Regulatory Failures with Ballot Marking Devices
Examines regulatory and certification failures surrounding Ballot Marking Devices, focusing on barcode vote encoding and ballot image discrepancies.
Summary
The Fundamental Dilemma of Ballot Marking Devices
Ballot Marking Devices (BMDs) encode voter choices into machine-readable barcodes or QR codes that human voters cannot visually verify before inserting ballots into precinct scanners.
Discrepancies Across Multiple Ballot Records
Marnie Mahoney highlights how BMDs generate three distinct representations of voter intent: encoded barcode images, human-readable text summaries, and digital scanned ballot images, each vulnerable to differing points of failure or manipulation.
Regulatory and Certification Gaps
Federal and state voting system testing standards have lagged behind technological realities, certifying complex computerized ballot markers that fail to guarantee meaningful voter verification.
Advocating for Independent Paper Verification
Reforming election equipment standards requires mandating human-readable, voter-marked hand paper ballots and prohibiting unreadable barcode vote tabulation.
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