In the past, those that have been for more secure elections have over-reached and over-reacted, at least as far as what the problem in Oregon could be. I have seen proposals like having a webcam at every ballot box (and we vote by mail!), and proposals that would be impossible in some of Oregon's smaller Counties.

This proposal, to use a sampling method, is exactly the correct response to the type of technology used. In my County we have 17 precincts. If we randomly selected two per election and hand counted ballots in one or two races (perhaps one State wide race and one local - randomly selected), it would clearly show if the machines were counting correctly. It would take our County staff about an hour to do.

That is not over reaching. That is reasonable.

Simple. Have everyone fingerprinted and then check the ballots against the fingerprint records. I don't like the idea that criminal illegal Mexicans can cast ballots in Oregon.

GT's proposal also eliminates the notion of a Secret Ballot. Voters using GT's scheme could be harassed for voting the "wrong" way.

The counties ALREADY compare signatures from the outer envelope to voter registration cards. This is fair and eliminates most fraud. Requiring a verification fingerprint on the ballot itself is unlawful, unconstitutional, invasive, and well, ludicrous.

• Bob R.

I would add a separate proposal (it doesn't have to be part of this bill) -- a web-based interface to see if your envelope has been received by the county.

This would be relatively simple to implement - the outer envelopes already have bar codes and a tracking number. The voter could simply jot down this number, go to a state-run web site a few days later, and enter in the number. The output would simply be "received", "not received", or "problem - please contact elections office" and could include contact information for people concerned about their ballot.

No names, private information (and nothing about how a person may have voted), etc., need to be disclosed -- just the unique number and "received" or "not received". This would prevent fraud and intimidation while adding confidence to voters who want to know their ballot will be counted.

• Bob R.

All that's needed to confirm identities is for the State Attorney Generals office to regularly compare SSN's with names registered with the U.S. Treasury Dept. No ballots should be mailed to those whose name doesn't match their SSN. To date, the state AG has refused to do that.

So far as electronicly counting votes is concerned, pre-election tests should be run by running a known sampling of ballots through the entire system and comparing the results with the expected count. Then, all tallying and reporting equipment (including programmable routers) should be sealed and not used until the actual voting day.

But, heck, accountability just isn't much fun, is it? And that's exactly why you end up with two terms of G.W.Bush and Company, lazoids.

paul - unfortunately, your comments are based on addressing a different problem than Betsy is addressing with her efforts. What interests me is if you know that or not.

Betsy is addressing the issue of detecting rigged machines and her solution is the proper way to do that, assuming a known unrigged machine is available. Which of course is not a reasonable or valid assumption.

You are addressing the issue of random faulty machines, and your solution is one way to do that. However, the mathematical details of sampling theory says in general that insuring an accurate result could require a large number of recounts, and that knowing the number of recounts required itself requires knowing something about the actual failure mode and rate (which, if you knew, could be dealt with other ways more effectively.)

Phil Jones - I think you miss the point entirely about what elections are about, and the trust factor. First, people distrust electronically counted elections because they can't see what is happening with their own eyes. Second, no amount of testing in the form you suggest can ever assure anyone there has not been tampering after the test. Seals can be broken and re-installed, and at some point the cost of technological solutions to just seals starts to exceed the cost of doing something non-technological.

You may not like that, but in an election in a free society, where the purpose of an election is the peaceful transfer of power, it's not your choice whether you like it. Your only reasonable choice is to respect it.

Betsy is addressing the issue of detecting rigged machines and her solution is the proper way to do that, assuming a known unrigged machine is available. Which of course is not a reasonable or valid assumption.

Should have read:

Betsy is addressing the issue of detecting rigged machines and her solution is the proper way to do that, assuming a known unrigged machine is NOT available. Which of course is a reasonable and valid assumption.

Well folks, the problem has been solved...in Venezuela. Their solution was to audit the machine by matching paper ballots to results found on the machine. Everything is totally transparent, nothing is left to dispute.

On election night, up to 50% of the paper ballots are randomly selected for auditing. With such a high audit requirement, the final vote distribution will be virtually identical to the distribution found in the audit.

To conduct the audit five people from the community are randomly selected as auditors. People from political parties are free to attend. One person picks up a paper ballot and announces out loud the selection marked on the ballot. The people randomly selected from the community and from the political parties record what they hear. Once the ballot by ballot audit is completed, votes are tallied. The tally on the machine must match the tally of the auditors. If they match, results are posted and sent to election central. Everyone can see if the tally recorded at election central matches what was announced locally.

