Speaker 1: Get in Tech of Technology with tech Stuff from stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I am your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm full of them
Speaker 1: and Vigger. And that's because, unlike almost all other episodes
Speaker 1: I'm in, I'm actually joined in the studio by the
Speaker 1: physical being of another human, and it happens to be
Speaker 1: a human with whom I get along. It is Ben
Speaker 1: Bowlen from Stuffing I Want you to Know and car
Speaker 1: Stuff joining once again. Thank you Ben for being here.
Speaker 1: Hey Jonathan, thanks for having me on this show. And
Speaker 1: hello tech Stuff audience. I was really excited when you
Speaker 1: brought up this topic and asked if I if I
Speaker 1: want to hang out with you on it. However, before
Speaker 1: we go any further, I've got to ask, are you
Speaker 1: okay man that in true is getting a little weird? Um,
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 used 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. But
Speaker 1: if you've printed something on a piece of paper, it's
Speaker 1: a lot harder to change the thing you print it
Speaker 1: on the piece of paper without it being noticeable. Now
Speaker 1: you can change it in electronic format and print a
Speaker 1: new thing. Yeah, I don't wish to bamboos all you.
Speaker 1: I am no flim flam man um. So yeah, today
Speaker 1: we're specifically talking and you know from the title of
Speaker 1: the podcast, we're talking about voting machines today, electronic voting
Speaker 1: machines specifically, and what it is about electronic voting machines
Speaker 1: that have certain people kind of talking about security, transparency,
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. And here in the US we
Speaker 1: are hurtling towards an election, uh, kicking and screaming all
Speaker 1: the way, as is typical every few years in the US,
Speaker 1: I mean, especially when it's a presidential election, which we
Speaker 1: have every four years. And so I thought it was
Speaker 1: really important for us to kind of talk about this,
Speaker 1: and of course ben as a host of stuff they
Speaker 1: don't want you to know. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories that surround voting in general, not just electronic
Speaker 1: voting machines, but the whole process. Yeah, yeah, it's true.
Speaker 1: There are a there are quite a few things that
Speaker 1: would be called conspiracy theories. There are also quite a
Speaker 1: few very valid criticisms are observation about the nature of
Speaker 1: the voting system, everything from the nuts and bolts of
Speaker 1: the technology, to the way technology disrupts existing legislative systems,
Speaker 1: to just the organizational stuff. You know, the question that
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of you guys probably have
Speaker 1: out their ladies and gentlemen is stuff like why was
Speaker 1: Ross Perro the last third party candidate to make it
Speaker 1: to the you know, the big kids table of debates
Speaker 1: right actually and actually getting put onto ballots on most states.
Speaker 1: Or another great question that I hear all the time
Speaker 1: is why the heck do we still have an electoral
Speaker 1: college if we've if we've evolved beyond the point where
Speaker 1: a bunch of very wealthy white landowners have decided that
Speaker 1: really we shouldn't give complete control to the HOI ploy
Speaker 1: when it comes to picking our leaders. We should have
Speaker 1: a protective layer in between the dirty masses and the
Speaker 1: enlightened leaders. The quote Titian can't even appreciate a coup movement, Julie,
Speaker 1: that's true. Yes, uh, here about recognize the the esteemed
Speaker 1: representative from the state of Virginia. Um, yeah, that's A,
Speaker 1: that's okay. So that's a that's a great point. And
Speaker 1: before we get too far into it, one of the
Speaker 1: most salient or applicable quote unquote conspiracy theories about elections
Speaker 1: revolves around the idea that elections have been fixed retroactively
Speaker 1: or miscounted, whether intentionally or accidentally by a machine or
Speaker 1: the people in charge of the software running the machine. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, these are are 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 mastered on 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 there
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 manages 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 a target. Yes. Yes, I actually had a
Speaker 1: conversation with someone this morning about how uh they they
Speaker 1: had suggested we moved to h a time where we
Speaker 1: would be able to assigned votes to specific people so
Speaker 1: that for verification purposes, and I said, that's a terrible idea.
Speaker 1: And the reason it's terrible is because it favors the
Speaker 1: majority and it punishes the minority. Right, if you are
Speaker 1: in the minority opinion and you vote your conscience. Like
Speaker 1: you you are not going to be cowed into voting
Speaker 1: the majority just because all these other people want you to.
Speaker 1: Then you stand, you know, victim. You're you're vulnerable to
Speaker 1: the majority who may punish you for your choice to
Speaker 1: uh to vote your conscience, and or you might just
Speaker 1: feel pressured to change your vote so that you keep
Speaker 1: your you, yourself and your family safe. So secret ballots
Speaker 1: I think are really important. They actually came officially to
Speaker 1: the scene pretty late, especially when you're talking about standardized ballots.
Speaker 1: Those didn't become a thing until the mid nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: So eighteen fifty six was when we saw the first
Speaker 1: standardized ballots, meaning ballots issued by the government with the
Speaker 1: candidates arranged in whatever order they had deemed was appropriate.
Speaker 1: I don't know if they went alphabetically or how they
Speaker 1: arranged it, but the government had come to a decision
Speaker 1: on here's how we're going to present the ballot. Um
Speaker 1: it's standard for everybody. And that government was Australia, so
Speaker 1: it wasn't the UK. Of course, it wasn't the U
Speaker 1: S which a lot of people would assume. Yeah, now
Speaker 1: there had been secret ballots in both the UK and
Speaker 1: the U s US. But this was a standardized approach, which, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is where you're saying everyone's getting the same sheet
Speaker 1: of paper to vote on, as opposed to if you
Speaker 1: went into a voting precinct to one part of the
Speaker 1: United States for let's say the presidential election, and then
Speaker 1: went to a voting precinct in a totally different state,
Speaker 1: the ballots could look dramatically different from one another and
Speaker 1: have a have completely different presentation. Like you could just imagine,
Speaker 1: let's say that you're going through a corrupt precinct and
Speaker 1: the candidate that they all want to win is a nice, big,
Speaker 1: bold print, and then the other candidates are in teeny
Speaker 1: tiny print and you can barely see them Like that
Speaker 1: would be unfair, obviously, you would say, like, I detect
Speaker 1: a sense of bias. So this was Australia in the
Speaker 1: mid ninete century. I guess then the best way to
Speaker 1: organize the candidates would be by their crime in alphabetical order.
