speaker 1: how difficult it is to ask taxpayers to pay more
Speaker 1: in tax so that these machines can be serviced. The
Speaker 1: government's not paying itself to do it. In the case
Speaker 1: of Georgia, they're paying someone called Premier Election Solutions. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: just electric solutions. Used to be die Bald elections. Then
Speaker 1: we'll get into die Bald in a minute. So over
Speaker 1: the next several years from two thousand two on to today.
Speaker 1: Various security experts in civil rights groups have been challenging
Speaker 1: the use of d r E systems and elections for
Speaker 1: various reasons, and two thousand twelve, issues with the election
Speaker 1: in New York City were so bad that in the
Speaker 1: city would actually pull five thousand one liver voting machines
Speaker 1: out of storage to use instead of electronic voting machines.
Speaker 1: She yeah, well, it's a good thing they kept him.
Speaker 1: Huh Yeah, So whoever was in charge of keeping all
Speaker 1: that old stuff? I'm sure you listen to tech stuff
Speaker 1: and hate You're no longer a hoarder. Yeah, now you're
Speaker 1: a patriot. So what are some of the advantages? Okay,
Speaker 1: before we get into all the criticisms, and then we're
Speaker 1: gonna also address the fear of the election being hacked,
Speaker 1: because that has been in the news for a while,
Speaker 1: let's talk about what are some of the good things
Speaker 1: about election voting. Well, first off, speed is huge, right,
Speaker 1: Like you can you can collect and tabulate votes faster
Speaker 1: through this method than through any other method, and assuming
Speaker 1: that everything is working the way it's supposed to, then
Speaker 1: you know you've got a really accurate result and you
Speaker 1: can very quickly proclaim a winner in whatever district you're
Speaker 1: talking about. So, uh, there's very little delay between the
Speaker 1: end of voting and declaring who the winner is using
Speaker 1: those methodologies because you don't have to go through any
Speaker 1: laborious process to tabulate the votes. And yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: that's it's it's like any other computer program. You know.
Speaker 1: You typically, unless you're talking about a computer whose processor
Speaker 1: is just laboring under way too much work, you get
Speaker 1: results very quickly. Another is that there are no moving
Speaker 1: parts in the actual voting mechanism, and electronic voting mechanism
Speaker 1: purely electronic. We're not talking about electro mechanical. You don't
Speaker 1: have moving parts, so that means they don't wear down
Speaker 1: over time physically. That being said, you can still have
Speaker 1: errors pop up in electronic voting machines. You could have
Speaker 1: operational errors. Things can crash. It's a computer program, and
Speaker 1: I'm sure all of us out there have had experiences
Speaker 1: where inexplicably a computer has crashed or in my case,
Speaker 1: failed to connect to the WiFi. Uh, And so that
Speaker 1: is still an issue. But because there's no moving parts,
Speaker 1: you don't have to worry about the physical wear and tear.
Speaker 1: The way you would with those mechanical devices. May was
Speaker 1: wont to say there's more. Yeah. So, one of the
Speaker 1: big advantages of electronic voting machines, and I think this
Speaker 1: is a really important one, is they are customizable so
Speaker 1: that citizens are able to more citizens can participate in
Speaker 1: the voting process. For example, if you have people who
Speaker 1: have visual impairments, like they can see, but they might
Speaker 1: have trouble reading something that's in small print because it's
Speaker 1: on an electronic screen, most of the time, you have
Speaker 1: an option for a large print version. But beyond that,
Speaker 1: if you have someone who has a complete visual impairment,
Speaker 1: perhaps they're blind or they're effectively blind, then you can
Speaker 1: have audio versions as well. So it's and you can't
Speaker 1: really do that with mechanical ones, right like you can't
Speaker 1: magically make the print on a series of levers larger,
Speaker 1: but with a screen you can do that. So it
Speaker 1: creates more accessibility for a larger number of people who
Speaker 1: want to participate in the system. However, not all electronic
Speaker 1: voting machines are created equally. No, Um, okay, I wish
Speaker 1: you guys could see this in the studio. I just
Speaker 1: did President Handry. Yeah, you get the thumbs slightly extended
Speaker 1: and the fist clenched, and then you do all your gestures.