Results are available the same evening.

Granted, in Venezuela, ballots do not contain as many candidates and initiatives as here. However, this problem can be solved. For instance, begin with a 5% audit of all machines. Where races prove to be close, increase the audit requirement according to the tightness of the race.

This voting system is one of the reasons that Venezuelans give higher marks to their democracy than do citizens of any other country in Latin America. Despite intense polarization of the population between Chavistas and the opposition, the legitimacy of the last election was never in doubt.

It's amazing how many naysayers come out of the closet to whine about how difficult solutions can be to technical issues. Some people just can't see the forest for the trees, I suppose.

I highly recommend a very readable book called "Brave New Ballot" by Avi Rubin, Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins U. Terrific book about the problems with computer voting and a very rational proposal for using technology in a way that doesn't make voting into a black box exercise where the voters simply have to trust private for-profit companies.

(Note that this describes a system for states that do not use all mail ballots. A lot of this doesn't apply in Oregon because of the mail thing, but the principles are the same.)

In a nutshell, a very fast, trustworthy system for polling place voting is this:

1) Use touchscreen technology to let the voter create a paper ballot. The touchscreen provides the error correction (warnings about overvotes, undervotes, etc.) This machine also counts the votes.

2) The voter takes the paper ballot and inserts it into an optical scanning machine made by an entirely different vendor. That machine reads the ballot and tallies the votes--and keeps the paper ballot.

3) Thus, you have two separate tallies on two different machines made by two different companies that should be identical.

4) If not, you have the paper ballots to permit hand recounts as needed to determine which machine is erring.

In the all-mail balloting system, we lose the advantage of having the capability for immediate warnings to alert the voter about various kinds of spoiled ballot issues (overvoting, undervoting, etc.) However, if we cared to, it's easy to imagine systems that would let us send voters a notice (e-mail or sealed card) saying "Your ballot had an overvote that will void your vote in the following races, please contact your elections office to revote" or "Your ballot did not register a choice in the following races" (for undervotes). This is harder, for sure, but perhaps democracy is worth it.

JMG - there would be horrendous distrust of a computerized system which actually tracked whether an individual's ballot had been undervoted or overvoted. And some degree of tracking would have to happen to cause voter notification to happen. The lack of immediate feedback, and the real problems correcting that, is one of those system flaws with VBM that contribute to make it a very detrimental system to our state. Read the rest of my comment for another one.

The following two paragraphs recount a true story, Google it for yourself if you don't believe me:

After the 2004 election the story emerged that Timothy Griffin --- a Republican operative who has been back in the news recently as the new Arkansas DA installed after the political firings of 7 DAs by the adminstration --- had been involved in voter suppression dirty tricks that some argue is what made the difference between Kerry winning and losing.

The tactic was simple, and not illegal: They sent non-forwardable, first class letters to registered voters. Eligible voters for which letter was returned, for any reason, had to go to non-trivial extra effort to vote, if they bothered at all, and had their voter registration suspended or cancelled if they didn't actively take steps to maintain it.

Now, compare that to what happens in Oregon under VBM with the full support of terribly naive people like Betsy Salter (in her own words: "Oregon's otherwise stellar election system", "Oregon leads the way in ensuring that elections in America are accessible, transparent, secure and verifiable.")

In Oregon, every election, the state sends a non-forwardable first class letter (the ballot) to voters. Eligible voters for which letter (ballot) is returned, for any reason, in the end have to to go to extra effort to vote, if they bother at all, and will in many cases have their voter registration cancelled if they don't actively take steps to maintain it. The only case where registration is maintained is when the USPS positively reports the status of the recipient.

In addition, with our VBM system, failure to return a ballot because the voter failed to receive for whatever reason, but that the PO delivers because they do not have some notice on file of a delivery status change by the voter, also results in the voter being noted as having not voted in the election with the registration status consequences that follow from not voting in an election.