Speaker 1: So sorry, as always, as always we love to poke
Speaker 1: fund at Australia for getting its start as a as
Speaker 1: a as a penal colony. Well, I mean, clearly the
Speaker 1: Aborigines have been there forever. But but you know, from
Speaker 1: the European standpoint, Hey, but before we get too cocky, Ben,
Speaker 1: we live in Georgia, a state that was a penal colony.
Speaker 1: Do we get a pass for that because we because
Speaker 1: because Georgia was a debtor's prison essentially. If you've ever
Speaker 1: been in Georgia you can understand how how when Europeans
Speaker 1: got here, they first thought, yeah, this is where we
Speaker 1: want to put bad people. So so the the Australian
Speaker 1: state would create these out of I guess taxpayer money. Yep, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was and that was a big deal, right, like
Speaker 1: the decision that because anything the government does, you know,
Speaker 1: any product that they're going to make, any anything they produce,
Speaker 1: the money for that comes from taxes. That's where governments
Speaker 1: get their money. So you know, you're not going to
Speaker 1: the Australian government gift shop and buying a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of T shirts and that money goes to making making ballots. Uh.
Speaker 1: But once this was established, then it quickly caught Uh.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say caught fire, but that's hard to
Speaker 1: talk about when you're talking about paper ballots. It got popular,
Speaker 1: um I was adopted throughout the world. And so by
Speaker 1: the late nineteenth century, it's late eighteen hundreds, inventors, yeah,
Speaker 1: just a couple of decades later. Inventors were already beginning
Speaker 1: to experiment with ways to create machines for voting, things
Speaker 1: like using punch cards so that you could tabulate the
Speaker 1: data really quickly. And you know, because especially as populations
Speaker 1: grow and as you open up the vote to more
Speaker 1: eligible voters, as you make more people eligible, you know,
Speaker 1: keep in mind, this is the same period where we
Speaker 1: start to see uh, various minority populations end up getting
Speaker 1: the right to vote. That increases your voting population. We
Speaker 1: see women get the right to vote, that increases your
Speaker 1: voting population. Being able to count those votes quickly becomes
Speaker 1: really important because you don't want to hold up like
Speaker 1: you don't want to everyone waiting, Like we voted three
Speaker 1: weeks ago. When are we going to find out who won?
Speaker 1: You don't want that to happen. So there were a
Speaker 1: lot of experiments in ways to tabulate votes more quickly,
Speaker 1: and also the idea was that this would be more
Speaker 1: reliable than a human like less likely to make an error,
Speaker 1: less prone to uh, less prone to a user error
Speaker 1: or or fraud or fraud. You know, you can't bribe
Speaker 1: a tabulation machine to give you incorrect results. You could
Speaker 1: program 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. It sounds like a
Speaker 1: like a limi he is or he was. Can I
Speaker 1: say limey on the air? That? Okay? I mean we
Speaker 1: can beep it out. It's just gonna sound like I
Speaker 1: said something works the English Blackguard. Um. He was an
Speaker 1: Englishman and he received a U. S. Patent for a
Speaker 1: push button voting machine back in eighteen seventy five. And
Speaker 1: 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. So
Speaker 1: so you like in other words, like when we go
Speaker 1: in for an election, frequently we have multiple uh positions
Speaker 1: or or issues that we're voting on, not just the
Speaker 1: president or maybe a state rep or as state senator,
Speaker 1: but also uh controller uh well, and then and people
Speaker 1: in the actual House of Representatives in the U. S. Senate.
Speaker 1: So you've had 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 uh one of
Speaker 1: my favorite inventions that came out fairly early was a
Speaker 1: lever that you would pull in order to close the
Speaker 1: curtain behind you. Know, 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, which I think voting will count
Speaker 1: as my political careers, say, before you burnt all the
Speaker 1: bridges and before I burned the bridges and became an
Speaker 1: inspiration for several characters in the House of Cards. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I I was in the very early days before this
Speaker 1: was institute. I did get to experience like the older
Speaker 1: paper based voting I I did. Um, I did the
Speaker 1: old lever machine that used to be that used to
Speaker 1: be in Georgia. But foo, I'll talk about that more
Speaker 1: in a second. But um, the way that they that
Speaker 1: they typically would work because this once this innovation was introduced,
Speaker 1: it was adopted pretty much universally. Uh. You would have
Speaker 1: a lever that you would use to close the curtain
Speaker 1: behind you, and only then would the other levers become
Speaker 1: active where you would be able to cast your vote.
Speaker 1: So it was great because it meant that you were
Speaker 1: pretty confident that your vote would be done secretly. No
Speaker 1: one's going to look in on you, because before you
Speaker 1: could even get started, you had to close the curtain.
Speaker 1: You didn't have an option to vote with the curtain open.
Speaker 1: And Uh, typically the way it would work is that
Speaker 1: there'd be a mechanism that would just lock all the
Speaker 1: other levers in place until that curtain lever was activated.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it was really ingenious. Was again pretty simple.
