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New from Vendors -
Sequoia Voting Systems
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By Ed Felten, Princeton University
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April 05, 2008 |
This article was posted at Ed Felten's Freedom to Tinker Blog and is reposted here with permission of the author.
I wrote previously about discrepancies in the vote totals reported by Sequoia AVC Advantage voting machines in New Jersey’s presidential primary election, and the incomplete
explanation offered by Sequoia, the voting machine vendor. I published
copies of the “summary tapes” printed by nine voting machines in Union
County that showed discrepancies; all of them were consistent with
Sequoia’s explanation of what went wrong.
This week we obtained six new summary tapes, from machines in Bergen
and Gloucester counties. Two of these new tapes contradict Sequoia’s explanation and show more serious discrepancies that we saw before.
Before we dig into the details, let’s review some background. At the
end of Election Day, each Sequoia AVC Advantage voting machine prints a
“summary tape” (or “results report”) that lists (among other things)
the number of votes cast for each candidate on that machine, and the
total voter turnout (number of votes cast) in each party. In the Super
Tuesday primary, a few dozen machines in New Jersey showed
discrepancies in which the number of votes recorded for candidates in
one party exceeded the voter turnout in that party. For example, the
vote totals section of a tape might show 61 total votes for Republican
candidates, while the turnout section of the same tape shows only 60
Republican voters.
Sequoia’s explanation was that in certain circumstances, a voter
would be allowed to vote in one party while being recorded in the other
party’s turnout. (”It has been observed that the ‘Option Switch’ or
Party Turnout Totals section of the Results Report may be misreported
whereby turnout associated with the party or option switch choice is
misallocated. In every instance, however, the total turnout, or the sum
of the turnout allocation, is accurate.”) Sequoia’s memo points to a technical flaw that might cause this kind of misallocation. |
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New from States -
New York
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By Bo Lipari, New Yorkers for Verified Voting
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April 22, 2008 |
Vendor to sue NY again to allow DREs
This article was posted on Bo Lipari's Blog and is reposted here with permission of the author.
I told you the DRE vendors are like zombies,
and will never, ever stop trying to force DRE machines on New York
State voters. Once again, LibertyVote and their Dutch partner Nedap are
preparing to go to Court to challenge county purchases for accessible
paper ballot systems, and to overturn New York State’s right to test
our voting machines to the strict standards we worked so hard to
achieve.
On Thursday, March 20, the Cattaraugus county Board of Elections informed the State Board that they wanted to change the order placed last month
for 57 Ballot Marking Devices, and instead want to substitute
LibertyVote DREs for the paper ballot systems. This is an astonishing
request for several reasons – for one, orders have already been placed
for the ballot markers and contracts have been completed, signed and
sealed; and for another, the LibertyVote DRE has yet to undergo any
testing whatsoever! Yes, that’s right, testing to New York’s rigorous
standards has not yet even started, and won’t be completed until this
summer at the earliest. But Cattaraugus county is telling the State
Board they want to purchase the LibertyVote DRE now, essentially asking
them to bypass all testing and simply approve the machine at the next
Board meeting on Wednesday, March 26.
The Cattaraugus letter, signed by the county commissioners (and obviously prepared
by LibertyVote/Nedap’s lawyers) lays out the vendor’s litigation
strategy and arguments to the Court if the State Board refuses the
county request to allow them to switch
from paper ballots to an uncertified DRE. My guess - if the State Board
turns down this outrageous request at the next meeting,
LibertyVote/Nedap will be back in State Supreme Court before the close
of business asking that New York’s certification testing be canceled
and their DRE immediately approved for purchase. And based on their past success in this Court, why wouldn’t they? |
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New from National Issues -
General Topics
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By Kim Zetter
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April 05, 2008 |
This article was posted at Wired.com's Threat Level Blog and is reposted here with permission of the author.
 One reason election officials around the country have given for
purchasing touch-screen voting machines is that they say the systems
save money -- both in the cost of printing paper ballots and in storing
them after an election. Officials have made this claim, despite the
fact that the machines carry a steep price tag (about $3,000 per
machine).
So SaveOurVotes
(.pdf), a voting integrity group in Maryland, decided to see if the
19,000 touch-screen machines their state purchased really did save
money. The results aren't really a surprise -- the machines are wildly
more expensive than anyone anticipated. But just how expensive they are
makes their analysis mandatory reading for any legislators and state or
county budget committees that approve voting equipment purchases.
