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.

Editor’s Note

We want you to visit CTVotersCount frequently to keep up-to-date with important developments in Connecticut and beyond. Unlike a newspaper we do not have to produce something every day. However, going several days without a post we start to get restless. Our answer is to provide Frequently Asked Questions and Ironies. These are intended to explain or highlight important and timeless information. To see all past entries click on FAQ on the list under the ‘About’ tab on the right.

CT Irony #2: The Closest Races Will Never Be Audited

Nor will they ever be hand-counted. Nor will contested races.

Connecticut’s “strongest in the country” post-election audit law exempts races that are recounted or races that are contested from post-election audits. The law does not require that recounts be manual hand-to-eye counts and the Secretary of the State after some hesitation has lifted her requirement that recounts be manual.

Worse. If one race in a district is contested or subject to recount, the district is entirely exempt from the post-election audit.

  • Example #1: (Actual) When Representative Caruso contested the mayoral primary in Bridgeport, it exempted his race and all the races and districts in Bridgeport from the post-election audit entirely.
  • Example #2: (Theoretical) A state-wide race, such as Governor, Senator, or Attorney General could be close and cause a recount resulting in no post-election audit in the entire state.
  • Example #3: (Theoretical) Candidate A is the apparent winner of a fraudulently stolen race for the Connecticut House that would likely be detected by a post-election audit. But candidate B who lost the Connecticut Senate race in a senate district including the House district can conspire to block the audit of A’s race by contesting the Senate election.

Further Irony: We randomly select races to audit with no exceptions. We will audit/count races where candidates are unopposed, leaving other races unaudited.

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.

CT Irony #1: The Hand-Count Irony

In our most recent Presidential Primary there were many towns in Connecticut that ran out of optical scan ballots and a huge percentage (30-40% ?) of the vote in those towns was then un-scannable hand counted copied ballots. These were counted late at night by unprepared election officials after a fifteen hour day.

Ironically the only votes audited (because that is the law) were those counted by machine.

(This is particularly ironic because many discrepancies in past audits were attributed by election officials to hand counting errors during the audits – resulting in claims by election officials that it is impossible to count accurately by hand.)

Of course reality is that it is possible to count accurately by hand, but it takes checks and balances. One check is to count more than once. Another check and balance is to count by machine as well. Or by machine followed by sufficient random hand count audits.

The post-election audit should audit by random selection all types of ballots no matter where or how they were cast, no matter where or how they were originally counted. Currently we only audit ballots cast in polling places that were originally counted by machine. We exempt all hand counted ballots, all absentee ballots counted centrally by machine, and provisional ballots.

Risks Continue For 2008 – Myths Have Not Been Repealed Nor Refuted

Note: A post by Jon Kantrowitz on MLM prompted this response.

There is no reason to be comfortable. The “Ten Myths In The Nutmeg State” have not been repealed.

I have the greatest respect for the computer scientists mentioned in the article, their research, and their contributions. We also need many more election officials as conscientious Ion Sancho. He is one of the stars of “Hacking Democracy” and a tireless advocate <video>

To their ranks I would add Dr. Alexander Shvartsman of the UConn VoTeR Center. He and his team have had papers selected for the ACCURATE conference this year and last <read> <read>.

Where I diverge from the article is in its conclusion:

thanks to this team of computer scientists and their partners in the public sector, communities across the country will be better prepared to prevent malicious attacks and mishaps at the ballot box.

This is true but to a very limited extent because so few states have used the well known and not so well known available information about voting risks to take action to protect our votes.

In Connecticut:
Continue reading “Risks Continue For 2008 – Myths Have Not Been Repealed Nor Refuted”

Voting Machine Does Not Compute – Story Does Not Compute

The Danbury NewsTimes has the story of problems with a referendum in New Milford <read>. We are always pleased to see election integrity coverage, and we agree with the sentiments of this article, however there is something more to investigate. Apparently New Milford is not following procedures or there is more to the story.

Problems with New Milford’s budget referendum last week are a cause for concern on a much bigger voting process — the presidential election in November.

The new optical scanning machine at the town’s Lanesville district malfunctioned, which necessitated the hand counting of all 426 votes there.

Continue reading “Voting Machine Does Not Compute – Story Does Not Compute”

CTVotersCount Visits the UConn VoTeR Center

On June 4th we visited Dr. Alex Shvartsman and his team at the UConn VoTeR Center, toured the lab, and observed the testing of memory cards and the Diebold AccuVote-OS. Dr. Shvartsman and some of the staff

We have applauded the VoTeR Center’s academic work on evaluating the security of the AccuVote-OS and other voting machines <read> <read> along with their programs to independently inspect memory cards. <read> <read>. We have have also highlighted the Center’s post-election audit reports with some criticism based not on UConn’s work but on the lack of our confidence in the integrity of the data provided <read>

UConn’s reports on Diebold vulnerabilities complemented those of other researchers around the country, confirming the same vulnerabilities and adding additional vulnerabilities. The computer program to independently test memory cards represents excellent work. We are aware of no other researchers and no others state with a similar capability. This makes possible the unique program in Connecticut to test memory cards. We would like to see the program expanded to pre-test 100% of our memory cards before each election prior to delivery to election officials. The testing continues to highlight quality control problems in the programming of the cards by LHS Associates, and the failure of election officials to rigorously follow pre-election testing procedures.

Continue reading “CTVotersCount Visits the UConn VoTeR Center”