Speaker 1: Even when you get to electro mechanical voting booths later on,
Speaker 1: it's still followed the same principle, And I thought that
Speaker 1: was really neat. Now, those voting booths were and incredibly heavy,
Speaker 1: uh and complex, and like I said, they would break
Speaker 1: down occasionally, which obviously that's a problem. They sound positively
Speaker 1: steam punk if we're being honest. Yeah, if you were
Speaker 1: to ever like look in the back of one. You
Speaker 1: would be pretty impressed. It would look kind of like
Speaker 1: a piano got in the fight with you know, like
Speaker 1: a copper store or something. It was pretty cool. That
Speaker 1: is such a beautiful description. That might be your best
Speaker 1: writing this week. Well, like a piano with a store. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you that's you got a lever action voting machine. Uh.
Speaker 1: In eighteen eighty one, Anthony C. Baroneck received a U
Speaker 1: S patent for a push button voting machine that was
Speaker 1: more suited for American elections. This one had the multiple
Speaker 1: rows and column so it was more advanced than than sprats.
Speaker 1: And then in eighteen eighty nine, Jacob H. Myers patented
Speaker 1: the first lever voting machine also known as a direct
Speaker 1: recording vote machine, which use mechanical levers to indicate votes
Speaker 1: and results were counted by the machine itself and then
Speaker 1: what would happen is he would record the results. A
Speaker 1: human being would record the results from each machine for
Speaker 1: it to be UH tabulated in the grand totals. Um
Speaker 1: and Myers had said that the approach had major advantages
Speaker 1: over older methods and that it could prevent ballot stuffing
Speaker 1: because each person could only use the machine once before
Speaker 1: it had to be reset, so you couldn't vote and
Speaker 1: then just go ahead and vote again and vote again,
Speaker 1: and then just keep on creating uh you know, false
Speaker 1: votes for whatever candidate you chose. You can only do
Speaker 1: it the one time and then it would have to
Speaker 1: be reset for the next voter, which meant that, you know,
Speaker 1: it was a little labor intensive because you had to
Speaker 1: have someone there to reset the machine. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, it kept the voting process honest um. And
Speaker 1: then the first time Myers machine was actually used, I
Speaker 1: remember it was made in so it didn't take long.
Speaker 1: And again there still was a weak point here. If
Speaker 1: you had someone whose job it was to write down
Speaker 1: the results, they could fudge the results from the machine.
Speaker 1: Let's also point out that here in the well eight
Speaker 1: nineteen century, yep, post civil war, at least in the US. Yes,
Speaker 1: the late nineteenth century is post civil war even today,
Speaker 1: even today, I'm just saying, with with that having occurred
Speaker 1: so recently, corruption was rife and rampant, oh yeah, especially
Speaker 1: like there's certain areas of the United States that have
Speaker 1: almost a comical association with election fraud, Chicago, Chicago being
Speaker 1: the big one. Like you'll hear stories about Chicago elections
Speaker 1: that are amazing, like like like, how how how many
Speaker 1: people turn out to vote in an election, including ones
Speaker 1: who haven't been alive for like ten years? Um, boss
Speaker 1: tweed kind of stuff. Right, Yeah, yeah, so at any rate,
Speaker 1: the the this didn't erase the ability for uh, some
Speaker 1: tampering to happen, right, But again it would be the humans. Ideally,
Speaker 1: the machines count all the votes as they were cast,
Speaker 1: but the humans whose job it was to transcribe that
Speaker 1: could fudge if they wanted, if they if they were
Speaker 1: so inclined. Not that they were allowed to, but they
Speaker 1: could have because there's a hierarchy of reporting here. One
Speaker 1: person tabulates each machine. After each vote goes to a precinct.
Speaker 1: Precinct tabulates, it goes to a higher authority of a
Speaker 1: regional swort, and then on and on and on up
Speaker 1: to the national level. Yeah. And just like you said earlier,
Speaker 1: the more moving parts we have in a mechanism, whether
Speaker 1: an organization or a machine, the more potential points of
Speaker 1: failure we have. Right. And and this again kind of
Speaker 1: leads into the thinking that would eventually develop into the
Speaker 1: electronic voting machine. The idea of being that hey, if
Speaker 1: we can remove some of these steps, then perhaps we
Speaker 1: can end up having a more accurate reflection of the
Speaker 1: public's intent, right which that's a very honorable thing, but
Speaker 1: it gets a little a little muddy and practice. We
Speaker 1: still have a ways to go. Bea we do so
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty lever voting machines have become a common site
Speaker 1: throughout elections in US cities. Most major cities had these
Speaker 1: by nineteen thirty. UM In nineteen sixty two, karn City, California,
Speaker 1: would use optical scan ballots for the first time. So
Speaker 1: these are like the center dized tests, like the s
Speaker 1: A T. I assume they're still like that. I haven't
Speaker 1: been in high school in a really long time, but
Speaker 1: you know the kind of test where you have to
Speaker 1: fill in the bubble all the way to indicate your choice.
Speaker 1: That's what we're talking about. Optical scans. So you've got
Speaker 1: your ballot and you fill in the ballot as directed
Speaker 1: in order to make your choices, and then those are
Speaker 1: later put through a scanning machine. It's essentially like a camera.
Speaker 1: It just detects where the dots are and then it
Speaker 1: can tell who you voted for based upon the position
Speaker 1: of the dots. And obviously this means that you have
Speaker 1: to have uh, very standardized papers so that they can
Speaker 1: load in properly, be read by the machine correctly, so
Speaker 1: that you don't get misidentified votes that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: You have to also have the seemingly unnecessary but in
Speaker 1: practice crucial instructions for every voter on what we actually
Speaker 1: mean when we say filling in a bubble. Yes, you know,
Speaker 1: no check marks, no X. You have to fill it
Speaker 1: in completely, all the stuff you may remember from your
Speaker 1: S A T S, A C T S or L sets, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: because if you don't fill it in correctly, if you
Speaker 1: don't fill in that bubble fully, then it may not
Speaker 1: be counted. And obviously every person who goes to the
Speaker 1: trouble to vote once his or her vote to matter, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, we don't. We don't just stand there just
Speaker 1: for the fun of it. Um. Maybe the first time,
Speaker 1: but after that you're like, well, I'm doing my civic duty.