The fact is, that in Ohio, the scheme was designed to suppress Democratic votes directly. It was based on recognizing that voters with less address stability are more likely to vote Democratic because the socio-economic factors which (traditionally) pre-disposed people to vote for Democrats also pre-disposed people to have less address stability, and to vote more irregularly. In Ohio, of course they upped their chances for suppressing the Democratic vote by targeting registered Democrats. Note that this only upped their chances, though, because starting with the Reagan era, people registered as Democrats in fact voted Republican - so Griffin's tactic probably suppressed some Republican votes.

In Oregon, there is no reason to believe other than VBM has a similar suppression effect because the effect arises from the mechanism of how ballots are delivered and how a voter remains eligible to receive a ballot. In addition, up until now there has been no widely publicized research that has disproved this probable suppression effect. There also is no work reported on the SOS website in this regard. If it exists someone should bring it forward.

There are actually much more compelling arguments out there why VBM is bad for governance. In particular, Prof. Paul Gronke has been quite articulate in this regard. The proponents one hears from everywhere have shown, however, they really don't care about those arguments for a one dominant reason: They cheerfully cite how this system works well for them and people like them because it caters to their consumerist approach to life, and see no problem at all with imposing that consumerist mentality on our election system.

In their argument though lies the very proof of the destructive nature of VBM voting. They cite as it's strength how it has been designed to make it easy, and therefore filter, for participation by them and people like them. In that way they embrace making it less easy, and therefore filter against, participation by those who have less address stability, or are just the victim of random system failures each election. This also is not the full story about address instability and the very negative consequences of VBM, this particular aspect of address instability is the one that speaks most directly to the misguided arguments of those who defend VBM as a progressive concept, and who choose to ignore the far more substantive arguments why VBM is bad for our state, our country, and representative democracy.

Betsy, I support your measure. It is good common sense regardless of how elections are conducted. However, I think it is sad you actually believe that the result of your work is to restore the public's trust in Oregon's election system and demonstrate to the nation that, once again, Oregon leads the way in ensuring that elections in America are accessible, transparent, secure and verifiable.

we can restore the public's trust in Oregon's election system

There is no need to "restore the public's trust in Oregon's election system" since there it has never really lost that trust. Nor should it.

There may have been elections for which a recount would have reversed the results, but WE WILL NEVER KNOW.

And unless there is a recount for every election, WE WILL STILL NEVER KNOW. While its certainly possible someone could figure out how to tamper with the counting machines, its pretty unlikely. Its also unlikely they would get caught by a manual recount.

This is a solution looking for a problem. The real problems with computerized voting are elsewhere and don't apply to Oregon's system. My guess is that old-fashioned ballot box stuffing is a bigger threat.

Fingerprinting is the most effective way to ensure that criminal illegal Mexicans don't cast ballots. They use fingerprinting in many other countries around the world - why not here? You want "every vote to count" yet then argue with me that my idea for a sure fire way to ensure just that is "Un American"? You liberals whine about every proposal. No wonder these Democrats can never get any decent legislation passed - they're always quibbling!

Paul -

The problem with any proposal that allows an actual ballot to be reviewed by a voter after-the-fact is that it enables vote-buying. With campaigns now spending multiples of $10 per vote cast, how difficult is it to believe that an unscrupulous person would offer $$$ to disadvantaged persons who privately "prove" to them that they cast a vote a certain way? Also, the current concern about the "battered spouse" being intimidated into casting a ballot contrary to their intentions would become validated, because such an individual could now be forced by their partner to "verify" that they indeed cast their ballot a certain way. Granted, these may not ever be pervasive and widespread problems, but at the margins they could be enough to swing a close election. What problem are we solving by opening this potential new doorway for abuse?

• Bob R.

(To all, I'm responding to Paul's comments above, NOT to the legislative proposal described in the main post -- I do support the legislative proposal.)

paul positively about technological solutions a little too quickly, and clearly does not think like a computer scientist. He says (with one snarky aside as academics are wont to do) incorrectly:

Oh, and by the way, there is a way to know if the machines are counting accurately. It is quite simple.

You generate a given number of ballots with a known pattern of votes. There are many procedures by which you can generate these ballots and "embargo" the results from the election officials, the candidates, or whomever conspirator you happen to suspect today.

Then you run these ballots through a machine, see what it reports, open the envelope, and voila!, you've certified the accuracy of the machine.

Sounds good, right? Can anyone see the glaring failure of his argument as presented?