Maryland uses one system statewide -- touch-screen machines made by
Diebold Election Systems -- which it purchased in batches in 2002 and
2003. A loan of about $67 million was taken out from the state treasury
to pay Diebold for the machines, which counties are still paying off.
They'll continue to pay for the machines through 2014, even though the
state has since decided to scrap the touch-screen machines, due to
security concerns, and change to optical-scan machines by 2010.
Nonetheless, according to SaveOurVotes' figures, by the end of the
presidential election this year, Maryland will have spent more than
$97.5 million on the machines it's abandoning, but only about half of
that can be attributed to the actual cost of purchasing the machines.
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New from Vendors -
Microvote
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By Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita Press Release
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April 04, 2008 |
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Secretary of State Todd Rokita moves to collect fines and fees totaling more than $360,000.00
 This week, Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita’s office filed a
Petition to collect civil penalty fees from voting systems vendor,
MicroVote General Corp. totaling more than $360,000. The Secretary's
Office filed the Petition just as the appeals process is near
completion on a July 2007 administrative ruling. The ruling ordered
MicroVote to pay the State more than $360,000 in civil penalties and
investigative costs stemming from 198 violations of Indiana election
law.
"The Secretary of State's Office will not
tolerate voting system vendors that violate Indiana's election laws,"
stated Deputy Secretary of State Matt Tusing. "Moreover, MicroVote's
apathetic attitude towards proper certification is disconcerting,
especially considering that their profits come from taxpayer dollars.”
“On
behalf of voters and taxpayers, our office will continue to fully
enforce our laws, protect the integrity of our votes, and work
hand-in-hand with county clerks to execute the most fair and accurate
election process in the nation,” stated Tusing.
MicroVote came under initial investigation in April 2006 following allegations
that the company sold uncertified voting equipment in as many as 47
Indiana counties. Indiana law requires voting systems to be certified
by the Indiana Election Commission before being sold, leased, or
marketed for use in an election. |
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New from National Issues -
Federal Legislation
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By Mew York Times
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April 04, 2008 |
This editorial was posted at the New York Times on April 4, 2008.
After the bungled voting and
vote-counting in Florida in 2000, Americans agreed that the nation’s
voting systems had to be upgraded. With a presidential election fast
approaching, there is a real danger of another meltdown — this time
because of the flaws in electronic voting.
This week, a House committee approved a good emergency bill,
sponsored by Rush Holt, Democrat of New Jersey, that would help fix the
problems. Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, should schedule a
vote of the full House as soon as possible.
After the 2000 election, Congress made money available to the states
to replace the punch-card machines that produced Florida’s infamous
hanging and dimpled chads. Unfortunately, many states bought
untrustworthy, paperless electronic voting machines. Experience has
shown that these machines do not always record the votes that are cast
and that they sometimes flip votes from one candidate to another.
Expert studies have also proved that they are highly vulnerable to vote
theft.
The answer to these problems is voter-verified paper trails — paper
records of every vote. After an election, the totals on the machines
can be compared with the paper records. If there is a discrepancy, the
paper records become the official results. |
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New from National Issues -
General Topics
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By Robert F. Kennedy
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April 04, 2008 |
Forty years ago today, Dr. Martin Luther King was assasinated. Robert F. Kennedy learned of Dr. King's death just after he arrived by plane at Indianapolis for a campaign rally, Kennedy was told of King's
death. He was advised by police against making the campaign stop which
was in a part of the city considered to be a dangerous ghetto. But Kennedy
insisted on going. He arrived to find the people in an upbeat mood, anticipating the excitement
of a Kennedy appearance. He climbed onto the platform, and realizing
they did not know, broke the news.
 Ladies and Gentlemen - I'm only going to talk to you just for a minute or so this evening. Because...
I have some very sad news for all of you, and I think sad news for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee.
Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings. He died in the cause of that effort. In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it's perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in.
For those of you who are black - considering the evidence evidently is that there were white people who were responsible - you can be filled with bitterness, and with hatred, and a desire for revenge.
We can move in that direction as a country, in greater polarization - black people amongst blacks, and white amongst whites, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion and love.
For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and mistrust of the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man.
But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to get beyond these rather difficult times.
My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He once wrote: "Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."
What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.
So I ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, yeah that's true, but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love - a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke. We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We've had difficult times in the past. And we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; and it's not the end of disorder.
But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land.
Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.
Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people. Thank you very much.
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New from States -
Georgia
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By VoterGA
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April 04, 2008 |
Citizens in an electronic voting lawsuit announced that they have filed a summary judgment motion seeking to ban the voting equipment currently used in Georgia. The motion contends that there are no issues of fact at dispute that would warrant a trial for certain counts of the lawsuit.