Speaker 1: It's not my civic Oh boy, let's go and do this.
Speaker 1: Remind me at some point when we get to the
Speaker 1: contemporary area, I have a great voting story for you. Okay,
Speaker 1: but but right now we've got the scanners, and then
Speaker 1: we move move into something that's a little bit of
Speaker 1: local history for you and I. Yeah, in nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 1: Fulton and Decab Counties in Georgia use punch cards and
Speaker 1: computer tallely machines for the first time in an election. Uh.
Speaker 1: Fulton and Decab Counties are really the two main counties
Speaker 1: of Atlanta. If you look at Atlanta on a map,
Speaker 1: especially if you look up the term metro Atlanta, there
Speaker 1: are a whole bunch of counties that are in that something.
Speaker 1: There's like thirteen or something. It's crazy at this point,
Speaker 1: but but the two big ones that make up what
Speaker 1: we what we who live in Atlanta think of as
Speaker 1: Atlanta are Fulton and Decab. And so in fact, I
Speaker 1: think Ben, I think you you might live in one
Speaker 1: and I live in the other. That is true. I
Speaker 1: am currently a resident of Fulton County, though for a
Speaker 1: long time I was over there with you in Decab. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and to be fair, I think only a couple
Speaker 1: of miles separate Ben and Ben's house in my a
Speaker 1: my house, so we're right there on the border of
Speaker 1: the two counties. Anyway, those counties became the first to
Speaker 1: use punch cards and computer tally machines for the first time,
Speaker 1: and that would quickly get adopted by a lot of
Speaker 1: other places. In Joseph P. Harris would patent the voto
Speaker 1: Matic punch card system and that would require voters to
Speaker 1: use like a stylus like pen to punch holes into
Speaker 1: a ballot. This became very common to and it was
Speaker 1: on sort of a template thing, right, like it would
Speaker 1: slide into this thing with the choices, the one that
Speaker 1: you chose, almost like a frame that would hold the
Speaker 1: paper taut. Yeah, I remember those. And also I want
Speaker 1: to point out this is one of my favorite eras
Speaker 1: of American history for gadgets. It's the time when everything
Speaker 1: was legitimized by adding oh matic at the end. It
Speaker 1: was their digital or their organic, their 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 o matic 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 aig seven hours ago.
Speaker 1: If you really be still my heart or just a
Speaker 1: jar of eggs. Yep, man, those are the days, right,
Speaker 1: So so yeah, this this is something that has an
Speaker 1: important difference though, right because the while the act here
Speaker 1: was just relatively simple human technology, a person poppuli style
Speaker 1: is into 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. I'll talk about that. Um.
Speaker 1: But but does it does open up the opportunity for
Speaker 1: tabulation errors only because if the piece of paper that
Speaker 1: you are punching out isn't come 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 V 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 the computer terminals UH, and it was first
Speaker 1: used in and the first one that was used was
Speaker 1: called the video voter. Yeah. Now, typically these days you
Speaker 1: have an electronic display that shows you the ballot and
Speaker 1: electronic version of the ballot, and then you use some
Speaker 1: form of interface to make your choice. It might be buttons,
Speaker 1: so it might be a physical button that you have
Speaker 1: to press that corresponds to a choice you see on
Speaker 1: the screen, or it maybe a touch screen in some
Speaker 1: cases where you you know your your choices pop up,
Speaker 1: you press, the screen activates, and your vote is uh
Speaker 1: is reflected on what you see on the screen. H.
Speaker 1: At that point, a couple of different things could happen.
Speaker 1: The vote could just be recorded electronically in memory, and
Speaker 1: then at the end of the day what the precinct
Speaker 1: folks will do is remove the memory from each device
Speaker 1: and then send that over to a centralized tabulation area
Speaker 1: and then the results would be collected there. Or it
Speaker 1: may also print a paper record so that you have
Speaker 1: a hard copy to compare against the electronic ones. Not
Speaker 1: all e v m s have paper trails. In fact,
Speaker 1: a lot do not, which is problematic. Will get more
Speaker 1: into that. Yeah, not even not even state to state,
Speaker 1: but within within a state, you could have one area,
Speaker 1: one precinct where there's a paper trail, and one whether
Speaker 1: it's not. This is largely because in the United States, Uh,
Speaker 1: the decision on what sort of machine you're using is
Speaker 1: made at the local level. It's not federally mandated. Right.
Speaker 1: The federal mandate is that you must have a system
Speaker 1: in place for people to vote. You got you gotta
Speaker 1: have somehow, right, But beyond that, it ends up being
Speaker 1: a decision made on the local level. And there's been
Speaker 1: a lot of arguments about who should foot the bill
Speaker 1: for these systems. Should it be a state level thing,
Speaker 1: should be regional, should it be federal? And uh, this
Speaker 1: is why we get a lot of disparity across the
Speaker 1: United States when it comes to different ways to cast
Speaker 1: a 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 H.
