Category: National

Lou Dobbs Segment On NJ Ruling And E-Voting

On the occasion of the NJ ruling yesterday, Lou Dobbs interviewed the lawyer involved, Penny Venetis, and two voting advocates, David Dill and John Bonifaz. Full transcript <read>

Voting segment:

KITTY PILGRIM, CNN NEWS CORRESPONDENT (voice over): A victory for voters. In Trenton, New Jersey, today, a court ruled that accuracy tests on paperless, electronic voting machines can be made public. The voting machine company, Sequoia, argued the information was a trade secret.

PENNY VENETIS, ATTORNEY: The courts had to step in to say it’s time now to examine the voting machines to determine whether or not they count votes accurately.

PILGRIM: After repeated electronic voting failures, 28 states are returning to paper ballots, according to an activist group who wants a return to paper ballots. According to that group, in this year’s presidential election, 61 percent of voters will be using paper ballot systems, up from 35 percent in 2004. But close to 20 states are still using electronic voting machines without a paper trail for the upcoming presidential election. Pennsylvania, Ohio, Colorado are potential trouble spots. One of the most problem states has switched back to paper ballots.

DAVID DILL, VERIFIED VOTING.ORG: For the longest time, Florida was dominated by electronic voting, but they made a sudden transition last year when they passed a law requiring paper ballots and it’s going to be a big success story. I think that Florida is likely not to be the embarrassment of the 2008 election.

PILGRIM: The system of choice these days, optical scan machines, a paper ballot is scanned by an electronic device and then kept in case a recount is needed.

JOHN BONIFAZ, VOTERACTION.ORG: Only a paper ballot based system will give people the confidence there is transparency and accountability with the process and that the process can be recounted or audited, which is critical for ensuring the integrity of the elections.

PILGRIM: Repeated tests by prominent universities has shown machines without a paper trail cannot be counted accurately.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

Now, while this is a victory in New Jersey today, and the public will have access to the accuracy testing of voting machines, New Jersey will not have paper ballots in time for the upcoming presidential election — Lou.

DOBBS: Well, I think we’ve also got to remind everybody that, when we saw the fellow looking at the ballot, that was a paper ballot.

PILGRIM: That was.

DOBBS: Causing all that trouble in Florida.

PILGRIM: That was a bad paper ballot and then they went to electronic because of that and that’s when they had even more trouble.

DOBBS: Well, it’s — seems like there is just a lot of trouble when it comes to figuring out how to cast a ballot in some quarters of Florida and other states. We hope that that won’t be a problem this year. Thank you very much, Kitty Pilgrim.

Well, the backlash against those e-voting machines has prompted some states such as Tennessee to pass laws requiring a paper trail for any type of voting. Unfortunately, Tennessee along with New York and Maryland won’t have the paper ballots either. Not until after the 2008 presidential election. In the swing state of Pennsylvania, as Kitty just reported, most of the machines are electronic and have no paper trail.

Democracy Too Important To Hide Under Trade Secrets

N.J. Star-Ledger, Judge rules public can see voting machine test results, <read>

A Superior Court judge in Trenton today agreed to overturn her ruling barring computer experts from publicizing test results of electronic voting machines.

The move was a victory for the American Civil Liberties Union and New Jersey media organizations that argued the public should be privy to the results before the presidential election.

“This is a historic moment. This is the first time a court has recognized the public’s right to examine voting computers,” said Penny Venetis, a professor at Rutgers Law Clinic who is representing the plaintiffs.

Broken System: Bridgeport Primary Does Not Add Up

Summary: This article and the Bridgeport Primary expose the problems with a “system” that ignores and excuses discrepancies that are discovered. As we have often pointed out in post-election audit reports, ignoring and excusing away discrepancies means that if there is ever an error or a fraud it will not be recognized. In this case we will never know who actually won the Bridgeport Primary. We may have some penalties assessed by Elections Enforcement. All we know for sure is that this was not a reliable election, that voting integrity in Connecticut is far from assured and does not exist in Bridgeport.

ConnPost article by Bill Cummings: Voting Numbers Do Not Add Up <read>

In the midst of a heated court battle over last fall’s Democratic mayoral primary, state Rep. Christopher Caruso’s legal team asserted there were more votes than voters.

City officials and their lawyers scoffed at Caruso’s contention, calling it untrue and irresponsible.

However, a Connecticut Post examination of election records from the Sept. 11, 2007, primary shows there were more votes than voters — 105 more.

Continue reading “Broken System: Bridgeport Primary Does Not Add Up”

What Does It Take To Get A Voting Machine Federally Certified?