Speaker 1: You know why you do it that way, right, So
Speaker 1: you're not exactly because if you point, then it almost
Speaker 1: feels like an accusation. They train you President one oh one,
Speaker 1: you can train don't point. Um. So your basic d
Speaker 1: r E is just a computer, right, so it records
Speaker 1: votes cast on the device typically you would use here
Speaker 1: in Georgia. You tend to get like a card, an
Speaker 1: activation card that you plug into almost like a little
Speaker 1: disk drive, and then you can make your votes and
Speaker 1: then you are told to remove the card at the
Speaker 1: end of it, and then you turn it back into
Speaker 1: somebody and a volunteer at your little polling place, Jimmy
Speaker 1: the volunteer, Ben's polling place. I'd like to point out
Speaker 1: that Decab County has much more respectable volunteers at the
Speaker 1: polling centers, all with free sassafras. Yeah, you get a
Speaker 1: little bit of that. So Sasaparilla. Sasparilla is actually what
Speaker 1: I was thinking of Fault County. It's fair, but yeah,
Speaker 1: there are differences. Ben and I will conclude Part one
Speaker 1: of the Scary World of E v M s in
Speaker 1: just a moment. But first another quick break. So you've
Speaker 1: got lots of different companies and make peace right, there's
Speaker 1: no standard across them, and in fact that ends up
Speaker 1: causing an issue. But once you make those selections on
Speaker 1: your computer screen, you get kind of too broad um
Speaker 1: types of d r s. In one type, it's all records,
Speaker 1: just electronically, so all you have is the electric electronic
Speaker 1: record of the votes, and the other one you have
Speaker 1: some sort of paper trail. Uh. Now, the paper trail
Speaker 1: ones you can even divide again because there's somewhere you
Speaker 1: have a paper trail, but there's no way for the
Speaker 1: voter to verify that the vote recorded on paper reflects
Speaker 1: their specific choices. So, Ben, I'm gonna give you an example.
Speaker 1: All right, let's say, let's let's let's go back in
Speaker 1: time and uh, you are picking between um, oh, let's say, uh,
Speaker 1: Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. You've got you've got your
Speaker 1: choices of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. But but back
Speaker 1: in this time period, this alternate history, they do have
Speaker 1: electronic voting machines. Wrap your mind around that. So so
Speaker 1: there you are, you're looking at Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan,
Speaker 1: and you, being a huge fan of Reagan's Holly would career,
Speaker 1: you've decided you're gonna support Mr Reagan and not Mr Carter,
Speaker 1: the Georgian native. Right, so I'm going against the home team. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're going against the home team. And this is one
Speaker 1: of those cases where you are very pleased that your
Speaker 1: your vote is secret. Yeah, because my love of Western's
Speaker 1: compels me that time for Bonzo or whatever it was.
Speaker 1: Vote you choose, you choose the Kipper, you choose Ronald Reagan,
Speaker 1: and uh and in the distance you hear g G,
Speaker 1: which indicates that indeed the printer has printed out the
Speaker 1: lines that are supposed to reflect your vote, but you
Speaker 1: are not able to see the piece of paper. So,
Speaker 1: for all you know, the piece of paper actually says
Speaker 1: Jimmy Carter was the one you voted on. And so
Speaker 1: while the the review screen that you get says you
Speaker 1: picked Ronald Reagan, electronically it records that vote as a
Speaker 1: vote for Jimmy Carter, and on the paper it says
Speaker 1: it's a vote for Jimmy Carter. And since you can't
Speaker 1: see the paper, you can't say, hey, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: that's not who I voted for. I let down the giver.
Speaker 1: Well you didn't, because you voted. You did everything you could. Now,
Speaker 1: there's also the voter verifiable paper trail, and the very
Speaker 1: viable paper trail means that you would be able to
Speaker 1: see the paper representation of your vote before you leave
Speaker 1: the precinct. So in that case, you vote for Ronald Reagan,
Speaker 1: piece of paper prints out, it says you voted for
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan. Now I should add there's still the possibility
Speaker 1: that electronically it flips your vote. But for that to happen,
Speaker 1: and for it to essentially flip back at some point,
Speaker 1: for it to purport that you have voted what you
Speaker 1: thought you were voting for, that makes let me put
Speaker 1: it this way, Jonathan. Yeah, and I know that we
Speaker 1: are going to go back and forth on some of this,
Speaker 1: and that's fine. Yeah, that's a very that's a difficult
Speaker 1: mistake to make. In other words, that's not a mistake
Speaker 1: that's something someone did on purpose. It seems more plausible
Speaker 1: that it would be like something that's something that involves
Speaker 1: those points occurring. Uh. Register electronically, Let's say I do
Speaker 1: vote for Big gif uh and then have the verifiable
Speaker 1: paper trail come out and says, hey, congratulations, you voted Ronnie,
Speaker 1: but then have the machine somehow register that as a
Speaker 1: vote for an opposing candidate. That I would argue that
Speaker 1: I can't think of a scenario where you could innocently
Speaker 1: do that, right, because you have to remember that the
Speaker 1: way these systems tend to work is that you get
Speaker 1: a verification screen at the end that says, hey, is
Speaker 1: this what you wanted before you actually cast your vote? Right,
Speaker 1: so that electronic screen is going to, in theory, reflect
Speaker 1: what you actually chose, and if you look down, you're like, yep,
Speaker 1: there's Ronald Reagan. That's who I picked. And then the
Speaker 1: piece of paper says, do you cast your vote? The
Speaker 1: piece of paper prints out and it says Ronald reagular Yep,
Speaker 1: that's so I picked. But electronically it says Jimmy Carter.