Speaker 1: George W. Bush and UM, it was a very close
Speaker 1: race throughout the United States, but particularly in Florida, which
Speaker 1: was seen as a state that was going to decide
Speaker 1: every right. And also to add to the allegations and
Speaker 1: the controversy here, the vote in Florida at the time
Speaker 1: could be influenced by the governor who was brother to
Speaker 1: w Yeah, so you had um, you had polls, like
Speaker 1: the actual surveys indicating that Gore actually had a bit
Speaker 1: of a lead in in a lot of areas, but
Speaker 1: a lead 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 could 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 could be as sure? Like what have you looked
Speaker 1: at a ballot and legitimately they had not made a
Speaker 1: choice for a specific issue or a specific position, or
Speaker 1: you 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 paper. It's not, you know, a bunch of
Speaker 1: guys in backwards chats, a cargo shorts hanging out. Although
Speaker 1: I wish I was, Yeah, I wish that the I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would expect to see see a bunch of chads
Speaker 1: hanging out in Florida, but only on spring break, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: and know if it's people named Chad, I don't believe
Speaker 1: in nominative determinism, which is the smart word for the
Speaker 1: smart phrase for that kind of belief. Yeah, we were
Speaker 1: very intelligent about our our short sighted uh bad jokes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, this is this is a huge eel though,
Speaker 1: because UM people who naturally people who support UM the
Speaker 1: Republican candidate at the time, George who would later become president,
Speaker 1: George Bush. Uh. They say, well, this is how democracy works,
Speaker 1: and we have to make sure it's a clean election.
Speaker 1: And then the Democrats who are supporting al Gore say
Speaker 1: this is not how democracy works, and yes, we need
Speaker 1: to make sure there's a clean election. These votes you count.
Speaker 1: You can't. You can't just throw people's votes out the
Speaker 1: door because you don't you don't like what they say,
Speaker 1: and use the excuse that they don't fit your standard.
Speaker 1: And so this was this was an ugly, ugly mess,
Speaker 1: very much so, all the way, all the way to
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court. That's how far this ugly mess went.
Speaker 1: And uh, and they eventually made the decision, going back
Speaker 1: to I love that you put this in earlier, going
Speaker 1: back to your comments about tabulating things in a timely manner.
Speaker 1: Ultimately right, Um, the people who, of course the winning
Speaker 1: party is going to fight and say there shouldn't be
Speaker 1: a recount because they got it done the once. You don't.
Speaker 1: When you think about it, a recount to the winner,
Speaker 1: it sounds like you're doing the election all over it.
Speaker 1: It's like double jeopardy. Now, you don't wanna you don't
Speaker 1: wanna run the risk of losing again. You you want
Speaker 1: to you one, you want to keep moving, and you
Speaker 1: 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 elections.
Speaker 1: And so in two thousand to the US government actually
Speaker 1: passed the Help America Vote Act or HAVA h a
Speaker 1: v A in response to the two thousand Hanging Chad debacle,
Speaker 1: and their goal was to phase out punch cards stems
Speaker 1: entirely and use other systems. Didn't They weren't specific in saying,
Speaker 1: you have to move to electronic voting machines, but just
Speaker 1: let's not have this happen again, because that was not pleasant.
Speaker 1: And so a lot of regions did opt to go
Speaker 1: with electronic voting machines, and in two thousand two, the
Speaker 1: first state to use the r E machines statewide it
Speaker 1: is mandated at a state level, is Georgia. Yeah, look
Speaker 1: at us. Take that. Yeah, we're first in something. We're
Speaker 1: first in several things. This is one of the good ones, arguably.
Speaker 1: So it was interesting to see that Georgia was just
Speaker 1: was taking a leadership position and innovation in this way.
Speaker 1: But we should point out that in most states, electronic
Speaker 1: voting machines are not the only way you vote. In fact,
Speaker 1: in most states there's some sort of combination of different
Speaker 1: voting methodologies. Uh, some states, you are, are you still
Speaker 1: mail in your vote? You don't even go to a
Speaker 1: polling place because, uh, those states are known for having
Speaker 1: low populations dispersed across the wide area, and it's hard
Speaker 1: to make a journey all the way to a place
Speaker 1: where you can go and cast a vote, especially depend
Speaker 1: on the season. If there's inclement weather in a place
Speaker 1: like Alaska, you know, how how can you realistically expect
Speaker 1: someone to travel all the way in? And then you know,
Speaker 1: also the reason we have to depend on some hybrid
Speaker 1: systems is because we may have UM veterans or state
Speaker 1: level officials, people working for the government that are stationed abroad.
Speaker 1: Might have people who are living abroad for some reason
Speaker 1: or another. But if it's a legitimate reason, I guarantee
Speaker 1: you they want to vote, usually against having their foreign
Speaker 1: income tax at US rates. But but then there are
Speaker 1: you know, there are multiple people who for one extenuating
Speaker 1: circumstance or another need to send a vote can't be
Speaker 1: physically at the machine. So overall, it's good for us
Speaker 1: to have this mix right, right, and and uh, you
Speaker 1: know again, for a lot of places, it's it was
Speaker 1: not so much that we have to move to electronic
Speaker 1: voting machines. We just had to move off of punch cards. Um. So.