The answer is this: The conspirator you happen to suspect today could have rigged the machine to do the first 1, 2, 3, (or some number greater than whatever would be reasonably expected) counts correctly and then do rigged counts after that. And you can be the actual number of test counts +/- some small number will be set down in election law so the conspirator will know it a prior.

Doing the test again after the count is complete would sound like it would be sufficient to catch this kind of rigging right? Well maybe only to political science professors who have a bias against hand counts for some reason, even though the purpose of hand counts is more than trust, and someone already gave a solution ho to make hand counts more accurate earlier in the thread. The test after the count is useless if the whatever conspirator you happen to suspect today has some idea how long the actual counting was to last. The tabulators can internally estimate time (quite accurately actually), and then starting counting accurately again after a time period that is assuredly less than the expected length of time that live votes will be tabulated.

Rig a machine that way and, to paraphrase:

and voila!, you've (falsely) certified the accuracy of the machine.

Two other comments:

First, paul's jab at open source is easily handled also: If you really believe that the whole solution is technology rather than properly done hand counts, you charge NIST with being the official development coordinator/maintainer/disburser of the only code that can be used in vote recording and tabulating machines. It doesn't actually solve the problem that people will never totally trust a count they can't see being done with their own eyes (hear with their own ears). However, if the idea is what paul is selling here of simply giving people plausible arguments designed to give people a false sense of trust in technological solutions, this is far more plausible than telling them to believe in proprietary code and complex algorithmic tricks that they will just have to believe can catch rigging.

Second, The MIT-CalTech consortium Selker is associated with was formed for the explicit purposes of "selling" techological solutions. Lip service aside, they seem to not "get it" when it comes to the human dimension of what it means to actually establishing true trust in an election. But of course, what would one expect from folks at institutions that are about technology as much or more than the human dimensions of society, and who really do believe in technocracy.

paul - In all seriousness, you have people reading your comments here who trust what you say. As intelligent as they believe they are, they are in fact swayed more by your authority than your arguments. By virtue of that authority and power, you really owe more than to them than this.

The Ron Saxton challange: Prove that illegal immigrants are voting.

The bigger challenge. Prove it matters.

Steven Maurer makes the point I raised to Kari. Namely, that the kind of accuracy checks paul describes are all about finding random, normal failures: The checks are mostly there to make sure that a vote isn't thrown off by a sensor failure in one of the machines.

Of course he goes on to illustrate the fundamental naivete on the part of many (not necessarily him) that they take an unfounded belief: The system is so self-redundant and cross-checked, they're really not worried about intentional vote fraud.. This is all but a technological impossibility: Any reasonable person assumes that an adversary knows as much about the design of the system, including the safeguards, as anyone and therefore will design an exploit around all of the safeguards. And whether a perfect set of safeguards can be designed depends totally on the problem being safeguarded against. Nothing has been put in evidence here or in the public domain that it is even theoretically possible to put perfect safeguards in place against practical rigging schemes.

Maybe I'm dense, but in all honesty I can't quite parse this comment:

Never attribute to malice that which can be adaquately explained by incompetence.

What would be the "malice" referred to here, and what would be the "incompetence"?

A followup in response to paul's praise of the MIT-Caltech consortium and Selker:

When they formed, they were concerned about restoring public trust in electronic direct recording machines and fully electronically conducted elections in general. As a quite legitimate intellectual tactic, they did some work which showed in many cases voter suppression dirty tricks were probably more responsible in Florida and Ohio for tilted elections than rigging or electronic election machine failures.

Since they are interested in the problem of voter suppression --- by system design or malice intent --- it would seem that studying whether or not our VBM system has any suppression effects would be a legitimate thing from them to do. (Particularly since they have a problem with paper ballots also, and our system is completely based on paper ballots.) I haven't checked in with them lately to know if they have done this, but up through about a year ago they had not published any work in this regard.

paul - do you know if they or anyone have, or are studying, the possible voter suppression properties of VBM? One possible scenario described in fair analogy to a known malicious voter suppression tactic in Ohio in 2004 has been noted here, so clearly there is a reasonable question for academic study there.

clearly does not think like a computer scientist.

In this case that may be an advantage. The problem is that someone who wants to rig a machine to manipulate the vote needs to know an awful lot of specific information in order to direct a specific outcome. Then they have to have access to the optical scanner and the ability to reprogram its chip to mis-record votes in a specific way while avoiding detection.