Speaker 1: I say, something hinky has gone on, and sure that
Speaker 1: it was somebody doing that on purpose. You know, I've
Speaker 1: got to confess. I'm I'm surprised that you're I'm surprised
Speaker 1: that you're drawing the same conclusion so quickly, because you're
Speaker 1: very um the way that you evaluate situations. And you guys,
Speaker 1: you guys know Jonathan, you listen to this show is
Speaker 1: to go through all of these facts. So to hear
Speaker 1: you say something with this certitude is is pretty significant. Well,
Speaker 1: and and it's because I understand the technology right, Like
Speaker 1: if you've if you've designed a system, first of all,
Speaker 1: in order to get any electronic voting system in place,
Speaker 1: it has to go through lots of different third party
Speaker 1: testing to make sure that it actually works right. Um,
Speaker 1: So for it to pass all those tests and then
Speaker 1: magically not work properly on election day tells me something
Speaker 1: someone has interfered, whether it was someone on the actual
Speaker 1: uh manufacturing side, like someone on the software side for
Speaker 1: the company that made the voting machine, or some other
Speaker 1: third party actor who has infected a machine with malicious
Speaker 1: code to change votes on the electronic level. The whole
Speaker 1: point of this, though, is that if you have a
Speaker 1: paper trail, especially a voter verifiable paper trail that's the
Speaker 1: most important kind, then you have something against which you
Speaker 1: can perform an audit after an election. So the elections over,
Speaker 1: the results are in, and then a lot of states,
Speaker 1: not all, but a lot of states require a post
Speaker 1: election audit where they will compare the electronic results against
Speaker 1: a hard copy of the results. If it's a voter
Speaker 1: verifiable hard copy, then theoretically every single voter had the
Speaker 1: opportunity to see that his or her vote was actually
Speaker 1: recorded as intended, and means that if there is a disparity,
Speaker 1: then you could bring that up and say, hey, we're
Speaker 1: going through this, and there seems to be some significant
Speaker 1: differences between the electronic copy and what's on the hard copy, right,
Speaker 1: like like, hey, some of us voted for Hillary Clinton,
Speaker 1: some vote for Donald Trump, and a couple for some
Speaker 1: third party candidates, but every vote here is for Gary Busey.
Speaker 1: Yeah what gives Yeah that that's a terrifying future that
Speaker 1: I had never ever considered. But in the in the
Speaker 1: Reagan Jimmy Carter example, we gave before you could say, well,
Speaker 1: according to this paper copy, this one person who happens
Speaker 1: to be Ben. But they don't know that. Because voter
Speaker 1: identity is very important, we want to keep that when
Speaker 1: I go in disguise, based on our earlier series about
Speaker 1: how to use the Internet and without being caught, right, So,
Speaker 1: so Ben, they don't know it's Ben, but they look
Speaker 1: and they see this voter record that says this person
Speaker 1: voted for Ronald Reagan, but electronically it says Jimmy Carter
Speaker 1: something is wrong, and then then there could be a
Speaker 1: better investigation. It's great to have that, but we'll go
Speaker 1: more into why that's not working everywhere in just a second.
Speaker 1: So this kind of brings us into those concerns more formally.