Speaker 1: One of the other sad things about Georgia though, is
Speaker 1: that in a lot of areas the machines being used
Speaker 1: are essentially the same ones that were launched in two
Speaker 1: thousand two, which means we have early adopter syndrome. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: we also have the the problem that a lot of
Speaker 1: people have when they get into PCs for the first time,
Speaker 1: which is that they realize they have to upgrade every
Speaker 1: few years. Uh. We have not done that in a
Speaker 1: lot of states, including Georgia. And this also comes in
Speaker 1: to play with the idea of the expense, right, you
Speaker 1: have to pay to get those new systems in, and
Speaker 1: that means you have to allocate taxpayer money to do that.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if you noticed this, Ben, but um,
Speaker 1: a lot of taxpayers aren't keen on the whole idea
Speaker 1: of paying more tax, which means that if you aren't
Speaker 1: paying more tax, then you have to take money away
Speaker 1: from something else in order to pay for the electronic
Speaker 1: voting machines. And it's it's hard to make that a
Speaker 1: politically positive move. It is difficult to justify that because
Speaker 1: there's so many different interested parties. And if you were
Speaker 1: to say, hey, uh, this group over here, I know
Speaker 1: that we typically budget a certain amount every year for
Speaker 1: you guys, but we're gonna decrease that budget a little
Speaker 1: bit this next year so that we can put that
Speaker 1: towards electronic voting machines. And then that group says, why
Speaker 1: are you punishing us? Um? And I'm not I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to pass judgment here. I understand like there's it's
Speaker 1: just it's a difficult political game to play. And then
Speaker 1: we have to also ask, you know, what private industry
Speaker 1: is involved with this. Yeah, so I'm just gonna I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna. I don't want to go I know we'll
Speaker 1: get into it later, but I do want to point out,
Speaker 1: you know, when we're asking that question, or we we're
Speaker 1: bringing up the point of how difficult it is to
Speaker 1: ask taxpayers to pay more in tax so that these
Speaker 1: machines can be serviced. The government's not paying itself to
Speaker 1: do it. In the case of Georgia, they're paying someone
Speaker 1: called Premier Election Solutions. Yeah. Yeah, Electric solutions used to
Speaker 1: be die Bald elections and we'll get into Diebold in
Speaker 1: a minute. So over the next several years, from two
Speaker 1: thousand two on to today, various security experts in civil
Speaker 1: rights groups have been challenging the use of d r
Speaker 1: E systems and elections for various reasons. In two thousand twelve,
Speaker 1: issues with the election in New York City were so
Speaker 1: bad that in the city would actually pull five thousand
Speaker 1: one liver voting machines out of storage to use instead
Speaker 1: of electronic voting machines. Yeah. Well, it's a good thing
Speaker 1: they kept him. Huh yeah. So whoever was in charge
Speaker 1: of keeping all that old stuff, I'm sure you listen
Speaker 1: to tech stuff and haye, you're no longer a hoarder. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now you're 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 can 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 are no moving parts,
Speaker 1: you don't have to worry about the physical wear and
Speaker 1: tear the way you would with those mechanical devices. Mays
Speaker 1: was wont to say there's more. Yeah. So one of
Speaker 1: the big advantages of electronic voting machines, and I think
Speaker 1: this is a really important one, is they are customizable
Speaker 1: so that citizens are able to more citizens can participate
Speaker 1: in the voting process. For example, if you have people
Speaker 1: who have visual impairments, like they can see, but they
Speaker 1: might have trouble reading something that's in small print because
Speaker 1: it's on an electronic screen most of the time, you
Speaker 1: have 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, I wish I
Speaker 1: could see this in the studio. I just did President Handry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you get the thumbs slightly extended and the fist clinched,
Speaker 1: and then you do all your gestures. You know why
Speaker 1: you do it that way, right, So you're not pointing
Speaker 1: exactly because if you point, then it almost feels like
Speaker 1: an accusation. They train you President one oh one, you
Speaker 1: can train don't point. Um. So your basic d r
Speaker 1: A is just a computer, right, so it records votes
Speaker 1: cast on the device typically you would use here in Georgia.
Speaker 1: You tend to get like a card, an activation card
Speaker 1: that you plug into almost like a little disk drive,
Speaker 1: and then you can make your votes and then you
Speaker 1: are told to remove the card at the end of it,
Speaker 1: and then you turn it back into somebody and a
Speaker 1: volunteer at your little polling place, Jimmy the volunteer, Ben's
Speaker 1: falling place. I'd like to point out that the cab
Speaker 1: County has much more respectable volunteers at the pollings into
Speaker 1: a free sassafras. Yeah, you get a little bit of that.
Speaker 1: Sasaparilla is actually what I was thinking of. It's fair,
Speaker 1: but yeah, there are differences. So you've got lots of
Speaker 1: different companies that make these, right, there's no standard across them,
Speaker 1: and in fact that ends up causing an issue. But
Speaker 1: once you make those selections on your computer screen, you
Speaker 1: get kind of too broad um types of d r s.
Speaker 1: In one type, it's all records, just electronically, so all
Speaker 1: you have is the electric electronic record of the votes,
Speaker 1: and the other one you have some sort of paper trail. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: the paper trail ones you can even divide again because
Speaker 1: there's somewhere you have a paper trail. But there's no
Speaker 1: way for the voter to verify that the vote recorded
Speaker 1: on paper reflects their are specific choices. So Ben, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna give you an example. All right, let's say let's
Speaker 1: let's let's go back in time and uh, you are
Speaker 1: picking between um, oh, let's say, uh Jimmy Carter and
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan. Alright, you've got you've got your choices of
Speaker 1: Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. But but back in this
Speaker 1: time period, this alternate history, they do have electronic voting machines.
Speaker 1: Write your mind around that. So so there you are.