Not Much <read the whole story>

Last February, SysTest labs wrote its certification test report for a new voting system manufactured by Premier Election Solutions (formerly Diebold). The report listed the 79 problems the lab found during testing. Even so, SysTest recommended the system be certified by the EAC.

As we have pointed out, apparently we don’t take voting machines seriously. We take gambling machines and electric meters seriously. And hold gas companies to higher standards than Diebold.

“Paperless electronic voting is in retreat” – Because It Cannot Be Verified

Electronic Verification for E-voting: A Dead End for Voter Confidence, by By Sean Flaherty, Verified Voting Foundation <read>

There is a small possibility that sometime in the future some smart people will come up with a way that we can vote and verify our votes all electronically, without paper. Yet, it may be impossible. For now at least, voter verified paper and manual counting or manual audits are required.

Paperless electronic voting is in retreat, its popularity done in by disturbing security reviews of current e-voting systems and significant voter concern about the integrity of elections. Optically scanned paper ballots, which also use software to count votes but allow software-independent hand audits and recounts, are the most common voting system in the United States. A number of states that have purchased paperless electronic voting machines are moving to adopt optical scan systems, with accessible ballot-marking devices for voters with disabilities. Approximately 60% of America’s voters live in jurisdictions in which voter-marked paper ballots will be the primary voting system in the November elections.

But we live in a technological age, and to some it seems logical that in crafting laws governing voting systems we not “stifle innovation” by closing the door on paperless voting. The present generation of systems was a bust – but could a new generation of paperless voting systems contain enough redundancies that paper ballots or voter-verifiable paper records could become unnecessary?

…First, it is necessary to compare electronic voting to electronic commerce. There is a fundamental problem in comparing e-voting to e-commerce: the secret ballot. Secure electronic commerce depends in part on connecting the individual investor with the online stock trade, the taxpayer with the 1040 form, the traveler with the flight itinerary. The secret ballot, an essential element of our democratic tradition, requires that the voter not be connected with the votes she has cast. If taxpayers had no way of confirming to their satisfaction that their tax returns were received by the IRS as they submitted them, most would never consider filing their taxes electronically…

In Connecticut we are more than half way there. We have voter initiated verifiable paper ballots, yet lack sufficient post-election audits and lack a sufficient chain of custody.

Florida Risks OUR Democracy With Internet Voting

What’s wrong with Florida using Internet Voting? Why should Connecticut Voters care?

  • It is not private – open to intimidation abuse, vote selling – especially in environments such as military, business, religeous, and union.
  • There is no auditable record
  • Anything that risks who is declared President, or could change the balance in Congress and the Senate threatens the future and value of votes for Connecticut voters.

Update: Additional Article <here>

Voters Group Objects To Internet Voting Pilot Program
Posted May 29, 2008 by Catherine Dolinski, Tribune Tallahassee Bureau
Updated May 29, 2008 at 01:58 PM
A group of skeptical voters are objecting to Okaloosa County’s plans to experiment with Internet voting for overseas service members, raising the possibility of a lawsuit if Secretary of State Kurt Browning doesn’t squelch the idea.

Under plans by Okaloosa Elections Supervisor Pat Hollarn for Operation Bravo, service members in Germany, England and Okinawa would vote at computer stations on encrypted electronic ballots. A secure computer line would transmit the data to Spain and then Florida. Only Florida election officials would be able to decode the ballots, according to Hollarn.

The voters would also see a paper printout of the ballots prior to transmittal. Hollarn noted that’s more than Florida’s 2007 paper-trail legislation requires for disabled voters.

But Dan McCrea of a group called Florida Voters Coalition isn’t buying it.

“Taxpayers are still reeling from the costly mistake of allowing DRE touchscreen voting before that technology was secure,” he said in a letter to Browning today. “We mustn’t repeat that mistake.”

He called Operation Bravo “illegal” and “dangerous.”

McCrea cites the 2007 paper-trail statute, while Hollarn cites a 2005 statute permitting safe electronic transmission of election materials. McCrea said Browning should rule that the 2007 law is the controlling law.

McCrea also contends that Hollarn has a conflict of interest because she heads the Operation Bravo Foundation, which is “essentially … a voting system vendor.”

But Hollarn replies the foundation is only a fundraiser for the project, and said McCrea’s accusation is “grasping at straws.”

Browning spokeswoman Jennifer Davis said he hasn’t yet received Okaloosa’s final plans and had little comment. But she differed with McCrea’s characterization of the project as “internet voting,” comparing the the ballot transmission to a fax.

“The voters would also see a paper printout of the ballots prior to transmittal.” – this is a false sense of security – a receipt given to a voter which cannot be compared to or used to audit the tally produced by the computer counting the votes is absolutely useless for increasing or providing integrity.

