Take Back Elections began looking at voting technology with Prime III, or the Premier Third Generation Voting System, an open source voting system developed by Dr. Juan Gilbert of the Human-Centered Computer Lab at the University of Florida. After trials in Oregon, Wisconsin and Florida, it was used statewide in 2016 in New Hampshire, the first state to certify use of the machine.

We felt that, if using voting machines, they should be secure; verifiable; auditable; with low-cost, off-the-shelf technology meeting certain standards and criteria; accessible; using software that is true open-source, with general public license; includes layers of checks-and-balance; have machine-marked, machine-printed-at-the-poll, ballots on durable paper; the marked, voted ballots, checked and verified marked as intended; possibly, an audit imaging/scan technology; followed by/coupled with as many hand-counted paper ballots at the polls, once voting stops, before the polls close, for however long that process takes.

In TBE we like 100% hand-counted, machine-marked, voter-verified, paper ballots. We also have a hand-count protocol that we plan to report on.

TBE started by looking at Alan Dechert blueprint, prototype for what became the Prime III, the only deployed voting technology we could find that fit all our criteria. Alan Dechert’s concept was developed by a team led by the noted Dr. Juan Gilbert, including Brian J. Fox, world-famous coder. Prime III was successfully tested in several elections in New Hampshire in 2014.

Brent Turner, Secretary of the California Association of Voting Officials (CAVO), advocates for the use of open source, general public license, walked us all through the Prime III voting concept, features and technology function and fielded all our questions. Thank you, Mr. Turner!

This was an interesting and informative presentation. And, we like the redundancy allowed by a paper hand-count check-and-balance with the technology!

Please share your thoughts, comments and ideas with us below! Please get involved and help out! Sign up for one of our working groups! Join us here on the website and our growing Facebook group. Please donate if you can and help any way possible as we write sweeping reforms for our election system.

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Thanks so much for watching!!

M. Welch
Take Back Elections.org

https://takebackelections.org/conference-call-videos/