Voters across the country are denied by design the right to verify the only ballot that matters: the ballot that actually gets counted. In electronic tabulation your votes are computed from an electronic “version” of your ballot, a version you are never allowed to see. If you cannot see it, you cannot verify it before it’s counted.
This matters immensely because the explicit design of electronic tabulation completely rejects voter oversight of what goes into the count. The count determines results, and the design of electronic tabulation denies any and all voters the opportunity to personally confirm that their votes are exactly what is being counted. Rather, you are forced to assume it. Federal law, so we are told, is there to “help” Americans “feel confident” that their votes are counted accurately. But this is not so. Besides the fact that those who are not Americans are routinely voting, Americans are forbidden the opportunity to ensure that their votes–which are their commands–are in fact obeyed
A hand-counted paper process can help make the problem with electronic tabulation controlling the counting of the votes even clearer: in a hand count, the very paper voted on is the very paper counted. In that process, the voter can see that the paper they cast is exactly the same as what is read into the count. This cannot happen in electronic tabulation. Even if paper ballots are used in your state–and this includes mailed ballots–the paper only supplies a later scan. After the paper is surrendered and the scan is finished, we are forced to assume that accurate data is generated, if any relevant data at all, to supply the count and reveal the results.
