Often when we attempt to explain Punchscan to activists and others we hear something like the following:

Darn it. If my 80-year-old grandma can’t understand it, then we shouldn’t use it. Elections should be transparent.

I have been meaning to address this issue in a blog post for some time, but today I see that Ben Adida has already done a pretty good job. While people may have a point that Punchscan and E2E in general is somewhat complex, this is not the same as transparency. While not everyone will take the time to understand it, the fact remains that a normal citizen could do it if they so desired, and that is the key distinction between E2E and many other systems. There are no experts, closed sources, closed designs, or NDAs. Ben’s definition of transparency is as follows:

A system is transparent if, given a reasonable amount of time and effort, a person with a college education can understand it. Then, those without the education, time, or willingness to understand it can consult with someone they trust who does understand it.

I sort-of agree with this statement, although I would use high-school instead of college.  In reality, I think that transparency is fundamentally different, and it has to do with the level of observance people can exert on the election. Anyway, we have been saying something similar to this for a long time now. Here’s what we say on our FAQ about it:

The actual system could, we expect, with such a mock election as introduction, be taught in advanced high school science or college classes. This is many times simpler than convincing anyone of how the software in current voting systems works—even if people were allowed to see it!

I see no reason why anyone with a minimal education would not be able to understand Punchscan with the help of a 1-2 week (or day) course.

The only thing I find even a little objectionable about Ben’s post is the following:

…to anyone familiar with quality control processes, the ballot chain-of-custody is a reliability nightmare: how does one check that no one has tampered with a ballot box full of de-identified ballots that no one can look at during the 24 crucial hours where low-wage, minimally trained election workers are entirely responsible for them?

This doesn’t exactly do justice to the solution most activists are trying to promote. They want semi-translucent boxes in full view, and counting done on the same day at the same place in a specific way in front of anyone who is able to observe. There are still many problems with this but it is a bit different than centralized counting or the DREs we have today.

Kudos to Ben on an excellent post.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 17th, 2007 at 5:30 pm and is filed under Voting Goals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.