The reality is standardizing the procedures for voting and testing would make it easier, not harder, for someone seeking to rig a machine to avoid detection. This is the problem with Microsoft or any standard, every machine has the same security flaws.

"The bigger challenge. Prove it matters. "

If you don't see a problem that criminals who broke the law can cast a vote, then that is a fundamental difference between the way you and I think. Here we are quibbling about "if my vote matters" and you argue "who cares if criminals vote". See the disconnect here?

The solution is to require fingerprinting of everyone. Sure its a little intrusive but we should just accept the fact that fraud is rampant in today's world. They should do the same for credit card transactions, food stamp cards, everything. How much did we lose last year due to fraud? I'm sure any effort to stem this tide would be worth it.

Ross Williams is quite right about standardization and making it easier to rig elections. However, that is quite apart from what engenders (false) trust in non-technically adept people. The fact is, they will always trust that which someone they trust can examine, particularly if many people they trust can examine it, than that which they can't examine and have to take on faith is "OK" from someone they don't know.

As long as we are throwing around aphorisms, I'll throw in the most important one every good engineer learns:

Never choose a complex technical solution when a simpler technical solution suffices, and never choose a simple technical solution when a non-technical solution suffices.

If you don't see a problem that criminals who broke the law can cast a vote, then that is a fundamental difference between the way you and I think.

Do you think it is a problem when we let people who got a speeding ticket vote? How about tax cheats? Shouldn't we require that people have an audit of their state and federal tax returns before we let them vote? I don't think so and I don't think it matters whether someone who lacks a proper work visa mistakenly votes either. In fact, I don't really see any good reason to exclude them from voting. They have a stake in the outcome like everyone else.

Here we are quibbling about "if my vote matters"

I don't know that is the real concern. I think the fear is that election results themselves are wrong, not that one or two votes are or aren't counted.

What happened in Florida in 2000 was that every military vote was counted whether it was legally cast or not. These were believed to be Republican votes. At the same time there was a concerted effort to exclude the votes of people likely to be Democrats. These were not random decisions, they were made because of how they would impact the final result.

never choose a simple technical solution when a non-technical solution suffices.

I think this is just plain wrong. Anyone here think they can multiply 203405 by 344558 more accurately with a "non-technical solution" than they can with a calculator? On the other hand, when multiplying 30 by 5 you in fact may be more likely to make an input error on the calculator than to get the answer wrong in your head.

The reality is the optical scanners quite likely count more accurately than a hand count (not to mention faster and cheaper). The problem is if they can be made to count inaccurately to effect the outcome of an election. And whether it is likely to be detected if someone does.

"Do you think it is a problem when we let people who got a speeding ticket vote? How about tax cheats? Shouldn't we require that people have an audit of their state and federal tax returns before we let them vote? I don't think so and I don't think it matters whether someone who lacks a proper work visa mistakenly votes either. In fact, I don't really see any good reason to exclude them from voting. They have a stake in the outcome like everyone else."

I don't see how you can equate immigration and identity fraud with such petty crimes like speeding tickets and tax evaders? Do you HONESTLY view criminal illegal Mexicans in the same light as someone who gets a speeding ticket?

I would like to see members of the Nation of Islam to be recruited in Oregon to count our ballots. It's the only "True" way of knowing what the count should actually be.

Peace out.

With the advent of electronic machines, we now have the opportunity to use two methods (machine and hand count) to can check the accuracy of the outcomes. (The Oregon VRC method requires a sample of less than 3 percent of the votes using hand counts.) This method is a simple way of gaining "checks and balances" to ensure accurate outcomes. The method has been vetted by specialists in statistics nationally.

Since the programming for the electronic machines is proprietary and the manufacturers have not allowed the software source code to be examined for malicious code, even by federal or state governments, this hand-count procedure is essential. HAVA (federal law) requires that software is certified for accuracy (by a private company that is paid by the vendor being certified). HAVA does not require an examination of software designed to find outcome-altering code.

With an independent hand-counted sample of votes, we have a way of testing whether our votes were counted as cast. We certainly want to be sure that our bank hand-counts our money as we submit it to them and gives us a paper receipt of that count--as a check against the electronic record. Why would we want less assurance on the accuracy of the electronic count of our votes than at least a sample hand count?

I don't see how you can equate immigration and identity fraud with such petty crimes like speeding tickets and tax evaders?