Speaker 1: We've already kind of addressed a big one. But if
Speaker 1: your goal is to make voting and tabulation easy and efficient,
Speaker 1: then if everything's working properly, there's no tampering involved, there's
Speaker 1: no bias that's been introduced, either unconsciously or purposefully, then
Speaker 1: it's a beautiful world. You get that, you get those
Speaker 1: votes in, you're done with it and it you get
Speaker 1: the winner and the loser can be gracious and defeat
Speaker 1: and all that wonderful stuff. Um, but it's really hard
Speaker 1: to make sure that your vote is being counted the
Speaker 1: way you want it. So first of all, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of electronic voting machines that have no corresponding
Speaker 1: paper trail at all. So let's say let's say that again,
Speaker 1: uh Ben, you voted for Reagan and votes come in,
Speaker 1: and there they announced the results for Georgia and it's
Speaker 1: like nineties, seven point three percent of voters voted for
Speaker 1: Jimmy Carter. Well, you don't know. If you were in
Speaker 1: that small percentage that didn't vote for Carter, you would
Speaker 1: have no way of knowing. You're one person. I would
Speaker 1: have nothing to refer to except perhaps uh, circumstantial evidence
Speaker 1: based on exit polls or pre voting polls, so I
Speaker 1: could say, what the heck happened? There were you know,
Speaker 1: fifty percent of us last week, we're gonna did we
Speaker 1: all just not go? They forget about kings Row, bedtime
Speaker 1: for Bonzo. I told you be for bonso I knew
Speaker 1: that was the jump one. And I don't have a
Speaker 1: computer in front of me. I was purely for member.
Speaker 1: That's just from that's yeah, that's just because you care.
Speaker 1: It's because I care. But yeah, that's that's a great point.
Speaker 1: So aside from that, there would be no, um, certainly
Speaker 1: nothing with a legal basis, no legal le to stand on. Yeah, so, uh,
Speaker 1: that would be problematic. The only thing that would make
Speaker 1: you really suspicious if they said, of all Georgia voters
Speaker 1: supported Jimmy Carter, and you think I'm pretty sure I didn't.
Speaker 1: But you know, any system where someone's gonna do tampering, Um,
Speaker 1: you would figure they'd be smart enough not to make
Speaker 1: it so noticeable that there would be an investigation to follow. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: your whole goal is to do this clandestinely and not
Speaker 1: get caught. So if you're doing that and you're being careful,
Speaker 1: you would want to design a system where it's not
Speaker 1: a blowout for a state where it might have been
Speaker 1: close leading up to the election. So if there is
Speaker 1: no corresponding paper trail, then you don't You have nothing
Speaker 1: to audit against. All you have is the electronic copies,
Speaker 1: and as we know, you can alter electronic copies. Now,
Speaker 1: it's in the best interest of all the companies that
Speaker 1: create these electronic voting machines to be as secure as
Speaker 1: possible on Fortunately, that never happens. Right. Security on electronic
Speaker 1: voting machines is a joke, It's terrible. As a matter
Speaker 1: of fact, Wired released a pretty uh, pretty scary article
Speaker 1: which you you've probably already you're already aware of it
Speaker 1: back in August. Yes, title being American's electronic voting machines
Speaker 1: are scarily easy targets. Yeah, hey, Ben, hey Jonathan, so
Speaker 1: um you and I kept talking after this bit that
Speaker 1: we just stopped just now for a while. So, uh,
Speaker 1: what happened, ladies and gentlemen, is that when we finished talking,
Speaker 1: we stepped outside to look and see how long we
Speaker 1: had been talking, because we don't currently have a producer
Speaker 1: sitting at our desk to to maintain the recording, just
Speaker 1: because of we got lots of stuff we got. We
Speaker 1: got lots of things going on and thoughts and jokes
Speaker 1: and facts, got a lot of ends, got a lot
Speaker 1: of else you know, a lot of big Lebowski's happening.
Speaker 1: And so it turned out we had been recording for
Speaker 1: almost two hours, and we realized that's probably too long
Speaker 1: for a single episode. So we're going to conclude part
Speaker 1: one here, but next week we're gonna pick up with
Speaker 1: part two right where we left off. We got a
Speaker 1: lot more to say, so Ben, we'll be back in
Speaker 1: part two because he never left. And that wraps up
Speaker 1: this part one of the two part series about electronic
Speaker 1: voting machines. On Monday, we will listen to part two
Speaker 1: and we will get the conclusion where Ben and I
Speaker 1: are talking all about the issues around electronic voting and
Speaker 1: what we can do to make sure that the process
Speaker 1: remains intact, that we don't lose confidence in it, because
Speaker 1: if we lose confidence in the process, then democracy itself
Speaker 1: sort of falls apart. Right. If you don't trust that
Speaker 1: the votes you are casting are being counted, then you
Speaker 1: don't have any trust that the people who are representing
Speaker 1: you are actually representing you. That the game is fixed,
Speaker 1: and that is a problem. But we'll listen to that
Speaker 1: part two next week. I hope you guys are well,
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff
Speaker 1: is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from
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