What could be a worse than a receipt useless for verifying the tally, but perfect for delivering to a friend, intimidator, purchaser, manager, minister, union steward, or commanding officer?

“comparing the the ballot transmission to a fax.” – well no, presumably there is a paper record of a real fax available on the other side. Not that a faxed ballot would that much better in any regard.

Hats off to Dan McCrea and the Florida Voters Coalition.

People And Paper Save The Election In Arkansas!!!

The ballots were incorrect, the machines were not programmed correctly. But election officials noticed the ballot problem in time and after the election discovered the machine problem. Because they had a paper record the election was able to be correctly decided. <read>

Haggard says the night before the election, officials noticed that the electronic ballot on two machines slated to be used at East Cadron B was missing the State House District 45 race. So officials printed up paper ballots to be used just for that race in that precinct.

Voters cast electronic ballots on the voting machines for other races, then cast paper ballots for the District 45 race. At the end of the day, Dr. Terry Fiddler (D) had beat Linda Tyler (D) for the House seat with 794 votes to Tyler’s 770. But a post-election examination revealed that despite the fact that the electronic ballots on the two machines at the East Cadron B precinct didn’t display the District 45 race, the machines recorded votes for that race anyway…

“Somehow the recording software had tabulated it into the wrong race,” Haggard says. “Thank goodness for the paper trail. We went to the paper trail and could show how people actually voted.”...

ES&S machines were also at the center of the controversy over the 13th Congressional District race in Florida in 2006 when more than 18,000 ballots cast in Sarasota County

But in Sarasota they had no paper trail <read> and a huge loss for democracy in the polling place, in Congress, and in the courts.

Some say that Pennsylvania is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Arkansas in between. I guess not! In Pennsylvania they don’t have the paper to protect the vote <read>.

Update: As other advocates have pointed out, all is not rosy in Arkansas:

  • A DRE should always exactly equal the paper record, the same machine prints and tallies both – it should not mix up candidates and print a record for a candidate not on the ballot
  • The paper record is subject to the problems of voters not really checking – an optical scan paper record completed by the voter would provide much more confidence
  • What if any pre-election testing was performed – this is about the easiest error to spot, other than the machine failing to start or catching fire

You Can’t Always Trust The Paper

When it comes to paper ballots, trust comes from:

  • An easy to understand ballot
  • A private ballot
  • A strong chain of custody
  • Transparent counting of the ballots, or sufficient transparent audits – followed by appropriate action

When it comes to media we need all the facts, correct facts, and many usually reliable sources of news. We can’t rely on even the New York Times to get simple facts straight. Bradblog summarizes the story as reperted in detail at Smirking Chimp <read>.

“In 2001 painstaking postmortems of the Florida count, one by The New York Times and another by a consortium of newspapers, concluded that Mr. Bush would have come out slightly ahead, even if all the votes counted throughout the state had been retallied.“
— Alessandra Stanley, New York Times, May 23, 2008 in a review of the HBO television movie, Recount

That’s not true.

The New York Times did not do its own recount. It did participate in a consortium. Here’s what they actually said:

“If all the ballots had been reviewed under any of seven single standards, and combined with the results of an examination of overvotes, Mr. Gore would have won, by a very narrow margin.“
— Ford Fessenden And John M. Broder, New York Times, November 12, 2001

Why did Ms. Stanley make such an important and fundamental error?

It is not a trivial matter. It is a common piece of misinformation. Many, many people believe it. Now a few more do, as a result of Ms. Stanley’s review.

It is not a trivial matter. Because that misinformation was created by one of the most bizarre, and still completely unexplained, journalistic events in modern times.

Here’s what happened.

Hard to fathom the New York Times being exposed by a Chimp – worth remembering this the cautionary tale.

Senators Feinstein and Bennett Plan To Unite Voting Integrity Advocates

Another effort in a long history of knee-jerk reactions to address public concern with voting by throwing expensive, inadequate, unproven, and unnecessary technology at the problem. The better solution is a stronger “Holt” bill banning DRE’s, mandating paper ballots, and strong, effective audits.

Senators Feinstein and Bennett issued a press release purporting to enhance voting integrity by a bill to be offered (text not yet available) <read>. Unfortunately, this bill as described in their press releases is wholly flawed.

For the last couple of years voting advocates have been split on bills by Representative Rush Holt proposing federally mandated paper ballots followed by audits. While supported by many advocates as useful improvements, others have opposed these bills for not going far enough.

We confidently predict that the new Feinstein/Bennett bill will unite all voting integrity advocates against their flawed assumptions and inadequacy.

Continue reading “Senators Feinstein and Bennett Plan To Unite Voting Integrity Advocates”