Tax evasion is stealing money from all of us and is a felony. Speeding sometimes kills people. What is it about working as a handyman or picking strawberries that is so dangerous?

Why would we want less assurance on the accuracy of the electronic count of our votes than at least a sample hand count?

Because the exact count of money is important. The exact count of election results isn't unless it is a very close election.

I don't think the question is whether you should trust the scanner counts. Its whether the current approaches used to assure that they are accurate are sufficient. And whether having a single statewide standard for doing so would add security or actually make them less secure.

A stolen election doesn't have to be "very close."

Fraud is a different issue, the question was accuracy. With money if the count is off by a couple dollars, someone loses a couple dollars. If the vote count is off by a couple votes it probably isn't going to change the outcome at all.

"What is it about working as a handyman or picking strawberries that is so dangerous?"

It's a huge detrmient to our society. These illegals are taking away work that kids should be doing in the summer instead of sitting on their lazy butts all day playing video games. "Cheap labor" in fact becomes very expensive when you take everything into consideration.

We have to pay for their kids' educations. Since they have a LOT of kids and pay very little into it, that costs all of us. The fact that they overwhelm the ER's. That costs all of us. The fact that they bring a very substantial CRIMINAL element. The fact that many use stolen Social Security #'s.... How about that many BROKE the law and entered the country illegally, an insult to many who came from other countries and filed the necessary paperwork. I could go on and on. Have you checked the newspapers in some of the more suburban communities and see how many Hispanic names are in the arrest record? Do it sometime, I think you'll understand where I'm coming from. Check the McMinnville News Register or the Hillsboro Argus.

Our Secretary of State, Bill Bradbury isn't concerned about illegal vote tabulations. He's fixated on those 26 foot tidal waves that are going to wipe out most of our coastal cities in the near future due to global warming.
It's nice to see he has his priorities straight.

see how many Hispanic names are in the arrest record? Do it sometime, I think you'll understand where I'm coming from.

Oh, I think I got that ...

"Posted by: zman | Mar 19, 2007 5:25:59 PM

The whole immigration debate comes down to this:

If you want to reduce immigration, the most effective solution would be to require everyone to have high security, national citizen ID cards. "

That's incorrect. If you want to 'reduce immigration' or effectively deal with illegal immigration you have to ensure that EMPLOYERS do not hire illegals. Follow the $$. When undocumented workers cant find employment because laws that are already on the books are being enforced - they will go back home.

Nobody wants a big brother solution, and that's not the way to deal with the problem.

"Why is it that Republicans aways focus on and demonize the immigrants who may have come to this country illegally, but don't bother to criticize the business owners who hire them and provide the main motivation for these people to migrate to the US in the first place?"

I agree that employers should be held to the law, but that doesn't justify coming to this country illegaly. If people couldn't/wouldn't "sneak" into this country illegaly, then the demand for labor would push the laws to be changed and/or result in the outsourcing of jobs, which we're already seeing.

Question: "Why is it that Republicans aways focus on and demonize the immigrant"

Answer: "see how many Hispanic names are in the arrest record?"

The problem is obvious, a lot of immigrants are hispanic and Republicans have never liked hispanics.

we're trying to make a good system better.

The problem is that you may be making it more vulnerable. County offices already take precautions to prevent vote fraud. It seems to me that they do need to be educated about the potential for fraud and how they can prevent it. But the question here is whether they all ought to be required to take the same precautions. It seems to me to consistency just makes the whole system that much more vulnerable.

It's interesting to me that some of the leading opponents of electronic election systems, including optical scan/paper ballot systems like we use in Oregon, are computer programming and computer security experts. These experts include Dr. Rebecca Mercuri, Dr. Avi Rubin, and Chuck Herrin (http://www.chuckherrin.com/archive.htm), to name just a few. Those who blindly trust these electronic systems, or think they can be trusted because we have honest people running our elections, etc., are people with no expertise in computers. The people in the latter category unfortunately includes our County Clerks. Personally, I'll take the advice of experts over the belief of amateurs any day.

Maybe everything is fine here in Oregon. Maybe it will continue to be fine. But I want proof! After all, it's my vote, and everyone's vote, we're talking about, i.e., the transfer of power from We the People to the government. I want to make sure that transfer of power is legitimate and goes to the rightful winners. I will only TRUST after VERIFICATION.