Speaker 1: You're looking at Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, and you,
Speaker 1: being a huge fan of Reagan's Hollywood career, You've decided
Speaker 1: you're gonna support Mr Reagan and not Mr Carter, the
Speaker 1: 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 Mecause that time for bonds or whatever it was,
Speaker 1: you choose, you choose the Gipper, you choose Ronald Reagan,
Speaker 1: and uh and in the distance you hear which indicates
Speaker 1: that indeed the printer has printed out the lines that
Speaker 1: are supposed to reflect your vote, but you are not
Speaker 1: able to see the piece of paper. So for all
Speaker 1: you know, the piece of paper actually says Jimmy Carter
Speaker 1: was the one you voted on. And so while the
Speaker 1: the review screen that you get says you picked Ronald Reagan,
Speaker 1: electronically it records that vote as a vote for Jimmy
Speaker 1: Carter and on the paper it says it's a vote
Speaker 1: for Jimmy Carter. And since you can't see the paper,
Speaker 1: you can't say, hey, wait a minute, that's not who
Speaker 1: I voted for. Well you didn't, because you voted. You
Speaker 1: did everything you could. Now, there's also the voter verifiable
Speaker 1: paper trail, and the very viable paper trail means that
Speaker 1: you would be able to see the paper representation of
Speaker 1: your vote before you leave the precinct. So in that case,
Speaker 1: you vote for Ronald Reagan, piece of paper prints out
Speaker 1: it says you voted for Ronald Reagan. Now I should
Speaker 1: add there's still the possibility that electronically it flips your vote.
Speaker 1: But for that to happen, and for it to essentially
Speaker 1: flip back at some point, for it to purport that
Speaker 1: you have voted what you thought you were voting for,
Speaker 1: that makes Let me put it this way, Jonathan and
Speaker 1: I know that we are going to go back and
Speaker 1: forth on some of this, and that's fine. That's a
Speaker 1: very that's a difficult mistake to make. In other words,
Speaker 1: that's not a mistake that's something someone did on purpose.
Speaker 1: It seems more plausible that it would be like something
Speaker 1: that's something that involves those points occurring, UH register electronically.
Speaker 1: Let's say I do vote for Big gip uh and
Speaker 1: then have the verifiable paper trail come out and says, hey, congratulations,
Speaker 1: you voted Ronnie. But then have the machine somehow register
Speaker 1: that as a vote for an opposing candidate. No, that
Speaker 1: would I would argue that I can't think of a
Speaker 1: scenario where you could innocently do that, right, because you
Speaker 1: have to remember that the way these systems tend to
Speaker 1: work is that you get a verification screen at the
Speaker 1: end that says, hey, is this what you wanted before
Speaker 1: you actually cast your vote? Right, So that electronic screen
Speaker 1: is going to, in theory, reflect what you actually chose.
Speaker 1: And if you look down, you're like, yep, there's Ronald Reagan.
Speaker 1: That's who I picked. And then the piece of paper
Speaker 1: says after you cast your vote, the piece of paper
Speaker 1: prints out and it says Ronald Reagan, Like, yep, that's
Speaker 1: who I picked, But electronically it says Jimmy Carter. I
Speaker 1: say something hinky has gone on, and sure that it
Speaker 1: was somebody doing that on purpose. You know, I've got
Speaker 1: to confess, I'm I'm surprised that you're I'm surprised that
Speaker 1: you were drawing the same conclusion, so quick leap, because
Speaker 1: you're very um. The way that you evaluate situations and
Speaker 1: you guys, you guys know, Jonathan, you listen to this
Speaker 1: show is to go through all of these facts. So
Speaker 1: to hear you say something with this certitude is is
Speaker 1: pretty significant. Well, and and it's because I understand the
Speaker 1: technology right, Like if you've if you've designed a system,
Speaker 1: first of all, in order to get any electronic voting
Speaker 1: system in place, it has to go through lots of
Speaker 1: different third party testing to make sure that it actually
Speaker 1: works right. Um. So for it to pass all those
Speaker 1: tests and then magically not work properly on election day
Speaker 1: tells me something someone has interfered, whether it was someone
Speaker 1: on the actual uh manufacturing side, like someone on the
Speaker 1: software side for the company that made the voting machine,
Speaker 1: or some other third party actor who has infected a
Speaker 1: machine with malicious code to change votes on the electronic level.
Speaker 1: The whole point of this, though, is that if you
Speaker 1: have a paper trail, especially a voter verifiable paper trail
Speaker 1: that's the most important kind, then you have something against
Speaker 1: which you can perform an audit after an election. So
Speaker 1: the elections over the results are in, and then a
Speaker 1: lot of states, not all, but a lot of states
Speaker 1: require a post election audit where they will compare the
Speaker 1: electronic results against a hard copy of the results. If
Speaker 1: it's a voter verifiable hard copy, then theoretically every single
Speaker 1: voter had the opportunity to see that his or her
Speaker 1: vote was actually recorded as intended. And that means that
Speaker 1: if there is a disparity, then you could bring that
Speaker 1: up and say, hey, we're going through this, and there
Speaker 1: seems to be some significant differences between the electronic copy
Speaker 1: and what's on the hard copy, right, like like, hey,
Speaker 1: some of us voted for Hillary Clinton, some vote for
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, and a couple for some third party candidates,
Speaker 1: but every vote here is for Gary Busey. Yeah what
Speaker 1: gives Yeah that at a terrifying future that I had
Speaker 1: never ever considered. But in the in the Reagan Jimmy
Speaker 1: Carter example, we gave before you could say, well, according
Speaker 1: to this paper copy this one person who happens to
Speaker 1: be ben but they don't know that. Because voter identity
Speaker 1: is very important, we want to keep that. I go
Speaker 1: in disguise. Based on our earlier series about how to
Speaker 1: use the Internet and without being caught right, So so Ben,
Speaker 1: They don't know it's Ben, but they look and they
Speaker 1: see this voter record that says this person voted for
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan, but electronically it says Jimmy Carter. Something is wrong,
Speaker 1: and then then there could be a better investigation. It's
Speaker 1: great to have that, but we'll go more into why
Speaker 1: that's not working everywhere in just a second. So this
Speaker 1: kind of brings us into those concerns more formally. We've
Speaker 1: already kind of addressed a big one. But if your
Speaker 1: goal is to make voting and tabulation easy and efficient,
Speaker 1: then if everything's working properly, there's no hampering involved, there's
Speaker 1: no bias that's been introduced, either unconsciously or purposefully, then
Speaker 1: it's a beautiful world. Beat you get that, you get
Speaker 1: those votes in, you're done with it and it you
Speaker 1: get the winner and the loser can be gracious and
Speaker 1: defeat and all that wonderful stuff. Um, but it's really
Speaker 1: hard to make sure that your vote is being counted
Speaker 1: the way you want it. So, first of all, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of electronic voting machines that have no
Speaker 1: corresponding paper trail at all, So let's say let's say
Speaker 1: that again. Uh, Ben, you voted for Reagan and the
Speaker 1: votes come in and there they announced the results for Georgia,
Speaker 1: and it's like ninety seven point three percent of voters
Speaker 1: voted for Jimmy Carter. Well, you don't know if you
Speaker 1: were in that small percentage that didn't vote for Carter,
Speaker 1: you would have no way of knowing. You're one person,
Speaker 1: I would have nothing to refer to accept perhaps uh,
Speaker 1: circumstantial evidence on exit polls or pre voting polls, so
Speaker 1: I could say, what the heck happened? There were you know,
Speaker 1: fifty percent of us last week? Did we all just
Speaker 1: not go all? Forget about kings Row bedtime for Bonzo?
