They are (or should be!) anonymous and do not identify voter. Under freedom of information law, it is your right to get copies of these electronic files. These are called “ballot images” and are simply electronic files, like PDF or TIFF or JPG or PNG files. (Electronic voting systems self-populate a template, which isn’t as good but still somewhat helpful). Think of it like this: As ballots go through the scanner, it takes a photo of each and stores it as an electronic file. Paper ballots are by far the best, because they are needed for part 2. Ballot images – Modern voting systems, and even the touch-screens, even if they are paperless, capture an individual image of each vote.What this does is crowd-source the authentication of the vote, in effect letting any and all persons verify ALL the votes, and if they want, anyone can do their own full recount of any or all races. There is a word we use in popular culture today: Crowd sourcing. If you do this, it won’t matter if it’s the Russians or some local good ol’ boy sticking hands into the system, because you can catch them. It is a one-two punch which makes it very difficult to tamper with results without detection – no matter who administers the system, what vendors they use, or who gets their hands on the computer code. All that remains is cooperation (or court-ordered coercion) of public officials to force them to honor your rights. It costs almost nothing and enables almost everyone to authenticate computerized voting system results. Laws are already on the books to authorize you to do this. This is already available in most systems.

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