The main thrust of the motion centers on a lack of equal protection and due process that the plaintiffs claim Election Day voters have when compared to absentee voters who use optically scanned paper ballots. The motion contends that retention of tangible paper ballots is required for voters to verify their actual ballot choices, for election officials to provide true recounts as needed, to investigate voting discrepancies, to prevent fraud and to produce evidence for contested elections.
In addition, the motion seeks to ban database servers used to tabulate electronic and optical scan votes at county and state levels because of admissions from officials that the equipment does not detect fraudulent manipulation of votes.
The landmark motion further seeks to ban the newer sequential roll technology used in three precincts for the 2006 audit trail pilot on the grounds that it jeopardizes secrecy of the ballot, a point that was stated in the 2006 Audit Trail Pilot Report produced by the office of the new Secretary of State in April of 2007.
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New from National Issues -
General Topics
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By Verified Voting Foundation
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April 03, 2008 |
The Verified Voting Foundation issued a warning today that the Internet is not safe for casting ballots in important public elections. Many computer scientists and others are concerned because Internet voting was used in the Democratic Party's Presidential primary for overseas voters in February, and because several state and national legislators recently have expressed an interest in Internet voting as an option for military service personnel overseas.
“Internet voting is vulnerable to all the risks of paperless computerized voting machines; it allows no meaningful recounts or audits,” said Barbara Simons, a computer scientist and expert on Internet voting. “If ballots are cast on the Internet, attacks on the election can be made by anyone with an Internet connection anywhere in the world, including individual hackers, political parties, international criminal organizations, hostile foreign governments, or even terrorists.”
“The Internet could be used to make voting easier, by, for example, allowing military and overseas voters a convenient way to obtain an absentee ballot, but votes delivered over the Internet cannot be trusted,” said David Dill, professor of computer science at Stanford University and founder of the Verified Voting Foundation. "Multiple studies by computer scientists have shown that making Internet voting safe is an incredibly hard problem, not solved yet, and possibly unsolvable. At this point, any claims of ‘secure Internet voting’ should be regarded with extreme skepticism.”
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New from States -
Connecticut
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By Connecticut Citizen Election Audit Coalition
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April 03, 2008 |
Procedures Alone Insufficient For Effective Election Audits
Download the Report
Coalition report on post-presidential-primary audits finds inadequate adherence to procedures and recommends additional changes in the law.
We report the good news that procedures have been significantly improved and that discrepancies noted in the counts in February post election audit were much lower than November. We are also pleased to report that, for the most part, registrars fully supported the portion of the procedures providing significantly improved observation opportunities for observers. These procedures allowed us to visually verify that ballots were being counted accurately and totals reported were accurately accumulated from those counts.
Unfortunately, now that procedures have been improved, the audit observations have exposed the lack of understanding of those procedures, lack of understanding of the principles behind the procedures, lack of attention to those procedures, and apparent lack of ability for election officials to follow those procedures.
The February audit observations leave us with the information necessary to vouch for the accuracy of the hand-counting results we observed. However, many of the audits, as observed, leave us uncertain as to whether an error or fraud would have been detected in an audited race where we were not present to observe. We also question the security of the chain of custody to protect the integrity of ballots before the audits and to protect the integrity of ballots and tabulators after the audits such that further audits and investigations could effectively be performed.
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New from National Issues -
Federal Legislation
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By Representative Susan Davis Press Release
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April 02, 2008 |
The Universal Right to Vote by Mail Act would allow all eligible voters an option to vote by mail
The bill by Rep. Susan Davis to lift restrictions for voting by mail in some states was approved by the House Administration Committee. The Universal Right to Vote by Mail Act (H.R. 281) was reported to the full House on a voice vote.
“This straightforward bill would simply give any eligible voter the option of voting by absentee ballot,” said Davis, a member of the committee. “No longer would an antiquated patchwork of state laws prevent voters from voting because they have work, family or other commitments. We will level the playing field by allowing voters in the states that do not have No Excuse Absentee Voting to catch up to the twenty-nine that do.”
Currently, there are twenty-two states that restrict an eligible voter’s ability to vote by mail, also know as absentee. These states restrict vote by mail privileges to certain categories of people, including the elderly, individuals with disabilities or an illness, or those in the military. Twenty-eight states give eligible voters the option of voting by mail for any reason. Oregon conducts its elections entirely by mail.
In many states, excuses such as having to work, taking care of a child, or serving on a jury are not considered valid reasons to be able to vote absentee.
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