Speaker 1: I told you be bonso I knew that was the
Speaker 1: chump one. And I don't have a computer in front
Speaker 1: of me. I was purely for memory. That's just from
Speaker 1: that's yeah, that's just because you care, because I care.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's that's a great point. So aside from that,
Speaker 1: there would be no, um, certainly nothing with a legal
Speaker 1: basis right, no legal leg 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 uh so noticeable that there would be an investigation
Speaker 1: to follow, right, Like, your whole goal is to do
Speaker 1: this clandestine lee and not get caught. So if you're
Speaker 1: doing that and you're being careful, you would want to
Speaker 1: design a system where it's not a blowout for a
Speaker 1: state where it might have been close leading up to
Speaker 1: the election. So if there is no corresponding paper trail,
Speaker 1: then you don't You have nothing to audit against. All
Speaker 1: you have is the electronic copies, and as we know,
Speaker 1: you can alter electronic copies. Now, it's in the best
Speaker 1: interest of all the companies that create these electronic voting
Speaker 1: machines to be as secure as possible. Unfortunately that never happens. Right.
Speaker 1: Security on electronic voting machines is a joke, it's terrible.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, Wired released a pretty uh
Speaker 1: pretty scary article which you you've probably already you're already
Speaker 1: aware of it back in August. Yes, title being American's
Speaker 1: electronic voting machines are scarily easy targets. Yeah, hey, Ben,
Speaker 1: Hey Jonathan, So, um, you and I kept talking after
Speaker 1: this bit that 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, thoughts and jokes and fats,
Speaker 1: got a lot of ends, get a lot of outs,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of big Lebowski's happening, and um,
Speaker 1: so it turned out we had been recording for almost
Speaker 1: two hours, and we realized that's probably too long for
Speaker 1: a single episode. So we're going to conclude part one here,
Speaker 1: but next week we're gonna pick up with part two
Speaker 1: right where we left off. We got a lot more
Speaker 1: to say, so Ben, we'll be back in part two
Speaker 1: because he never left, and you will get to hear
Speaker 1: the conclusion of this and Ben, tell people where they
Speaker 1: can find your stuff. Sure, thanks Jonathan. Folks, if you
Speaker 1: haven't heard yet, you can find uh find me and
Speaker 1: several other like minded compatriots at a show called Stuff
Speaker 1: They Don't Want You to Know, which examines fringe theories
Speaker 1: and applies critical thinkings and stuff the mainstream media would
Speaker 1: often rather not tell you about. And that is true. Uh.
Speaker 1: We also have a show called car Stuff that I
Speaker 1: do with my with my co host and erstwhile guests
Speaker 1: here on tech Stuff Scott Benjamin. Also your road trip buddy,
Speaker 1: also my road trip buddy we take Ah, we took
Speaker 1: a road trip together. You can find out about everything
Speaker 1: that floats, fly, swims or drives on that show. So
Speaker 1: thanks for having me on. And uh then, and I
Speaker 1: hope that you guys come in for the next week's
Speaker 1: podcast because I feel like we had some pretty solid
Speaker 1: jokes and yeah, and we undermined the political system pretty sufficiently.
Speaker 1: We launched a bit of a revel We may have
Speaker 1: we may have ventured slightly into rant territory a little bit.
Speaker 1: Oh oh, I forgot that we have a brain stuff video, Jonathan.
Speaker 1: You and I do a show called brain Stuff together.
Speaker 1: We have a brain stuff video about how much it
Speaker 1: costs to run for president. It's not as much as
Speaker 1: you think. Just to run uh, and it's not as
Speaker 1: hard to register. It's just really really it only gets
Speaker 1: really really expensive if you want to win. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: you you got to get in front of those voters faces. Uh.
Speaker 1: We also have a great brain stuff video, the two
Speaker 1: of Us for twins. Oh, one of my favorites of
Speaker 1: all times. Corny, I love it. I love it so much.
Speaker 1: But we we did a lot of overacting in that one.
Speaker 1: So guys, if you have any suggestions or questions, you
Speaker 1: got any any people that I should have on either
Speaker 1: to interview or to be a guest host, please give
Speaker 1: me a shout let me know the email addresses tech
Speaker 1: stuff at how stuff works dot com or dropped me
Speaker 1: a lot and on Facebook or Twitter. The handling both
Speaker 1: of those is text stuff hs W and I will
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon for more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com